The concept of hybridity has been used in numerous ways by scholars across a range of disciplines to generate important analytical and methodological insights. Its most recent application in the social sciences has also attracted powerful critiques that have highlighted its limitations and challenged its continuing usage. This article, which introduces the collection on Critical Hybridity in Peacebuilding and Development, examines whether the value of hybridity as a concept can continue to be harnessed, and how its shortcomings might be mitigated or overcome. Specifically, we seek to demonstrate the multiple ways to embrace the benefits of hybridity, while also guiding scholars through some of the potentially dangerous and problematic areas that we have identified through our own engagement with the hybridity concept and by learning from the critiques of others. This pathway, which we have termed 'critical hybridity' , identifies eight approaches that are likely to lead scholars towards a more reflexive and nuanced engagement with the concept.
In conflict-affected countries there is a trend of rapid urbanisation driven by internal migration and displacement. These countries are also increasingly young. Despite constituting a demographic majority in urban conflict and displacement-affected situations, youth are often invisible. Afghanistan fits this dynamic well with two-thirds of the population below the age of 25 and one in four living in cities in so-called 'informal settlements' on the fringes of cities, a vast majority with displacement backgrounds. Furthermore, Afghan youth have had very little agency in conceiving their future and that of their country. They are viewed as either vulnerable or risk factors for conflict, with action limited to 'exit' or 'violence'. This article gives urban displaced Afghan youth a voice by telling their story of being caught between the desire for agency and the real and perceived obstacles that prevent this from happening.
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