Negotiating rural-urban transformation and life course fluidity: Rural young people and urban sojourn in contemporary Cambodia

Cambodia's politico-economic change in the 1990s has engendered profound rural-urban transformation and pressure on traditional peasant livelihoods. This article examines how rural young people cope with this societal change by migrating to work in the city, in the process renegotiating the life course and transforming rural life. Given rapid urbanisation and uneven growth, rural-urban labour migration has increasingly become a “normal” experience for young peasants entering working life. What is less clear is how these rural-urban migrant workers negotiate the emerging opportunity structures and mobility in the life course and what it means for rural life. Drawing on biographically oriented interviews with rural young people working in the capital of Phnom Penh, this article analyses their life experiences and meanings of urban sojourning to engage in labour work. This demonstrates how structural change and cultural scripts shape the life courses and perspectives of young peasants but also how they articulate their aspirations and agency in negotiating the changing terms of rural existence through a fluid life course.