The violent irruption of African youth into the public and domestic spheres seems to have resulted in the construction of their behavior as a threat, and to have provoked, within society as a whole, a panic that is simultaneously moral and civic. At issue are the bodies of young people and their behavior, which escape the constraints of social construction, their sexuality and pleasure, as well as the formulas of their action and presence as junior social actors. The new situation has consequences for several issues, the most important of which are the redefinition of the relationships between identity and citizenship in the whirlwind of globalization, the metamorphoses of the processes of socialization, the production of new forms of inequality accompanied by their own representations and imaginations, and the extraordinary mutation of the chronological and psychological constructions of the passage from youth to adulthood.

In the wake of the economic crisis in Cameroon and the disappearance of transitional pathways for youth that accompanied it, political and economic uncertainty turned into a new kind of social certainty for young people. Inspired by world-class models of success, and perceiving themselves as the “Unlimited” generation, they reacted by mapping out new biographical trajectories. Besides embracing beat-the-system strategies, they opted for migration to the West, seen as a “final port of call” at a historical juncture when the emphasis was on closure. For those who could not migrate, cyberspace provided a new space for encounters. With a view to capturing the excess energy of nonmigrating youths, political entrepreneurs created groups that sought to penetrate the state, which is still seen, even while being penetrated, as an unbounded Prometheus. In general, youths have tended to challenge a basic assumption of what has been called the “field of possibles”—that success is determined by one's cultural capital or baggage.

Interviews and documents are the basic elements sketching out this sociological analysis of university students in Cameroon, considered within a dynamic perspective. Our purpose is not to produce a critical analysis of the university system, but rather to listen to the discourses of students and teachers regarding the three following aspects: student life and ambitions, gender interaction in the university environment, and aims and strategies orienting their studies—knowing that the particular encapsulated society they are a part of is inscribed within a specific, global one upon which they depend, both initially (they have been socialized into it) and at the end of the process (the expectations invested in these youths). But what kind of job market—their key to a responsible, adult autonomy—do they face?

This article uses a Weberian model of patrimonialism to analyze clientalist and “staff” roles of child soldiers in the military regimes of the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. It thereby examines institutional aspects of child soldier identity and behavior not addressed in other standard models of child soldiers as coerced victims, revolutionary idealists, or delinquent opportunists. It shifts analytical attention from nation-state patrimonialism to the patrimonial dimensions of rebel regimes. It locates child soldiers within a social organization of domination and reciprocity based on violence structured through patronage ties with military commanders. It identifies child soldier “staff” functions within the administration of a patrimonial regime. A Weberian focus on the institutionalization and strategies of domination and dependency provides a corrective to views that exoticize child soldiers, decontextualize their behavior, or essentialize their “youth” as an explanatory principle.