Youth Solidarities: Contemporary Understandings of Solidarity In Turbulent Times

Solidarity broadly refers to relations of affiliation, obligation and collective commitment formed through shared struggle, common identification and practical interdependence. A rich sociological lineage has treated solidarity as a generative concept, from Durkheim’s account of social cohesion, Weber’s analysis of communal and associational relations, and Marxist traditions of class formation and worker solidarity, to more recent work on political solidarity, internationalism and solidarity across difference. Solidarity therefore names both the production of a political “we” and can also be the ‘strategic’ as a mode or labour through which collective interests are organised, advanced, defended and transformed.

Despite this lineage, solidarity remains comparatively underdeveloped in youth studies. The term has been critiqued for its political vagueness, since it can be invoked ambivalently across the political spectrum. It also often appears as an assumed virtue of youth activism, peer belonging or civic engagement, rather than as a contested social relation shaped by power, inequality and historical conditions. This session invites scholars from the Global North and Global South to examine how young people produce, sustain and contest solidarities in contexts of polarisation, austerity, coloniality, imperialism, platform capitalism, climate crisis and higher education restructuring.

We are particularly interested in solidarities as material practices, social relations, political infrastructures, and affective formations, including student movements, climate justice, racial justice, feminist and queer organising, Indigenous resurgence, mutual aid, and transnational activism. The session asks how youth solidarities might extend theories of political subjectivity, collective identity, inclusion, citizenship and social transformation in turbulent times.