Generations, Crises, Inequalities and Solidarities

The most recent generations of young people have gone through several challenging experiences in their formative years. They have experienced economic crisis, political crisis, a health crisis, an ongoing environmental crisis, a cost of living crisis. These developments have impacted on young people in many ways including in terms of their political, social and economic outlooks, their educational paths, employment, economic security, and the opportunities available to them to flourish and enact positive social change for the future. All these experiences are likely to have impacted on young people coming of age and experiencing their formative years in profound ways leading to the formation of new values in relation to those of generations coming of age in previous periods. In particular, this could be reflected in growing support for leftist values amongst young generations coming of age through these experiences. Moreover, these experiences are variegated within generations in terms of different dynamics of experiences such as those relating to gender or class or spatial inequalities. I will critically examine these crucial aspects in relation to generations and social change and build on insights from previous work to examine how these patterns can lead to opportunities for the development of solidarities and collective political action for social change in the current socio-historical juncture.