Biographical Perspectives on Democracies In Transformation

Democracies worldwide are undergoing profound changes shaped by political polarization, democratic backlash, environmental crises, migration, exile, and growing social inequality. Little attention, however, has been given to how such transformations are experienced, interpreted, and biographically negotiated. This panel session addresses this gap by examining how individuals and collectives make sense of democratic change and how these are connected to their life trajectories.

We invite contributions that explore the relationship between personal and family histories in changing democratic contexts. By linking individual life experiences with broader political and social transformations, this panel session seeks to deepen our understanding of how democracy is lived, imagined, contested, and transformed across diverse social contexts.

The key questions include: how individuals, different generations and collectives experience shifts in democratic values, institutions, political cultures, and forms of citizenship; how migration, social mobility, exclusion, activism, or political conflict shape understandings of democracy and democratic participation and what kinds of biographical narrations emerge from these experiences.

We welcome empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions using qualitative, biographical-narrative, ethnographic, life-course, comparative and interdisciplinary approaches. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to: biographical experiences of democratic participation and citizenship; life histories in contexts of democratic erosion, transition and transformation; migration, mobility, and democratic belonging; political socialization and generational change; biographies of activism, protest, and social movements; experiences of polarisation, populism, and political contestation; democracy, digital technologies, and everyday life as well as methodological and theoretical reflections on studying democracy through biographies.