Growing up and being young in an Indonesian provincial town

This study explores the experiences of youth in the provincial town of Pontianak, West Kalimantan, done in Pontianak, the provincial capital of West Kalimantan during the years 2008-2009. It tries to understand the various patterns of relations between growing up and being young, how social relations of interdependence are embedded within this process, and how it is experienced by different segments of youth population in Pontianak. By trying to understand how young people navigate between being young and growing up as two co-existing dimensions of their lives, this study offers an alternative approach to deal with the limitations of both perspectives of ‘growing up’ and perspectives of ‘being young’ which are often discussed, and deployed in research, separately. Mainly using a qualitative approach focusing on subjective experiences of an educated youth population coming from the lower middle class, it explores how tensions and continuities between growing up and being young are experienced in life domains influential in young people's lives: education, work, and romantic relationships. It shows the interweaving of life domains that young people have to negotiate in their lives, which are also often dealt with separately in studies on youth. The continuities and tensions between growing up and being young are captured through identifying two main patterns of relations: ‘being young while growing up’ and ‘growing up while being young’, with the difference between them being a matter of different emphasis along what is basically a continuum.