Abstract
As the scholarship on youth grows, so does the focus on the predicaments youth face increases. In particular, the phenomenon of waithood, which refers to a prolonged period of transition from youth to adulthood, has been attracting much attention from researchers. This article builds upon this growing literature by examining the roles that soccer academies in Ghana and shelters for unaccompanied young migrants in South Africa play in creating, sustaining, and spreading the waithood of youth. Even though both institutions operate in different spaces and promote distinct activities, they share a mutual goal by presenting themselves as educational stepping stones for a better present and future for African youths. Nevertheless, given the gaps between what both institutions claimed to provide and what they provided in reality, we argue that they served as the root of waithood for their young residents. As the following ethnography reveals, with worsening basic living conditions, infrequent access to school, and unattainable dreams about universities and European soccer leagues, many youths in shelters and academies were left incapable of assuming adult responsibilities and enjoying adult privileges. Our findings suggest that, unlike common perception of waithood as a phenomenon that takes place after school and before formal employment, waithood is also an institution-based phenomenon that can be facilitated within the education system. Simultaneously, in contrast to the common scholarly portrayals of waithood as an individual experience, we argue that waithood is a communal social phenomenon. At South African shelters and Ghanaian academies, the period of suspension and the prolonged journey to adulthood trickled-down to wider social and familial circles. The youth's efforts to seek alternative paths for adulthood, as well as the support they get from relatives and friends, reduces the loneliness of their waithood, though their contributions are hampered by local economic and political challenges.
Introduction
Africa's title as the youngest continent in the world holds much promise but is also a cause for concern. Half of the population is under 25 years of age with over 250 million people aged between 15 and 24 (UN World Population Prospects, 2019: 58). Researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and politicians view the abundance of youths who hope to join the workforce each year as an “unprecedented opportunity” for growth (Filmer and Fox, 2014: 2), while at the same time warning from “a ticking time bomb” (Ighobor, 2013) given the inability of most economies of Africa to offer all of them opportunities for livelihood. Consequently, millions of young adults in Africa are struggling to find stable jobs, form families, and attain markers of adulthood.
The lack of prospects to transition from youthhood to adulthood has meant that Africa's youth are locked in a perpetual state of “waithood.” The concept of waithood was pioneered by Dhillon and Yousef (2011) and Diane Singerman (2007) in relation to youth in the Middle East, and later developed by Alcinda Honwana (2012, 2014, 2019) in African contexts. Waithood relates to the prolonged delay in the transition to adulthood, when young people struggle to secure employment and cannot become financially independent. Their inability to secure employment causes delays in other aspects of adult life, such as the possibility of marriage and starting a family. The concept offers an opportunity for conceptualizing the ways that global and local economic power relations, neoliberal policies, inadequate governance, and poor infrastructures place obstacles to young people's ability to secure formal employment and provide for themselves and their families, thus creating a prolonged period of waiting in their path to adulthood.
While the concept of waithood helps in understanding the struggles that youth in Africa face as well as their creative ways of coping with them, it has overlooked youth's position before graduation (or dropping out), thus framing waithood as a phenomenon that emerges outside of institutions. This article fills this gap by uncovering the roots of waithood and examining the role of training, education, and welfare facilities in its formation. We argue that while waithood awaits youth after graduation, it can begin when they are still in educational frameworks. Youth are exposed to waithood, are being trained for it, and conduct a dialogue with it within the education system. While institutions aspire to give youth opportunities, equip them with skills and nurture their ability to plan and dream, they operate in the shadow of waithood, replicate it, and expose their youth to waithood when they are still in school. Consequently, young people's coping strategies with waithood are being evolved, developed, and honed before the school finish line.
This study unfolds the way waithood is entrenched in different spaces, ages, and life situations, within official frameworks of training and education. Relying on two examples, one from South Africa and one from Ghana, we discuss the ways youth's transition to adulthood was delayed due to gaps between what the two facilities were supposed to provide and what they did provide in reality, and due to promotion of far-fetched dreams as the single route to success. Lack of funds, poor living conditions, unstable policies, and unfulfilled promises for the future were keeping the young residents in a perpetual state of waithood while they were still going to school, thus shaping waithood as an institutional phenomenon.
The article relies on ethnographic work conducted in two institutions in which young Africans are perceived to receive vital educational tools for improving their lives—shelters for unaccompanied children and youth in South Africa and soccer 1 academies in Ghana. Since current literature understands the prolonged transition to adulthood of waithood as a liminal phenomenon that youth face after graduating school or university and before attaining formal employment, ethnography of waithood is often conducted in clubs and markets; on sidewalks and unpaved roads; benches and parks. However, since education systems are directly affected by national economies and global economic power structure, we stretch the boundaries of waithood in this study, and investigate the ways this phenomenon is manifested within youths’ institutions.
The article will first lay the pertinent theoretical foundation on waithood, after which it will provide some background on the two institutions and contexts of their establishment. The third and main section, foregrounds the findings of our fieldwork on the ways waithood is manifested in the shelters and the academies, emphasizing the particular nature of institution-based waithood. We show that by failing to provide basic living conditions, the young residents in both institutions were situated in a survival mode, waiting for things to change and unable to work hard toward their goals. On top of that, as the institutions in question were framing grand goals as the paths toward a better future, the majority of residents who were unable to attain these goals, were effectively kept in a state of waithood, waiting in frustration for these dreams to come true. The barriers in youth's paths to graduation and the intangible futures they had in mind have brought the notion of waithood into these educational facilities, stretching the process of growing up, and revealing the early stages of a prolonged and suspended transition to adulthood.
