Politics of youth survival in times of crisis

Abstract

This essay discusses the discursive shift in the idealized youth citizenship in Indonesia and recent instances that demonstrate the state’s ambivalent treatments of its youth as exemplified with the millennial aides and the government’s lack of support to its young labour force during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. I propose that the pandemic has further established uncertainty and insecurity as the “normal” in young people’s lives. This essay looks into the “politics of survival” imposed on Indonesian youth and discusses the multiple, ongoing, and developing crises that reveal the imaginations of the state and its governance of the ideal youth citizen.