Searching for a Better Life: Growing Up in the Slums of Bangkok

By Sorcha Mahony

Life in Bangkok for young people is marked by profound, interlocking changes and transitions. This book offers an ethnographic account of growing up in the city’s slums, struggling to get by in a rapidly developing and globalizing economy and trying to fulfil one’s dreams. At the same time, it reflects on the issue of agency, exploring its negative potential when exercised by young people living under severe structural constraint. It offers an antidote to neoliberal ideas around personal responsibility, and the assumed potential for individuals to break through structures of constraint in any sustained way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: May 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781785338595

Sorcha Mahony

Sorcha Mahony works as Senior Researcher at The Children’s Society, a charity that supports vulnerable children and young people in their search for a better life in England and Wales. She lives in London with her two children and volunteers with young refugees in her spare time.

Book preview

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