Throughout South Asia, young men and women are pursuing new educational opportunities and getting married later. These changes, Nicoletta del Franco contends, have cleared new paths toward adulthood—ways of passage whose complex implications have not been fully explored.

In Negotiating Adolescence in Rural Bangladesh, she fills this gap, documenting the realities of daily existence for young people as they navigate their lives amid the profound socioeconomic tumult of southwestern Bangladesh. Del Franco focuses on three main areas of these adolescents’ lives: college and student existence; same-sex and opposite-sex friendships and relationships; and the issues surrounding marriage and the choice of a husband or wife. In the process, she sheds new light on issues that affect adolescents not only in Bangladesh but also across South Asia.

One of the first books to address what it means to be young in today’s Bangladesh, this volume will appeal to students and scholars of Asian studies, gender studies, and sociology.