Youth in waithood
The study of youth is receiving growing attention in various disciplines within the social sciences, particularly through cultural and socio-political prisms (Paice, 2021; Ugor, 2021). Furlong (2013) identifies two main approaches in the contemporary study of youth. The cultural approach looks into youth subculture and lifestyle, often involving an inter-generational perspective. The transitional approach investigates youth as a stage of transition between childhood and adulthood, often through the research of structures and institutions that demarcate these life stages, such as education and employment. Both approaches engage with issues of power and privilege, deprivation, exclusion, agency, and engagement with power structures, all of which attest to the importance of paying attention to cultural, social, and political realms when researching the lives of youth.
These cultural and transitional approaches find expression in the phenomenon of waithood, as youth face difficulties assuming adult responsibilities and enjoying adult privileges. The cultural paradigm investigates what happens when youth are in waithood, how waithood is experienced, and what subcultures emerge out of waithood. This approach gives birth to studies that focus on youth's agency, constantly reminding us that the youth in question are not passively stuck in structural waithood but are actively and creatively coping with it (Cuzzocrea, 2019). The transitional approach provides a more structural angle, first by focusing on youth as a transitional stage from childhood to adulthood, and secondly by focusing on the economic, social, and political structures that set the ground for waithood. These two approaches complement one another, providing us with the necessary multidisciplinary tools to investigate waithood.
The notion of waithood has not been accepted by all. Marjoke Oosterom (2021) claims that policy discourse tends to reduce the term waithood to “sitting around doing nothing.” The author argues that policy makers should stop repeating the idea that young people are simply waiting, and that adulthood should not be understood as gained only through assimilation in the labor market. While we agree with the author about the problematic implementation of waithood by certain scholars and discourses, we believe that the concept of waithood carries great structural and social importance and should not be set aside, rather developed, nuanced and further analyzed.
The understanding of waithood is deeply embedded in the reality of many African economies. Continued economic and political crises have narrowed the horizons of African youth and hampered their transition to adulthood. Long period of suspension that African youth experience often stem from failed neoliberal policies, poor governance, corruption, the absence of fundamental freedoms, and the precarious working conditions in the informal economy (Ferguson, 2006; Piot, 2010). The unequal integration of southern economies in the global economy, which echoes colonial legacies and neocolonial influences, has aggravated the struggles youth face as they are trying to secure stable jobs (Dobler, 2020: 8). As Kovacheva et al. (2018) note, when labor markets do not expand as fast as the education systems and population growth rates, young Africans pay the price. According to Stasik et al. (2020: 4), in 21st century Africa, “dreams of stability and formal employment are as distant as ever.” In this reality, waiting for adulthood becomes a way of living (Finn and Oldfield, 2015). The youth find themselves stuck in a “state of limbo” (Honwana, 2014: 28) as they cannot become financially autonomous, assume responsibilities, and enjoy the fruits of adulthood. Stuck in waithood, though, does not mean that the youth are inactive. In this state, their activeness and resilience are realized through entrepreneurship and informal forms of employment. They invent new forms of interaction with society and new ways of existing in the margins.
The economic reality for unaccompanied Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa reflects part of these dynamics. Gukurume (2017) and Scoones et al. (2019) recognized that youth in Zimbabwe have been living in waithood for decades, as the economy has been rapidly deteriorating since the early 2000s, and as youth's unemployment has been radically increasing. Frustrated and undervalued, they often resort to cross-border mobility, where they also struggle to find jobs (Scoones et al., 2019), thus facing waithood in South Africa (Bernays et al., 2020). As Honwana (2012) notes, while in the past, migration to South Africa paved young people's path into adulthood through labor, these traditions are broken down as migrants face a lack of choices and an ongoing state of survival which again facilitates a prolonged transition to adulthood.
Also in Ghana, many young aspiring soccer players look beyond the country’s borders for a path out of their waithood. As Ungruhe and Esson claimed, “playing football and migrating to a foreign club has become a means for young men and boys residing in West Africa to enact social becoming and attain markers associated with adulthood” (2017: 36). 2 While the phenomenon of waithood has not been thoroughly examined in Ghana, it is clear that the neoliberal policies in the country serve as a direct background for young people's waithood. Even before the conceptualization of waithood as an analytical term, Langevang (2008) examined the difficulties Ghanaian urban youth faced in trying to transition to adulthood, as neo-liberal reform programmes intensified divisions between people and places, and in particular, severed the competition in the informal sectors. She noted that, in this reality of limited economic and educational opportunities, many young people seek to migrate to what they perceive as greener pastures.
Whereas the increasing scholarly interest in youth is also visible in the growing literature on waithood in Africa, the scope through which scholars examine this phenomenon remains largely limited in its scope. One central shortcoming of the scholarship is the often characterization of an institutional void which youth in waithood face. According to Honwana (2012), youth in waithood are situated in a liminal state, being stuck in-between social structures. Their inability to enter the formal job market creates a ripple effect, leaving youth out of other social and political institutions. Thus, waithood is often studied in an institutional in-between, after high school and before formal employment or before having a steady source of income, even if informal (Dobler, 2020; Finn and Oldfield, 2015; Honwana, 2012; Scoones et al., 2019). Within this literature, young people who are formally employed, study, or make a decent living are not considered to be in waithood. Waithood might pose a risk, but as long as they are under an institutional umbrella of some sort and as long as they are financially independent and not in a survival mode, they are not targeted or framed as youth in waithood.
