The articles presented here engage with some of the multifaceted and intersecting challenges faced by young people today – these include conflict, insecurity, limited government support, deep-set gender discrimination, climate change, infectious disease and a widespread lack of decent jobs. While recognising the structural influences on young people’s circumstances, the articles gathered here bring young people’s perspectives, experiences and actions to the fore. With an eye on the future, and a sense of the past, this collection is situated in the present. Most of the research presented here stems from the British Academy’s Youth Futures research funding scheme. The results showcased here remind us how the present matters in and of itself, while influenced by the past and playing a key role in shaping the future. Thus there is a triple significance to understanding young people’s challenges: they matter for today and for how they impact tomorrow, and will be best understood with reference to the past.

Globally, young people face weak labour market demand and have been particularly susceptible to recent livelihood stresses and shocks linked to climate change. In this article, we consider what happens when young people face intersecting challenges including climate change. While much of the literature focuses on barriers to work and how to break these, we consider young people’s struggles and successes in securing and maintaining work. The focus is on Uganda, demographically one of the world’s youngest countries and home to a largely ‘underemployed’ cohort of young people. Our findings identify some of the many ways in which climate change disrupts young people’s livelihoods. Young people are already proactively responding to climate change. This points to the need for other actors to learn from young people’s existing endeavours, to build in more support and opportunities, manage risk and insecurity, and construct a more climate change-resilient infrastructure.