Hope and Uncertainty at the Periphery in Global Times: youth employment in kinmen, Taiwan

Kinmen, located in Taiwan’s remote border area, has become increasingly embedded in the global economy by opening its border for trade and tourism with China. Previous rural youth studies mainly focus on decisions and experiences of migration while neglecting the experiences of those who stay in their hometown. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the experiences and subjectivities of young people who stay in the periphery for adulthood transitions. Based on our ethnographic data gathered in Kinmen, it shows how the enlarged employment with the new markets supported by Chinese tourists bring hope for the youth. At the same time, our findings explore how the highly dependent tourism economy and the overdependence on a single source of tourists bring them worry and uncertainty. Analyses of the paper highlight spatial elements in the economic, cultural and political processes of structuring young people’s lives and subjectivities under globalization.