In contrast to current scholarship, we argue that the experience of waithood can be initiated while young people are still in school. Situated within economic, social and political contexts that facilitate waithood, some educational institutions internalize waithood and set the stage for it. Focusing on soccer academies in Ghana and community-based shelters for unaccompanied children and youth in South Africa, we suggest that the expectations that these institutions create, reinforce, and spread, can shape a life of constant waiting and an inability to move forward, thus forming institution-based waithood. 3
Our analysis of waithood builds upon the growing understanding among scholars of youth that the “transition from youth to adulthood is increasingly non-linear and heterogenous” (Thomson et al., 2002: 335). We move away from 20th-century Anthropological misconceptions about a presumed life cycle model that presented a universal, strictly ordered, and coherent stages, and instead adopt Johnson-Hanks (2002) concept of vital conjunctures which foregrounds the possibilities that emerge around specific periods of potential transformation in one's life, and the different aspirations that arise when one faces vital life decisions. Doing so is also conducive to understanding the gendered differences within waithood, namely, the different aspirations and decisions young women face compared to young men within this period of suspension. 4 Furthermore, we also maintain that to uncover the different paths to adulthood, scholars of youth should be mindful of the “critical moments” (Thomson et al., 2002) in the youth's lives. The concept is useful in interviews for researchers seeking to uncover the key biographical changes in the youth's lives, the consequences of these changes for their lives and identities, and how these changes are influenced by wider social processes and geographical settings. Such an approach foregrounds the agency of youths to tell their stories, recognize critical turning points, and attest to their ability to change their life trajectories. The following examination builds upon these understandings concerning the multiplicity of paths to adulthood and the vitality of paying attention to the young people's experiences, aspirations, choices, and hopes.
Ethnography of waithood
Waithood is not an explicit phenomenon, nor is it declared or described by youth, their communities, institutions, or governments. It is revealed sporadically, hinting itself in subtle ways one can easily overlook or exempt with cultural or socioeconomic justifications. While quantitative studies discuss waithood through analysis of unemployment and marriage rates among youth with various degrees of education and socioeconomic classes (Akinyoade and Julius-Adeoye, 2017; Kovacheva et al., 2018; Singerman, 2007), qualitative studies (Finn and Oldfield, 2015; Masquelier, 2013; Ungruhe and Esson, 2017) rely on ethnographic methods, grounding their arguments about waithood through ongoing dialogues, observations, and spending long periods of time with youth in their social and physical environments.
This article builds upon previous ethnographers’ work through an analysis of two youth's institutions: shelters for unaccompanied migrants in Musina, South Africa, and soccer academies in Ghana. While these institutions operate in different regions and provide different services, both offer accommodation and education and frame themselves as a steppingstone for a better future. Not only do they claim to address youth's basic needs, but they also aim to provide a vision for the future and the tools to get there.
The shelters in the South African border town Musina provide an emergency solution for the phenomenon of child and youth cross-border mobility. They were formed by the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA) in 2009, following an economic and socio-political crisis in Zimbabwe that led to mass migration to the South African border area, including unaccompanied children and youth. As hundreds and thousands of Zimbabwean migrants arrived in Musina daily and were refused from going further into the country, the borderland turned into a bottleneck, creating a humanitarian emergency at the South Africa border town (Mahati, 2015). Local initiatives in Musina tried to handle the large numbers of migrants in the streets, including the URCSA congregation that opened its’ church's doors to unaccompanied children and youth in 2009, establishing two shelters, one for girls and one for boys, offering them food, accommodation, temporary legal protection, and access to local schools (Elphick and Amit, 2012). Soon after, the shelters became a pathway to education. Going to school became mandatory and all of the residents were expected to matriculate. School has been framed at the shelters as a means to a university degree, which was considered as the best way to ensure unaccompanied migrants’ future.
Fieldwork in Musina was carried out by Levy, working in two shelters, one for boys and one for girls. From October 2016 to May 2017, Levy visited the shelters daily and conducted participatory observations, life-story interviews, semi-structured interviews, group discussions and informal conversations with 11 children at the ages of 12–14 and 32 youths at the ages of 15–24, all migrated on their own before the age of 16 and lived at the shelters or used to live there in the past. The interviews were undertaken as part of a PhD research that sought to examine how concepts of childhood and youth, migration and un-accompaniment are shaped in contexts of migration in various spaces across the borderland. A thematic and narrative data analysis methods were used. This article relies only on ethnography conducted in the shelters and draws mainly on data collection with youths.
Initial consent to conduct ethnographic work in the shelters was given by the owner of the shelters, the late Professor Pastor Lesiba Matsaung. Following his consent, Levy discussed the project with the shelters’ residents and staff, and explained that only those who are interested will participate. Later on, Levy was advised by one of the older boys at the shelter that approaching the kids directly might put them in an uncomfortable position to refuse and offered to collect the names himself. At the girl shelter, Levy tried to apply the same technique but no one wanted to collect the names. Thus, Levy approached the girls directly. At the beginning, the girls were reluctant to participate. It was only after 3 weeks of daily visits, informal conversations and chit chats that they started to show interest in the research. In both shelters, some of those who did not want to participate in the beginning changed their minds after hearing their friends discuss the interviews, and requested to participate. The research was conducted with a collaboration of the department of Geography and Environmental Studies in the University of Limpopo and ethical clearance was obtained from the Institutional Review Board on Levy's home-university.
