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This paper from YOUR World Research highlights and explores the role of positive uncertainty in lives, strategies and transitions towards adulthood of marginalised children and youth in two urban locations in Ethiopia. Young men and women embraced notions of positive uncertainty, making journeys to street situations and internationally in search of more hopeful futures. While youth navigate uncertainty positively in the short term, the research suggests this is temporal and their agency relational and embedded. They seek support from peers but still want to belong and be accepted by their families and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing participation in family decision making is an integral part of adolescent development. This paper uses longitudinal data from four low and middle income countries—Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam—to assess the relationship between young people's involvement in schooling decision making and schooling outcomes. In the pooled sample, compared to young adults who indicate to have no say in educational choices at age 19, adolescents who make these decisions unilaterally or jointly with parents are on average 17%–23% more likely to drop out by age 22. The effects are, however, heterogenous across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools pursued multiple ways to cultivate national identity amongst students, but not all approaches are effective. Drawn from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in rural Ethiopia, this study aims at exploring how national identity is reproduced through the knowledge system of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC). By exploring the daily lives of students in the school of Qenie, the findings show detailed practices and how the school system exposes them to a multitude of cultural resources that help in national identity reproduction. The study has important implications for practice and policy to reinforce a healthy approach to nurturing valued aspects of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on interviews with 45 children, this article looks at the life situations and aspirations of working children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, including their hopes, efforts and struggles to make their dreams come true. Pushed by the need for survival, the children work and nearly half go to school. They demonstrate agency, taking care of themselves, supporting families and aspiring to change their lives. However, they also face challenges that make achieving their aspirations difficult. The authors argue that agency alone is not sufficient to help them realise their aspirations unless buffered by supportive structures and systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how children conceptualise and practice family relationships in two social settings in Ethiopia. Based on ethnographic data, it discusses (i) how urban and rural children construct family; (ii) what family activities children do and which social positions they assume; and (iii) the convergence and divergence of meanings and practices of family relationships between urban and rural Ethiopia. The analysis demonstrates how 'normative family' and actual 'family practices' are shaped by socio-cultural, material and spatial contexts. Insights drawn also reveal the complex ways in which access to material resources, geographical distance, rural-urban locations and cultural traits such as patterns of marriage and child relocation practices shape family relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]