Project description
Redefining youth activism in the Global South
A generational disconnect is widening across the Global South. While macroeconomic indicators may suggest growth, young people face stagnant wages, persistent gender inequality, and a pervasive sense of precarity. Traditional milestones of adulthood (financial independence and social security) are out of reach. Yet, the absence of mass protests or formal political affiliation suggests the theatre of activism has shifted to the structures of daily life. The ERC-funded REACT project aims to explore how young people navigate uncertainty through everyday activism. Researchers will explore how informal networks and cultural expressions allow young people to reclaim agency in a system that often excludes them.
Objective
We live in a time of endemic uncertainty and accelerating socio-economic exclusion. The collapse of the extractivist ideology of the neoliberal model of development has led to needs for other worldviews. Young people in the Global South are particularly impacted by the socio-economic consequences, affecting their ability to control their livelihoods. This is indicated by high unemployment, gender and job market inequalities, and the decline of living standards despite general economic growth.
REACT emerges as an ambitious, feasible project. The ambition is empirical, methodological and theoretical. REACT uniquely focuses on sourcing everyday activism outside of conventional activist spaces. A qualitative study of 300 youth across 5 cities combined with a survey (12.000) from 20 cities will generate insights on how young people negotiate and act upon their life circumstances. REACT applies a critical-creative pedagogy to foster critical hope via artistic expression, scenario building, urban manifestos, networking and cultural encounters across the Global South. Uncovering individuals’ everyday practices of activism generates insights about the formation of subjectivities in urban contexts, practices of communication in everyday life, perceptions and forms of activism, connects hope with citizenship, and individual action with collective action. These elements are deeply intertwined, hence the need for an interdisciplinary framework.
Embedded in communication for social change, and drawing on cultural studies, urban studies, critical pedagogy and critical development studies, REACT will develop a novel interdisciplinary theory for the study of COMmunication, PArticipation and Social Change (COMPAS). REACT’s ambition is also geographical and epistemological; Conducting a study of young people across the geographical Global South can amend the cognitive injustice seen in the imbalance of knowledge production about youth, communication and social change.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences educational sciences pedagogy
- social sciences sociology social issues social inequalities
- social sciences sociology ideologies
- social sciences sociology social issues unemployment
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-ADG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
LE11 3TU Loughborough
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.