Soccer academies are defined as “facilities or coaching programs designed to produce football talent” (Darby et al., 2007: 148). By the early 2000s, a plethora of soccer academies with various national and international affiliations began forming in Ghana, providing European clubs ways for signing young African players. These academies have attracted the interest of parents and their children given their attachment of soccer activities with an educational framework, as well as the close ties some of them maintained with professional teams abroad, soccer agents, and scouts. Parents and children regard academies as steppingstones for migration abroad that can improve their conditions and status, and as institutions that can provide graduates with a safety net in case they will not become professional soccer players (Darby et al., 2022; Ungruhe and Esson, 2017; Van der Meij and Darby, 2017). Given these potential rewards, parents and children invest great expectations in taking part in an academy (Esson, 2013, 2015). As Darby noted: “the migration of African footballers provides the sort of exposure to elite leagues and salaries that not only contributes to the development of football, but also allows individuals to escape poverty and potentially facilitate development at home” (2012: 266). Academy owners, on their part, have also used the rhetoric of development to attract participants in order to acquire financial and social capital for themselves and the surrounding communities. Such rhetoric, in turn, further fuels the “goal dreams” of the youths (Dubinsky and Schler, 2019), who believe that excelling on the pitch would open doors for social mobility for them and their relatives.
The fieldwork Dubinsky conducted in Ghana included five trips, lasting between six to eight weeks each, that were undertaken between 2013 and 2016, focusing on the experiences of youth playing at the Kumasi Sports Academy (KuSA). 5 Dubinsky conducted participant observations of the daily activities of the academy, including training sessions, matches, schooling, and recreation time. Alongside countless informal mundane conversations, Dubinsky interviewed over 50 academy participants at the ages of 12–20, their parents, and nearby community members, mostly through semi-structured, non-structured, and group interviews. Interviewees were recruited for the study based on the consent given by the academy's founder and the consent of each interviewee. The interviews were undertaken as part of a broader research that examined the roles Ghanaian football academies play in local development (Dubinsky, 2022). The reasoning for choosing this setting was the lack of knowledge in the literature on football academies in Ghana that were owned by Ghanaian. The interviews conducted in this research provided first-hand insights into how Ghanaians are able to mobilize their own resources and run football academies, and whether and how Ghanaian youths, their parents, and surrounding communities are benefiting from these endeavors. Thus, the interviews’ questions focused on the contributions and limitations of the academies to the progress of youths in the realms of sports and education. The interviews were then transcribed and analyzed through a thematic narrative analysis, with a prime focus given to the youths’ experiences, gains, and aspirations. These insights uncovered their concerns about their futures and the role these institutions play in creating their waithood, aspects which will be elaborated in the next section. Ethical clearance was obtained from the Institutional Review Board on Dubinsky's university.
The following examination uncovers not only the temporalities that youth experience but also what we can learn from their prolonged waiting, even in time of suspension that, on the surface, do not seem to entail much importance (Janeja and Bandak, 2018). We adopt Masquelier’s recommendation that researchers should focus on what was being produced while waiting in youth clubs rather than to “focus on what is lost under condition of crisis and privation” (2013: 473). This perspective enables researchers to better understand how African youth carve out possibilities for themselves in a context of scarcity, and it enables us to realize what youth are thinking, feeling, and doing while they are living in waithood.
Institution-based waithood
In what follows, the article focuses on the experiences of Zimbabwean and Ghanaian youth at the shelters and academies, respectively. As will be seen, these experiences can engender long periods of frustration and suspension, which, in turn, lead to the early introduction of their waithood. The discussion of these findings is done through two main themes: (1) Institutional barriers in access and participation, and (2) Waiting for dreams to come true.
Institutional barriers in access and participation
A major sign of waithood is an ongoing struggle to access adult structures, and thus remaining in-between institutions, incapable of assuming adult responsibilities and enjoying adult privileges. Yet when youth struggle to remain or benefit from institutions that provide the necessary steppingstones in the process of growing up, such as schools and suitable housing facilities, evidence of waithood emerge while young people are still a part of institutions.
Kumasi Sports Academy (KuSA) was established in 2010 at a time of great optimism in Ghana, shortly after the discovery of large quantities of offshore oil. Analysts and politicians predicted the discovery would generate immense revenues for the country, predictions that led entrepreneurs to ride the wave of this optimism. Among them was King James Asuming, who formed KuSA to profit from the transfer of soccer players and to promote the scholastic and sportive abilities of Ghanaian youth. To do so, Asuming invested in the refurbishment of an abandoned structure which he turned into dormitories, classrooms, and dining hall. He then hired professional teachers, coaches, and leased a communal soccer pitch. The academy's advertisement brochure presents various educational opportunities aimed at attracting the attention of interested parents and children. A similar message is transmitted in the academy's TV commercial, which ends with the message: “Kumasi Sports Academy—excellence in sports, scholars in knowledge” (Kumasisportsacademy Ghana, 2016). The importance of the integration of schooling and soccer was also articulated online, as the academy's website stated: “You don’t have to drop out of school because you want to be a footballer. Kumasi Sports Academy gives you the opportunity to be a professional footballer while in school” (Kumasisportsacademy, n.d.). Large posters of famous Ghanaian soccer players alongside their expensive cars decorated Asuming’s office where he had met the parents and their sons and daughters upon registration. The display of such images promoted the vision the academy sold: successful and luxurious life through soccer.
