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• 1 2016-03-18T15:38:10-07:00 4.3 | Creating attractive conditions for the youth 6 plain 2016-03-29T18:43:50-07:00 <<< 4.2 | Building infrastructure for sustainability
  
  Several interviewees stressed that “keeping the youth on the land” (i.e. in assentamentos) is a prominent shared concern among assentados [17:69, 19:34, 31:124]. The problem was usually framed in terms of life in an assentamento being perceived by youth as “less attractive” than life in urban centers—a description consistent with the strong pattern of rural-urban migration that has characterized Brazil and other Latin-American countries during the past five decades (Dufour & Piperata, 2004). Given the scope of our research, our intention here is not to discuss rural-urban youth migration in depth, but simply to highlight the common elements associated with this topic in assentamentos, derived from our data.
  
  Migration of youth threatens the endurance of assentamentos for obvious demographic reasons. However, the presence of youth in these communities can contribute to their sustainability prospects not just because it represents the very possibility of having a “future generation”, but also because it can influence the social dynamics of an assentamento in ways that are potentially conducive to enhanced sustainability. The clearest example raised by interviewees was that young individuals could function as vectors of new knowledge for the community, bringing in fresh ideas that may improve the community’s capacity to meet its needs (and continue to meet them in the future) [7:97, 17:22, 17:75, 19:33, 23:70].
  
  
  
  
  Young people can also question established belief systems working against the development of more sustainable living or production methods, and may play a relevant role in bringing about change. This was suggested by one assentado who favors organic production methods and who explained that, in order to convince neighbors to stop the “inertial practice” of using “agrotoxics”, he had realized by experience that it was better to approach his neighbors’ children [17:76].
  
  
  We identified three main sets of challenges related to creating attractive conditions to the youth: providing attractive jobs, offering leisure options and creating room for them to build their houses.
   

  4.3.1 | Providing attractive job opportunities for youth

  Interviewees reported that children in assentamentos have, in the vast majority of cases, access to basic (primary) and secondary education—usually in the public schools of the nearest town or, in the case of one relatively large settlement, in a public school that had been built specifically for it. However, they also reported that the process to secure that access can be hard, involving long negotiations with local government authorities [7:90]. An even more critical challenge may appear in the case of access to technical or professional education programs, for which there are only limited opportunities in rural areas. Interestingly, however, assentados did not raise this point in interviews, emphasizing instead the challenge of providing attractive job opportunities for qualified youth within assentamentos. After all, most of those who receive higher education do not necessarily want to directly work with agriculture, but still could bring their acquired skills to improve the communities in which they grew in and their parents still live on.
  
  Offering those jobs, however, is not easy, as it seems to require forms of collective organization—such as cooperatives and associations—that are not always present in assentamentos, and tends to be stronger in those communities that do not rely only on the primary sector. For example, in one case in which the assentamento had developed strong cooperatives for production and commercialization (COPAVA), interviewees noted that challenge and proudly highlighted that assentados’ children had temporarily left to pursue programs in agronomy, accounting, pedagogy, and medicine—but then had come back to work in the assentamento as service providers or technicians in cooperatives or agroindustries, notably in the production of cachaça [17:26, 19:33].

  
  4.3.2 | Offering leisure options for the youth

  Another challenge is the provision of leisure or cultural activities in assentamentos, where “today, leisure just means soccer on Sunday” [17:70]. “There is no sport, culture, theater, dance. Workshops and cultural activities are scarce in rural culture and in general. So we just have a soccer field and that is it, nothing more.” [19:34]. Currently, in order to obtain those, young people need to travel to nearby cities and, sometimes, just end preferring to move there [9:111]. As clearly stated by assentados, there seems to be a widespread perception of isolation in rural areas, and more strongly so for the youth. If leisure options are not provided, it becomes harder to maintain attractive conditions for young people in an assentamento.
  
  
   

  4.3.3 | Finding space for the youth to stay (or move in)

  Finally, we identified a structural problem deriving from the particular property rights arrangements present in almost all assentamentos we visited. As the design of assentamentos is based on the notion of family as the fundamental unit, only the parents are granted partial property rights over parcels of land in the assentamento’s establishment. At this stage all available parcels are granted to families and none are reserved to the future generations, making it very difficult to accommodate new residents thereafter.
  
  There are only two alternatives to hold property rights over land in an assentamento after the initial distribution of land: by inheritance (a case in which land cannot be divided in smaller portions) [1] or by buying land from an assentado that acquires full property rights. However, as explained in the previous chapter, there are strong legal restrictions over this last option. As a result, grown-up adolescents might not stay in that specific assentamento and look for housing in a urban or rural area nearby, or may even take part in the process of becoming assentados themselves at other locations (interview 11).
  
  >>> 5 | Two domains for the design of solutions to sustainability challenges in assentamentos
   

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  [1] Law 8.629/93, Art. 18-A.
• 1 2016-03-18T15:45:54-07:00 6.4 | Collective initiatives can prevent isolation in rural communities by acting as touchpoints with the external world and bringing exchange opportunities for assentados 4 plain 2016-03-29T17:21:00-07:00 <<< 6.3 | More room for experimentation can strengthen sustainability know-how
  
  Sustainability can only be effectively fostered in agrarian reform if assentamentos are not isolated. As we have seen during our research, local, national and international exchanges can be a key for discovering, discussing, and effectively adapting alternative methods for production and construction, and for making assentamentos more appealing to the youth.
  
  
  Our research indicates that engaging with people beyond their assentamento can provide assentados increased opportunities for learning and enhancing commercial and cultural activities. It helps to avoid isolation, and contributes to build a wider network of support—derived from the contact with people from other cultures and backgrounds.‘External people’ can either be specialized employees—attained via technical assistance or partnerships—or volunteers, students and assentados from different parts of the country. However, their engagement should be perceived as rewarding enough to compensate the costs implied by hosting external people imply (interview 23).
  
  Assentamentos can play an active and not merely passive role in this regard. Nevertheless, in order to achieve this, some degree of cooperation is essential—assentados can hardly assume that role individually, as it usually involves partnerships. As demonstrated by Terra Vista, fostering strong collective initiatives can make assentamentos become local diffusers of knowledge and catalyzers for the empowerment of surrounding communities [23:bx]. This is particularly true as assentamentos become ‘hubs of development’ of technologies and skills for sustainable production to other farmers. 
  
  
  >>> ​7 | Closing Remarks