In this article I examine the military recruitment of urban youth in West Africa and analyze their involvement in conflict as a "social navigation". I propose a perspective on youth that assumes that this generational category is both a social process and a position. The article illustrates how urban youth navigate their social ties and the options that arise from war situations to escape the social death that otherwise characterizes their situation. By describing youth as a time of stagnation and tearing apart of the social existence of young people in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, it is clear how war becomes an area of possibilities, rather than just a space of death. Thus, the concept of social navigation offers us penetrating insights into the interplay between objective structures and subjective initiative. This analytical perspective allows us to make sense of the opportunistic, sometimes fatalistic, and tactical ways that young people struggle to broaden their horizons of possibility in a world of conflict, turmoil, and dwindling resources, and lets us see how conflict coping it becomes a question of balances between social death and violent opportunities for life.