With the foundations ready, Asuming opened the doors of the academy, and began marketing it as a path to educational and sportive success. Yet, by 2015, the country’s optimism was erased by inflation, mass layoffs, public and private cutbacks, and KuSA was not immune. The economic downturn exposed the academy to multiple challenges, as it was unable to serve basic human needs. It was the academy’s director, the participants, their families, and the employees that have subsequently paid the price of the institutional predicaments.
Having conducted several fieldwork trips at KuSA from 2013 to 2016, Dubinsky witnessed the impact of the economic downturn on the academy. From a daily routine of three meals per day in 2013, most youths received only one daily meal in 2015. The academy depended on the school fees the parents paid, but with many of them unemployed, they could not support their children at KuSA. In 2013, the academy’s pantry used to be fully stacked, but it was mostly empty in 2015–2016. During one of the interviews with 16-year-old Vivian, she began spreading chalk on her lips and nibbled it, a sign of an eating disorder. Dubinsky asked her for the reason, and Vivian answered: “I did not eat supper since Friday [one week ago]. All I eat is porridge in the morning.” She had been in this situation for months. She had lost weight and seemed fatigued on the pitch and unfocused during classes. Usually, after a few minutes into the lesson, she began to drift into a deep slumber and would remain asleep for the rest of the lesson.
Vivian’s condition was not unique, given the daily routine at KuSA. A routine day at the academy began in a two-hour soccer training, after which the players attended school. After a rest, they were expected to complete their homework for the following day. In reality, the absence of nutritious and adequate food led many to fall asleep or drift during the classes. This unhealthy condition was aggravated by the absence of water during the training sessions. At the end of each training, the thirsty players who did not possess any money would ask their coach for a few pesewas [cents] to buy a water sachet. The county’s electricity crisis posed further setbacks for the youths, as they were often unable to prepare their homework in the evening, with the sporadic supply of electricity to the academy.
As the economic downturn continued, new adversities emerged, as Asuming was no longer able to pay his teachers’ salaries. It was a common sight to see players waiting after training in their classrooms to their teachers, uncertain if they would indeed arrive. Alhasan was one of the few teachers who arrived during most days of the week, though, once he was no longer able to pay the lorry fares, he too had to leave the academy to a different school. “I need money and the bank doesn’t give. Where is my future now? I must take care of my future,” he noted in our last conversation, after he had arrived in the academy to supervise his class’ final exam.
Asuming's aspiration to benefit from soccer had thus aggravated the youths’ waithood Expenses related to soccer gained primacy over educational expenses because the biggest source of income for an academy stems from the transfer fee it receives for transferring its players abroad. On one occasion, Asuming paid for non-refundable registration fees for a soccer tournament in China before ensuring that he had available players and staff who would be able to buy the flight tickets. He bought airtime on Kumasi's radio station and ran a commercial to encourage students to register at KuSA, but none of them assisted him in recruiting more players for the trip. The money paid for registering for the tournament was unrecoverable in times when the academy was in dire need of basic amenities.
The case of KuSA reveals a major aspect in youth's institution-based waithood—a substantial gap between what the academy was supposed to provide and what it actually did. Prior to anything else, KuSA was supposed to take care of the youth's basic needs. Food and water, as well as access to school, are all a part of the very basic infrastructure any institution must provide for the youth under its care. As KuSA struggled to do so, the young footballers were unable to fully partake in activities which were essential to their future, such as learning at school. Whether it was hunger, absence of teachers or lack of ability to do homework, in practice, they were denied from active participation in one of the key steps into adulthood.
Far from Ghana and the soccer industry, shelters for unaccompanied children and youth in South Africa's northern border town Musina reflect a similar process—one that began with a dream that was soon shattered by the reality. What started as an emergency solution for unaccompanied minors arriving from Zimbabwe, became a long-term solution for children and youth on the move, as Jacob Matakanye, the manager of Messina Legal Advice Office [MLAO] and a board member of the shelter project, reflected: We started from 7 boys, only boys, sleeping in the church's garage, and every day they came back with one or two more […]. When we started seeing girls coming to the garage, we said ‘let's have a proper planned project’, and then we approached IOM and the UN to build proper shelters […]. Any kids who were coming now—the community had an interest… That's our mandate—to see that there are court orders, that they have a shelter and that they are going to school…
Access to free primary and secondary education became a trademark of the shelters. Not only did the shelters’ management promote matriculation as necessary on its own, but it was an obligatory step for those who aspired to continue to tertiary education, which was presented as the ultimate stage toward a better future.
While the shelters’ management aspired to provide an opportunity to resume education, lack of basic living conditions such as food, running water and electricity stood in the way. 23-year-old Tawanda and 20-year-old Nyasha discussed the scarcity at the shelters and its implications in a joint interview: Sometimes there is nothing at the shelter, it's dry, so sometimes you tell yourself ‘If I could have been somewhere else’ … That's when I decided to leave… At the shelter, it can go dry, and you start to look for other options… We are now used to it, but there were times when the shelter was not a suitable place for people to live. You cannot live without food. You cannot live without water. Living at a place without electricity… While going to school! Yes, while going to school.
Nyasha and Tawanda were facing a similar situation to which they reacted in different ways. They were both good students, both aspired to go to the university after graduation, but Tawanda was fed up with living in hunger and dropped out after completing 10th grade. He started working and assisted those who remained in school with groceries and stationery. Nyasha decided to weather the storm and was about to matriculate at the time of the interview. Others went in and out of school, according to the financial situation at the shelters. When food was lacking, they quit school and tried to find piecemeal jobs. When funds arrived, they resumed their studies.
