A generation looking for opportunities and recognition: young rural people and their pathways into irrigated agriculture in North Africa

Abstract

Young rural people receive little attention in research and state development programs in the Mediterranean, despite their important role in farming and in the rural areas. This special issue focuses on the pathways into irrigated agriculture of young rural people in North Africa. The contributions to this special issue show the emancipation of rural young people, who install themselves, take initiatives and propose technical and institutional innovations that are driving the development of new forms of agriculture, which supply -for example -most of the needs of North African cities in fresh vegetables. The articles of this special issue make visible the agricultural dynamics in which rural youth are active and bring original insights on two main themes: i) the emergence of a social category shaped by a common aspiration to engage with small-scale entrepreneurial agriculture, and ii) the adaptive strategies of rural youth to develop their agricultural project in the face of the many difficulties in the access to productive resources. We discuss the informal nature of the new agricultural dynamics in which young rural people are engaged, in the perspective of new public policies that could explicitly take into account the pathways of young rural people, eager to renew irrigated agriculture in North Africa.