Young adults are often scapegoated for not complying with COVID-19 mitigation strategies. While studies have investigated what predicts this population's compliance and non-compliance, they have largely excluded the insights of African young people living in South African townships. Given this, it is unclear what places young adult South African township dwellers at risk for not complying with physical distancing, face masking and handwashing, or what enables resilience to those risks. To remedy this uncertainty, the current article reports a secondary analysis of transcripts (n=119) that document telephonic interviews in June and October 2020 with 24 emerging adults (average age: 20 years) who participated in the Resilient Youth in Stressed Environments (RYSE) study. The secondary analysis, which was inductively thematic, pointed to compliance being threatened by forgetfulness; preventive measures conflicting with personal/collective style; and structural constraints. Resilience to these compliance risks lay in young people's capacity to regulate their behaviour and in the immediate social ecology's capacity to co-regulate young people's health behaviours. These findings discourage health interventions that are focused on the individual. More optimal public health initiatives will be responsive to the risks and resilience-enablers associated with young people and the social, institutional, and physical ecologies to which young people are connected. SIGNIFICANCE: • Emerging adult compliance with COVID-19 mitigation strategies is threatened by risks across multiple systems (i.e. young people themselves; the social ecology; the physical ecology). • Emerging adult resilience to compliance challenges is co-facilitated by young people and their social ecologies. • Responding adaptively to COVID-19 contagion threats will require multisystem mobilisation that is collaborative and transformative in its redress of risk and co-championship of resilience-enablers.

Resumo Este artigo analisou os indicadores de resiliência oculta em adolescentes que tiveram envolvimento no tráfico de drogas. Participaram 551 adolescentes e jovens, entre 12-20 anos de idade (M = 16,01; DP = 1,548), de ambos os sexos, sendo 55,4% meninos. Os participantes são provenientes de instituições de três cidades localizadas no interior de São Paulo que atendem adolescentes com e sem histórico de envolvimento no tráfico de drogas. Foi utilizado o instrumento denominado Child and Youth Resilience Measure para verificação dos indicadores de resiliência nas populações. Paradoxalmente, os adolescentes com maior envolvimento no tráfico apresentaram maiores indicadores de resiliência. Questionam-se os modelos explicativos hegemônicos sobre resiliência e propõe-se que novos estudos sobre resiliência oculta sejam conduzidos.

Abstract This paper identifies hidden resilience processes among adolescents and young adults who have had involvement in drug trafficking. The participants were 551 adolescents and young people, aged 12-20 years (M = 16.01; SD = 1.548) from both genders, 55.4% of whom were boys. They were recruited from three social service institutions located in the state of São Paulo, which offer services for adolescents with and without a history of involvement in drug trafficking. To assess rates of resilience, the Child and Youth Resilience Measure was employed. Contrary to expectations, adolescents with greater involvement in drug trafficking had higher rates of resilience. This paper challenges the hegemonic conceptualization of resilience and proposes that more studies of hidden resilience need to be conducted.

O presente artigo visa apresentar as principais idéias e conceitos sobre resiliência, tendo como parâmetro a produção de Michael Ungar. Inicialmente será apresentada a perspectiva pós-moderna, na qual discutir-se-á sobre a construção social do conceito de resiliência e em seguida será introduzido ao leitor o conceito de "hidden resilience", aqui traduzido como resiliência oculta e relacionado a estratégias de coping não-convencionais. As pesquisas com adolescentes no Canadá e em vários países possibilitou a consolidação da proposta elaborada pelo autor, para o qual resiliência refere-se a uma experiência relacionada à capacidade do indivíduo de navegar por recursos associados ao bem-estar e à capacidade de suas famílias e comunidade em prover tais recursos de formas culturalmente significativas. Implicações para práticas profissionais na área da adolescência e juventude serão discutidas.

The purpose of this paper is to present the main concepts and ideas about resilience developed by Michael Ungar. At first, it will be discussed his post-modern approach of resilience and the social construction of the phenomenon. Thereafter, it will be presented the concept of hidden resilience related to unusual coping strategies. Researches carried out with adolescents in Canada and other countries solidified the conception of resilience as an experience associated to the individual's capacity to develop resources associated to his/her well-being and the condition of the individual's family and community to provide such resources in culturally meaningful ways. It will also deal with implications for professional practices with at-risk adolescents.

Nesse artigo, analisamos a questão do trabalho infantil como um fenômeno complexo, englobando fatores de risco por um lado e possíveis resultados positivos por outro. Baseados na teoria da resiliência e a partir de uma revisão de literatura, centrada em pesquisas que analisam a própria experiência de crianças sobre o trabalho desenvolvido, mostramos que quando inseridos em ecologias socialmente e fisicamente pobres em recursos, crianças associam sua experiência de trabalho como um caminho para assegurar recursos próprios para superação de adversidades. A compreensão de aspectos subjetivos da experiência de crianças trabalhadores nos permite considerar o trabalho como uma construção culturalmente embasada. Apesar da exploração de crianças não se configurar como o melhor para elas, há evidências de que elas usam quaisquer oportunidades disponíveis, incluindo o trabalho, para navegar em busca de recursos que necessitam e negociam por uma identidade associada à resiliência. Implicações para políticas públicas e intervenções também são discutidas.

In this paper we explore children's labor as a complex phenomenon encompassing risk factors on one hand and possible positive outcomes on the other. Based on the theory of resilience and on literature review that details children's own experiences of work, we show that children who are inserted in environments which are poor in social and physical resources may report labor as pathways to ensure their own resources to overcome adversity. Understanding children's subjective accounts of their experience permits us to see children's labor as a culturally-embedded construction. Though exploitation of children is not in the best interest of children, there is evidence that children use whatever opportunities are available, including labor, to search for the resources they need and negotiate for an identity as resilient. Implications for public policies and practices are discussed.