Youth Politicisation In Times of Polycrisis: New Activisms, Political Subjectivities and Collective Action

This joint RC47–RC48 session explores how young people experience, interpret and contest the overlapping crises that shape their lives, from precarisation, climate breakdown and democratic distrust to war, displacement, digital polarisation and authoritarian backlash. Moving beyond conventional narratives of youth apathy, disengagement or generational exceptionalism, the panel invites papers that examine politicisation as a situated, relational and biographical process, deeply shaped by class, gender, race, territory and global inequalities. We welcome contributions on youth activism and social movements in different regions of the world, including Global South contexts, transnational struggles and cases that question Northern-centred theories of participation and collective action.

The session is particularly interested both in forms of politicisation oriented towards social transformation and in more reactive forms of political engagement. It welcomes contributions on everyday, digital, community-based, feminist, ecological, labour, student, anti-racist, indigenous, migrant and prefigurative forms of youth engagement, as well as on more ambivalent, conservative, nativist or far-right forms of politicisation.

By bringing together youth studies, social movement research and the sociology of collective action, the panel seeks to open a comparative conversation on how young people turn uncertainty, anger and vulnerability into political meanings, solidarities and practices.