Intergenerational Aspirations Across the Life Course in Asia

Articles in this special issue probe the relationships between strategies for upward socio-economic mobility and intergenerational aspirations Asia. With capitalism, urbanisation, mass media, education migration increasing throughout Asia, now is a time of flux opportunities subjectivities. Such changes are lived as deeply personal relational. Young people often instrumental to familial ‘development’ strategies, effects divisions labour, norms moral economy, life course ideals distributions power. At same time, development discourses exhort author autonomous destinies through entrepreneurialism, career consumerism. Contributors issue, ‘Development, Gender Intergenerational Aspirations Asia’, ethnographically explore how old new dreams—some emphasising autonomy, while others stress obligation—conjoin, elide compete, negotiate associated expectations. We also show dreams find limits, requiring redreaming rerouting.