African emerging adult resilience : insights from a sample of township youth

Abstract

What enables the resilience of African emerging adults who live in sub-Saharan Africa and must contend with an everyday reality that is characterized by structural disadvantage and related hardship? This question directed the exploratory qualitative research that we report in this article. Its genesis was the relative inattention to the resilience of African emerging adults—that is, young people living in sub-Saharan Africa, aged 18–29. To answer this question, 16 South African participants (average age 21) from a significantly stressed community participated in group interviews and generated digital stories. A deductive analysis of the content yielded the understanding that the self is central to emerging adult resilience. Family members mattered too, but there was scant reference to any other social or ecological resource. These findings urge attention to the dangers to resilience if social ecologies are not resourced to better co-facilitate positive outcomes for disadvantaged emerging adults.