Agency in Adversity: How Long-Term Unemployed Youth Construct Survival Pathways in Hosanna City, Ethiopia

Abstract

Youth unemployment is not only widespread but increasingly prolonged, posing complex challenges for community well-being and sustainable development. Nevertheless, it is often measured in statistics rather than understood through the lived experiences of youth themselves. Moreover, research and policy debates frequently frame long-term unemployed youth as passive, dependent, and vulnerable, overlooking the resilience, creativity, and adaptability they display in navigating everyday survival. Addressing this gap, this study explored the survival strategies of long-term unemployed youth in Hosanna City, Ethiopia. Using a phenomenological design, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 21 participants and analyzed the data through Colaizzi’s method to ensure analytical rigor and thematic depth. From 45 significant statements, four interrelated themes emerged: economic and material survival, social and collective survival, psychological adaptation, and aspirations for migration and self-improvement. The findings show that young people actively develop practical and context-specific strategies to cope with prolonged unemployment. However, these strategies are largely reactive, shaped by structural constraints within labor markets, education systems, and social protection frameworks. Consequently, survival often entails significant personal trade-offs, including delayed transitions into adulthood and the normalization of precarity. While resilience is evident, it should not be romanticized as a sustainable solution to structural unemployment. Instead, policy interventions should move beyond supporting mere survival and instead promote sustainable livelihood pathways by expanding access to decent work, state-funded mega projects such as industrial parks, airports, and railways, entrepreneurship and agro-processing initiatives, skills development, and safe, legal migration opportunities.