Overview
The roundtable brought together SEAPF members, Rohingya Youth Unit in the Phillipines, and guest participants for an open conversation on how young Southeast Asians define and pursue success amid economic pressure, displacement, and political instability. Discussion moved through four guiding questions.
How would you define success, and has your generation’s definition been shaped by its challenges?
Participants agreed that success looks very different from their parents’ generation, when a job was often secured within weeks of graduation. Today, AI disruption in the job market, intense competition (with hiring skewing toward honor students and those with strong extracurricular records), and a difficult post-graduation job search were cited as new realities. One speaker described losing freelance writing work to AI-generated content despite warning that it would produce lower-quality output. For SEAPF members, simply sustaining regular publications and growing partnerships counted as success given the organization’s lack of external funding.
For the Rohingya and Myanmar participants, success carried an added layer: since they could not rely on family for financial support and had faced barriers to education in Malaysia (public school was inaccessible and private school unaffordable), reaching university in the Philippines was itself framed as a success already achieved, apart from career goals still ahead. Some also described success in communal or national terms, such as being able to return safely to Myanmar one day, a country still affected by civil war, military rule, and internal conflict.
Do regional or national issues affect how you pursue personal or academic goals?
Participants pointed to a shared regional vulnerability, noting that unrest anywhere in Southeast Asia (the Thailand-Cambodia conflict, political violence in the Philippines, forest fires in Indonesia causing haze) tends to have ripple effects across the region. Peso depreciation against the dollar was raised as a specific concern, particularly for those paid in foreign currency. Refugee participants described how shifts in foreign policy (citing changes in US immigration policy) and local hostility in Malaysia, where Rohingya refugees have faced accusations of being “illegal,” directly affect their security and options. Election-cycle vote-buying and short-term aid distribution were also raised as a shared Southeast Asian experience.
What is the hardest part of being young today?
Several answers centered on feeling pressure to “do more” against a backdrop of visible social and political problems, without always having the time or resources to act on that drive. One participant described being expected to prioritize supporting their family financially right after graduation over pursuing personal advocacy work, given a lack of family wealth and reliance on a local scholarship. The Rohingya participants pointed to extremely limited access to education in their communities and to feeling treated as a financial investment for their family rather than as individuals. Climate anxiety also came up, including concern over declining birth rates in East Asia, distrust in future pension systems, and worsening typhoons and flooding in the Philippines, which several participants had experienced firsthand (including being stranded during flooding near UST).
How do you balance ambition, family expectations, financial reality, and a desire to contribute to society?
The dominant view was that true balance is not possible, and that some part of one’s life inevitably has to be sacrificed for another. One participant gave up a childhood dream of becoming a doctor for financial reasons and has worked as a scholar since first year. Another described having to prioritize personal goals over family expectations after a personal financial setback tied to family debt. A Rohingya participant recounted giving up a chance at professional football because of pressure to prioritize education, while another shared having falsified their own age years ago in order to work as a translator for UNICEF, and described experiencing severe barriers to basic documentation (birth certificates, IDs) due to their community’s displacement history and Myanmar’s denial of civil registration to Rohingya people. For refugee participants, success in this context extended beyond personal achievement toward family reunification across countries and access to citizenship, since their families are currently separated across Malaysia, Bangladesh, and Canada.
What does a successful future look like, and what will it take to get there?
Closing reflections described this generation as more willing to push back and ask for fair treatment at work, even at personal risk, though some noted that nepotism and exploitative behavior persist among youth as well, not just older generations. Filipino participants noted a relative disconnection from the rest of Southeast Asia given the lack of land borders, unlike neighboring countries where regional travel is easier. Structural change, not individual effort, was repeatedly named as the real lever needed, citing the gap between Philippine minimum wage and cost of living compared to countries like Malaysia. For Rohingya participants, a successful future centered on citizenship, stable work, reuniting scattered family members, and eventually being able to give back education and opportunity to their home community.
Beyond Frontiers is a monthly cafe-style roundtable hosted by Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier, bringing together regional leaders and innovators for candid, forward-looking conversations.
