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INTRODUCTION
Youth unemployment has increasingly come centre stage in policy discussions across the world. Economic adversity and a lack of jobs have placed young people in limbo, the symbol of a generation in crisis (Utas 2003; Vigh 2006; Honwana 2012). The need to create employment is often presented as necessary to quell a perceived risk to social stability presented by un- or underemployed youth. Population Action International dubbed young people as the 'security demographic' (Cincotta et al. 2003), in line with popular theories about the risk that a 'youth bulge' might pose in terms of the likelihood of civil war (Urdal 2004). In 2014, high unemployment and underemployment came second in a list of 'global risks', citing the concern that a 'lost generation' might increase the chance of social unrest (WEF 2014). Underlying portrayals of jobless youth as security risks is a concern with the availability of the unemployed for recruitment in different forms of violence, from civil war to electoral unrest, as actors on behalf of entrepreneurs of violence vying for power, the 'infantry of adult statecraft' (Comaroff & Comaroff 1999: 24), or as autonomous organisers of insurrection (see Collier 2003; Colino 2012; Suhrke 2012; Urdal 2012).
Sierra Leone was the unfortunate poster child of these narratives as applied to post-conflict countries. Its civil war, taking place between 1991 and 2002, was framed as a 'crisis of youth', with young people's prominence in all combating factions strongly linked to their lack of economic opportunities, and especially jobs, in the years leading up to the war (Fanthorpe & Maconachie 2010). As the decade-long civil war drew to a close, a long process of reconstruction and peacebuilding began, focused on eliminating the root causes underlying the crisis. Despite Sierra Leone's peacebuilding process having been hailed as a model for post-conflict countries, significant challenges were already evident before the outbreak of the Ebola crisis (Cubitt 2011).1Encouraging surges in growth rates have not resulted in employment opportunities for the majority of Sierra Leoneans. Although labour market data remain sparse, estimates suggest youth unemployment may be as high as 70% (UNDP 2013). The unemployment challenge is especially concerning for Sierra Leone given the centrality of economic exclusion in narratives about young people's violent roles in the country's...