Similar to what was seen in the soccer academies in Ghana, acute scarcity meant that youth were denied basic living conditions and held back in their ability to pursue their studies. Dropping out of school, leaving temporarily, or remaining at school while hungry, all had harsh implications on their future. In addition to dropping out, those who remained in school had suffered a major drop in their final grades, and the students who went in and out of school had to repeat grades and postponed their graduation. Thus, they did not only wait for their basic needs to be fulfilled, but for the possibility to resume the pursuit of their future which was suspended again and again when basic needs were not met.
That pursuit was also challenged by the instability and precarity related to youth's status as unaccompanied migrants. Change of policies in local, regional and national levels were delaying students’ progress at school, constantly shaking the ground under their feet. Sudden requirements of the schools and the department of home affairs for study permits, birth certificates and passports, led to long suspensions from school in which the students had nothing else to do but wait.
Lack of stability and fluid policies were also an inside matter at the shelters. Christmas of 2016 provided a vivid example. While the town was busy with shoppers and the streets were flooded with travellers, six boys were going through a crisis as they were about to be expelled from the shelter after a feud with the staff. Being over 18 and still at school, the shelters’ management agreed to accommodate them as long as they provided food for themselves. In reality, everyday conflicts were a trigger for threats of expulsion. The Christmas crisis was not the first, the second or the third time that being over 18 was used against them. Usually, these threats were either solved after the youths in question asked for forgiveness or left the shelter, yet this time, the six boys were not going away without a fight. They met with the church's board of trustees, and when it did not help, they scheduled appointments with the Department of Social Development and IOM. In a joint meeting at the IOM offices, the shelter's manager withdrew her decision, and the boys were able to breathe.
This victorious event was celebrated but it came with a cost. During the threats of expulsion, they knew that they might have to find an emergency housing solution, which made it difficult to concentrate on their studies. As a result, some of them failed in their final exams. Like in previous occasions, they had to redo their school year. Going in and out of school, being suspended and taken back in, and having to repeat school years again and again, kept youth effectively stuck in an adolescent setting, even when they were in their mid-20 s. In addition, incidents such as the Christmas crisis had a major effect on the younger children who were terrified about what was going to happen to them at 18.
The notion of waithood is thus more complex than what has been argued so far. While leading scholars have been focusing on waithood as a structural phenomenon that emerges after completing school and before attaining steady employment, the findings from the academies and the shelters unveil that waithood can be set up for at a much earlier stage, when children and youth's institutions fall short in providing young people with their basic needs, hinder their active participation in school and stretch their dependency over many years. We agree that unstable labor markets (e.g., Dobler, 2020; Honwana, 2012) and imbalance between functioning education systems and malfunctioning economies (e.g., Kovacheva et al., 2018), are shaping youth's lives in waithood. Nevertheless, the findings from the shelters and academies challenge the assumption that the result of these structural constraints appears in the liminal phase after school and before employment. By situating obstacles in youth's access and participation, the transition to autonomy, independence, self-sufficiency, and proficiency is delayed by the institutions themselves, which are manifesting waithood under their roofs.
Waiting for dreams to come true
The barriers that kept youth's waiting during their training and studies, continued to haunt them as they were looking forward to the future, waiting for dreams to come true, and facing a reality that was quite different than the one that was described to them all along. The everyday schedule at KuSA was characterized by a constant wait for an ambiguous route to future success. “If you get abroad you can get far better money than Ghana. I’m waiting for the chance to leave here,” youth player Moses Nti explained his motivation for attending the academy, which encapsulated that of his teammates. This constant wait at times evolved into frustration when it was not backed by actual progress. On the one hand, many players from the women's team—such as defender Blessing Agbomadzi and goalkeeper Kerrie McCarthy—were awarded call-ups to Ghana’s youth national teams as a recognition for their good form in the league. Such call-ups serve as an important step forward to the players because playing at international level attracts attention from agents and scouts, which, consequently, can facilitate the movement to a team abroad, as was indeed the case with Agbomadzi. On the other hand, the players at the men's teams did not compete in a league because it was disbanded for lack of sponsorship, and thus, they had fewer opportunities to earn international call-ups, a situation that contributed to their frustration.
This frustration is seen with the account of 20-year-old Samuel Aiyan, KuSA’s most senior player. Since joining KuSA in 2010, only once was he invited to trials for a professional soccer club, but he ultimately failed to qualify. In addition, since 2016, the men's national league in which KuSA competed was closed. The most common route to secure a professional contract is by gaining exposure in a national competitive league, though, without a functioning one, KuSA’s men’s were left idle. This lack of a competitive framework limited the players’ exposure and has left many in the same place, Samuel among them. “I believe myself I can play that standards in terms the league they are playing there, England, France, Italy, Germany and Spain […] but I’m not getting any help who will take me there,” he complained. The lack of opportunities to advance to higher playing levels hindered Samuel's development and led him to his current state of waithood. Playing almost a decade for the academy had not served as a springboard for Samuel's career, but it mostly produced concerns about an unattainable dream. Samuel and his family are invested in his soccer career out of desperation, as he does not have any alternatives in life. Samuel remains in the same place, hopelessly explaining: “I don’t have any place to move on, that is why I’m still here. If I had a place to move on, I’ll be going on to start a new life there.”
