Searching for a Better Life

This book offers an ethnographic account of young people growing up in the slums of Bangkok, exploring their struggles to get by in conditions of severe structural constraint and the outcomes and side effects of their endeavours; in doing so, it offers an antidote to neoliberal assumptions about personal responsibility.

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Life in Bangkok for young people is marked by profound, interlocking changes and transitions. This book offers an ethnographic account of growing up in the city’s slums, struggling to get by in a rapidly developing and globalizing economy and trying to fulfil one’s dreams. At the same time, it reflects on the issue of agency, exploring its negative potential when exercised by young people living under severe structural constraint. It offers an antidote to neoliberal ideas around personal responsibility, and the assumed potential for individuals to break through structures of constraint in any sustained way.