Young people in rural eastern Nepal have experienced a recent civil war (1996-2006) and are still living in a situation of continuous political instability, regional ethnic activism, slow development and remoteness. Nevertheless, they are also the first generation for whom the majority can aspire to and negotiate both educational and labour mobility - both of which are associated with the chance of a better life.

This thesis is about young people (aged 16-31): How they negotiate their life chances and how they contribute to transformations of the socio-political space of their communities in two villages of Nepal's Panchthar District. The research sheds light on rural and non-activist young men and women, in contrast to prevailing studies of the urban young, or the young as either revolutionary or as combatants.

The findings show that mobility has come to be seen as a way of reaching an appropriate social becoming. Aspirations prevail over political interests: young people navigate and negotiate their engagement in party and community politics by making calculations concerning their own mobility, life strategies and obligations to kin. In this way, young men engage in, but also balance and shift, their political affiliations, and both young men and women are managing to find new forms of engagement in community politics through household practices. Moreover, the household becomes transformed into a multi-local institution that functions through young people rotating their roles, their movement and their staying. Even though working abroad in particular has become an important way of rationalizing a respectable social status for young men, many have deliberately positioned themselves as stayers and returnees, rationalizing this choice through the need to develop their own community and Nepal itself. Women, conversely, can only aspire to educational mobility due to gender norms. Furthermore, many of their hopes of ‘becoming somebody’ collapse upon marriage. Women find that they cannot continue their education, nor use the skills they have acquired in local politics, as they need to follow traditional dispositions and frequently to cope with the migration of a husband. Overall, this thesis shows that mobility as a life chance has re-defined the position of rural young people as both change-makers and as people who are under a constant necessity to change themselves