“If only I get enough money for a bicycle!” A study of childhoods, migration and adolescent aspirations against a backdrop of exploitation and trafficking in Burkina Faso

Abstract

This paper focuses on adolescent children’s independent migration to rural towns and urban areas in search of work. International and national agencies tend to see this migration through the lens of crisis, whether as a result of parental ignorance or youngsters’ unruliness. Here, the author explores, on the one hand, how these perceptions correspond with the common perceptions of childhood and youth in rural areas, and on the other, how rural adolescents describe their mobility. In the intersection between different notions of childhood and youth that give rise to conflicting ideas about adolescents’ work and migration, the author draws attention to the adolescents’ own rationales, choices and strategies to pursue their quest for money and meet intergenerational expectation