Across Youth Emotions and Aspirations: Educational Institutions, Inner Entrepreneurship and Social Imaginaries

In the first twenty years of this century, a series of vertiginous changes have occurred on a planetary scale: the global expansion of the digital world, the climate crisis, and redefined management modalities are just some of these changes. These transformations co-exist with old forms of inequality, discriminations and violences. Within this framework, all institutions are being affected by redefinitions, especially education and youth livelihoods (Romo & Agulhon, 2022). At the same time, several changes affect individual sensibilities in a global trend that Scribano (2022) describes as the colonization of the inner planet, creating tensions on individual self-construction and putting democracy at risk. Indeed, younger generations have been nudged to pursue the future as an individual, labour-centered prospect. However, the question of the role of societal factors and processes in aspiration formation and projection towards future resurfaces in different terms in such a context (Baillergeau & Duyvendak, 2019). It is thus essential to underline the need to investigate the changes in young people’s social imaginaries (Taylor, 2006), political sensibilities and aspirations about inner entrepreneurship and work in the framework of their educational experience, taking into account Appadurai’s (2004) invitation to appreciate the cultural dimension of the capacity to aspire.

We welcome contributions related (but not limited) to:

• Institutions and its role in youth’s social imaginaries
• Societal factors and processes involved in aspiration formation during educational and apprenticeship experience
• Emotions and political sensibilities about inner entrepreneurship
• Educational alternatives in youth representations of, and attitudes towards, the future