  Detailed studies of intermediate/low mass pre-main sequence (PMS) stars
outside the Galaxy have so far been conducted only for small targeted regions
harbouring known star formation complexes. The VISTA Survey of the Magellanic
Clouds (VMC) provides an opportunity to study PMS populations down to solar
masses on a galaxy-wide scale. Our goal is to use near-infrared data from the
VMC survey to identify and characterise PMS populations down to ~1 M_sun across
the Magellanic Clouds. We present our colour-magnitude diagram method, and
apply it to a ~1.5 deg^2 pilot field located in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The
pilot field is divided into equally-sized grid elements. We compare the stellar
population in every element with the population in nearby control fields by
creating K_s/(Y-K_s) Hess diagrams; the observed density excesses over the
local field population are used to classify the stellar populations. Our
analysis recovers all known star formation complexes in this pilot field (N44,
N51, N148 and N138) and for the first time reveals their true spatial extent.
In total, around 2260 PMS candidates with ages $\lesssim$ 10 Myr are found in
the pilot field. PMS structures, identified as areas with a significant density
excess of PMS candidates, display a power-law distribution of the number of
members with a slope of -0.86+-0.12. We find a clustering of the young stellar
populations along ridges and filaments where dust emission in the far-infrared
(FIR) (70 micron - 500 micron) is bright. Regions with young populations
lacking massive stars show a lesser degree of clustering and are usually
located in the outskirts of the star formation complexes. At short FIR
wavelengths (70 micron, 100 micron) we report a strong dust emission increase
in regions hosting young massive stars, which is less pronounced in regions
populated only by less massive ($\lesssim$ 4 M_sun) PMS stars.
