Drawing on ethnographies from the Global South, this book explores how politically, religiously and (sub-)culturally inspired Utopias motivate youth to imagine, enact and embody what was missing in the past and present. This book was first published as a special issue of Identities.

Oscar Salemink is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark; and Adjunct Professor in the Institute for Religion, Politics and Society at ACU Melbourne, Australia. He has conducted field research in Vietnam, China and Europe, amongst other places, and his current research interests concern religion, heritage, museums and contemporary art.

Susanne Bregnbæk is an anthropologist and Associate Professor at University College Copenhagen, Denmark. Her book Fragile Elite: The Dilemmas of China's Top University Students (2016) explored the predicament of Chinese youth in a society undergoing rapid transformation. Her current work focuses on the encounter between migrant families and the Danish welfare state.

Dan Vesalainen Hirslund is a social anthropologist from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He works primarily on South Asian politics and economy, and has conducted extended fieldwork in Sri Lanka and Nepal on refugees, Maoism and informal labour. He is currently exploring connections between capitalist globalisation and the construction industry.

Introduction: youth, subjectivity and Utopia - ethnographic perspectives from the Global South 1. Utopias of youth: politics of class in Maoist post-revolutionary mobilisation 2. Experimenting with alternative futures in Cairo: young Muslim volunteers between god and the nation 3. In search of the heart of a heartless world: Chinese youth, house-church Christianity and the longing for foreign Utopias 4. Displaced utopia: on marginalisation, migration and emplacement in Bissau 5. 'When breaking you make your soul dance' Utopian aspirations and subjective transformation in breakdance 6. Disjunctive belongings and the utopia of intimacy: violence, love and friendship among poor urban youth in neoliberal Chile Afterword - Utopia: secular and religious