Samuel's stress over his future is also reflected in his parents’ comments, embodying that waithood is not an individual experience but one that includes all those who are invested in the young person's life. His mother, Rukiya, angrily stressed her discontent from King, KuSA's director: “This year we are not hearing any good things from Mr King so we are not happy this year. Our son is still in Ghana here. I and my husband are not happy, not happy AT ALL.” Samuel's parents complained about paying Asuming for the issuing of a passport for their son. Samuel’s father took a loan to secure 150 cedi [US$26] and has not been able to repay it. Asuming told them that he had a link in Belgium and that he would send Samuel to play there, though, all they heard since then from Asuming was his repeated pleas for them to have patience. They grew tired of waiting and questioned whether the money they paid for the passport would benefit them somehow. Rukiya's agonizing statement revealed her frustration: We want our son also to be doing something. Look at his age—he's not small boy again. He have to start doing something so we parents will be free. He [King] has to let our son out of this country. […] I want Europe. I will be very very happy not in Ghana here, please. I don’t want Ghana here […] because in Ghana here not good payment.
Rukiya's disappointment with Samuel's involuntary immobility and absence of employment options is shared by other parents. For most families, it has turned out that they bought an illusion that entails waithood that reinforces personal and communal feelings of disappointment and despair.
The fact that some players from KuSA's women's team progressed to the national team, while the players from the men's team have not, attests to the academy's unique contribution to the challenging of prevalent gender norms in Ghanaians society. Yet, there remain deeper barriers within the Ghanaian society that imped the inclusion of additional young women in academies, as well as a clear trajectory from the academy-life to a professional career. Many young women throughout the country face obstacles in joining a youth team given that most teams only include men. In different Ghanaian academies Dubinsky had examined, the founders explained that they only accept young men because the demand from the global market of football is for men and not women. Another obstacle stems from the objection of many families to their daughters wish to seek a career in football, considering the low salaries Ghanaian teams pay their female players. These two limitations stem from the gender inequalities in the Ghanaians society concerning football, which—despite some progress that has been made in the 21st century—is still considered a male-dominated sphere. Thus, despite Assuming's pioneering decision to include young women at KuSA, many young women—even those who are called-up to represent Ghana at international levels—face disappointment in the wake of the bleak options they have for securing a professional contract. These feelings, in turn, further imped their departure from their waithood.
Unmet dreams were keeping youth at the shelter waiting in frustration as well, as tertiary education, which was framed as the ultimate goal and a crucial and final step into a better future, was out of reach for many of the graduates. This was the living reality of Richard and Tafadzwa, both graduated three years before their participation in this study, and both were still in Musina, barely making a living. Tafadzwa tried applying twice to the University of Limpopo and was rejected for bureaucratic reasons. He had no guidance, no idea about how the system works, and no one to assist him in his attempts to navigate through the foreign academic system. Unlike Tafadzwa, Richard did not even try to register since he was unable to pay the registration fees. He was working as a security guard in two establishments, earning a total of ZAR 2000–3000 [US$150–200]. At 24, Tafadzwa was living at his girlfriend's place and Richard was living at the shelter. Neither of them was able to pay rent or save money for future endeavors. Richard felt stuck and deeply frustrated: I don’t like this place […] South Africa is very big and very nice. Places like Cape Town, Durban, Joburg… Why am I here? […] We are just trying to run away from Musina. But I’m still here in Musina. I’m still here in Musina. Maybe I will die poor since I was born poor. Maybe this all means that I must die poor. I can’t force things. I can try to force matters, but if the Creator tells me that ‘this is not your portion’, it's not my portion.
After years of struggles with poverty at the shelter, threats of expulsion, and bureaucratic barriers that have kept them in and out of school, Richard and Tafadzwa continued to live in waithood even in the following years after their graduation. They were hanging on to the dream of tertiary education even though they were unable to pursue it, as it was the only available plan for a decent future they had. For years, they kept on waiting for something, anything, that would take them away from Musina.
As was seen in the academies in Ghana, the shelters in Musina provide another example for the communal aspect of waithood, as younger youths who were still in school were affected by the waithood of their older peers. 10th-grade student, Emma, reflected: Derek passed but he is not at the university, you saw that?. … You see Richard, Nancy, those people, they went to school but look at them now. What are they getting? Peanuts […] I don’t want that same thing to happen to me… What will I do?… Will I just stay here doing nothing?
Seeing her friends stuck and unable to push themselves forward made Emma and others anxious and worried about their future. While their teachers, care workers and congregation members emphasized the importance of education, the waithood that their friends experienced trickled down and made them realize that nothing was waiting for them after graduation. The reality on the ground challenged the assumption that education was a way of moving forward, and damaged students’ motivation. Thus, institution-based waithood was not only shaping individual lives but was a communal experience that had direct and indirect expressions and consequences.
The shelters and academies offered a framework that was supposed to provide a pathway to a better future. Instead, it marked a single track for success, which left many who did not manage to fit in that track in a deadlock. That deadlock was not only caused by the difficulty in obtaining a steady source of income as often portrayed by waithood scholars, but was highly promoted by the institutions that instilled false hopes among their young residents. Waithood was not the result of unmet dreams, but rather, it was the outcome of not having alternatives for that dream. Since the youths in question were taught that there is one single way to secure a better future, one goal to aspire to—it was difficult to accept that their plans are not realized. Giving up would mean that a better future is out of reach, simply because one dream, one plan, did not follow through. Thus, in addition to the shelters and academies failure in providing young people with access to basic needs and ability to actively participate in education frameworks, these institutions set the stage for waithood by marking one far-fetched track for success. As young graduates were trying to pursue their plan for long periods of time without any sign of success, the waithood they experienced did not only affected them, but trickled down to a wider social circle of those who were invested in them, depended on them, or looked up to them.
