Capturing agency and voice in research: a critical review of studies of youth unemployment, self-employment and the informal sector in Botswana

Abstract

This article reviews literature on youth unemployment and self-employment as well as the informal sector in Botswana and the extent to which young people feature as agents in these studies. It pays attention to their areas of focus, research questions, and methodologies employed to understand the situation of youth unemployment and self-employment. One key finding coming from this review is that most of research portrays young people as overwhelmed by structural constraints and no attention is paid to their agency in the form of their perceptions of the situations they encounter as well as the strategies they use to respond to constraints and enablements. The article concludes by way of suggesting the methods and use of theoretical frameworks that would give a voice to young people as agents, which researchers should pay attention to in research designs.