Conclusion: Institution-based waithood
Youth's voices from both fields reveal that waithood can be rooted within education institutions. The everyday at the shelters and the academies shows insurmountable gaps between what these institutions were supposed to provide and the living experience. The absence of basic living conditions, dysfunctional classrooms and precarious policies create gaps in youth's educational and physical progress, as they are thrown back to a survival mode, unable to concentrate or function properly, and end up suspending the pursuit of a better future while waiting for things to change. Convinced that the possibility of a better future relies on tertiary education or being recruited to play in foreign leagues, the young participants waited in frustration for opportunities to come along, hanging on to a far-fetched illusion that only a few manage to fulfill. They experienced repeating pauses in their transition to adulthood. At these gaps, institution-based waithood had emerged, jeopardizing the ability to establish a solid ground for adult life and obstructing youth's path to adulthood.
Whereas the two test cases can stand on their own, we integrated them to demonstrate that waithood can be facilitated within different educational frameworks, in very different geopolitical contexts. Positioned within institutions that did not live up to their immediate responsibilities and promoted one single way for success that was out of reach for the vast majority, youth from the shelters and academies described similar realities of waithood. The shelters and academies’ inability to provide food, water and electricity, as well as to sustain access to school and manage to form some sort of stability, contributed to the youth's inability to concentrate on their studies and pursue their goals, thus creating long periods of waiting, prolonging their school years, and postponing their ability to move forward into adulthood. In addition, framing future goals that are very difficult to attain as their ticket out of poverty, has led many of them to wait in frustration for far-fetched dreams to come true. Both the shelters and the academies embody a kind of “cruel optimism” (Berlant, 2011), given the disconnect between the educational institutions and unemployment realities, which hamper youths from realizing their fantasies for a better life. In contrast to the understanding of waithood as a phenomenon that is realized in the liminal phase between school and employment, we show that children and youth's institutions became active participants in the formation of waithood among youth. While their goal was to offer a sustainable living framework, education, and a pathway to a better future, in fact, they set youth up in a dialogue with waithood through the construction of long periods of suspension and a prolonged transition to adulthood.
Institution-based waithood among adolescents has a communal aspect that adds to individualistic and generational views of waithood in current scholarship. The literature on waithood often points to the ways that individuals are affected by this stage, as well as entire generations of youths from lower socioeconomic status in struggling economies (e.g., Honwana, 2012; Singerman, 2007; Scoones et al., 2019; Dhillon and Yousef, 2011). The shelters for unaccompanied migrants and the soccer academies reveal that the period of suspension and the prolonged journey to adulthood within education institutions trickles-down to wider social and familial circles. “Waithood,” as Dobler argued, “spreads waithood around” (2020: 10). In the academies, many players depended on their parents’ support, and many parents supported their children as a future investment. This dynamic increased pressure and reinforced feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy among youth and their relatives who do not progress. Not only are the youth living their lives in waithood and are facing obstacles in their transition to adulthood, but also their families that trusted the academies as an investment in the family's future. In the shelters, experiences of waithood among the youth who have already graduated trickled down to those who were still in school, damaged their motivation, and led to a general anxiety among the young students. In both cases, waithood was based within the institution, creating a communal experience in which the participants were not facing waithood on their own, but as a community. While it might ease the feeling of loneliness, experiencing waithood together may normalize waithood, shaping it as an inevitable part of growing up.
When we began our work in the academies and the shelters, there was no sign of waithood. Advertisements, media reports, and academic papers projected an image that the shelters and academies were local institutions that provide what children and youth need in order to grow up safely, acquire education, develop skills, and transition well to adulthood. The interviews we conducted with the owners, management, and staff projected success stories. The fact that children and youth kept on coming and stayed in these facilities supported this perception. Certainly, there was no malintent from the founders and managers of these institutions. Only through daily observations, conversations, and chitchats with youth at the academies and the shelters over a substantial period of time, their constant disappointments, anxieties, lack of focus, far-fetched expectations and sense of powerlessness were gradually unveiled. The hunger they were facing, the lack of institutional commitment to their education, and the triviality of changing policies were revealed by being there with the participants and witnessing their everyday struggles and dilemmas. Ethnographic work was thus crucial in our ability to notice waithood and investigate it in unexpected spaces.
Looking ahead, it is essential that ethnographers examine articulations of waithood in additional institutions and continue to investigate the structural sources, expressions, and implications of institution-based waithood. Doing so is crucial for having a more comprehensive understanding on modern-day waithood, to raise the awareness of institutions on which strategies they should avoid in order not to replicate the conditions leading to waithood, and to start a dialogue about the unique responsibilities that educational institutions for youth carry when waithood poses a tangible threat. Future research should also adopt long-term perspectives, as current scholarship tends to miss important life-trajectories in the lives of the youth they examined. For example, adopting a long-term lens would have exposed a different story about Vivian. Despite the hardships encountered at KuSA, Vivian eventually managed to progress in life owing to her soccer skills, to the extent of “departing” from her waithood. After playing at KuSA, she moved to play for a first division club in Ghana, was called-up for the women's national team, and in 2022, secured a professional contract at an Indian first division team. One of the goals she scored went viral and was seen by tens of thousands of viewers, thus raising her status on the world stage of football (FIFA, 2022). As such, whereas scholarship on waithood is often limited to youth who are currently experiencing waithood, research that extends over numerous years and spaces can provide a more nuanced understanding of how youth not only navigate their waithood but also manage to depart from it and enter adulthood.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors received funding for the research from the Tamar Golan Africa Centre at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.
