Political Generations and the Italian Environmental Movement(s): Innovative Youth Activism and the Permanence of Collective Actors

Abstract

During recent years, Italian social movements have experienced a period of crisis, in part due to diffuse antipolitical feelings and latent social conflict. However, environmental issues and especially territorial mobilizations remain relevant, due to the appearance of new contentious actors and to the permanence of long-standing organizations and important local grassroots campaigns. Based on 19 semistructured interviews with activists belonging to informal groups and formal associations, this article discusses the role of age and generations within the variegated Italian environmental archipelago, in which organizational and collective aspects prove to currently have a relevant role. Indeed, age does not represent an important fracture, representing a partial anomaly if confronted with the other case studies discussed in this special issue. The only diversities between cohorts are related to the forms of action preferred and (eventually) adopted, while the common perception of job precariousness among young activists is not translated into a single frame and common path of resistance. More than a Millennials’ identity, it is rather appropriate to speak of various and divergent political generations: individuals belonging to different cohorts share some ideologies and visions of the world, especially related to territorial belongings or to specific ways of looking at environmental issues. Also for this reason, a final comparison between contemporary young activists and those of previous generations is proposed to address the generation(s) in movement(s) in a dynamic perspective.

Keywords

environment environmental movements youth participation LULU movements Italy generational change

Introduction

This final article analyzes two main topics: the possible generational fractures between young and adult activists and the influence that (different) social movement organizations (SMOs) and collective actors still maintain in shaping individual participation and especially individual participation among youth. To do this, I consider the case of the Italian environmental movement(s), a very fragmented and diversified movement area (Melucci, 1996) or even more an archipelago of islands (Diani, 1995), whose actual composition and stratification will be explained in more detail later.

Currently considered—especially by some of its detractors—as a simple consequence of postmaterialist values (Inglehart, 1977), the history of environmental movement(s) is more complicated, and the role of organizations has been and continues to be important in mobilizing resources and framing issues (Dalton, Recchia, & Rohrschneider, 2003; Saunders, 2013). In fact, as recalled by Mario Diani (1995), a diffused dissatisfaction among civil society is insufficient; the capacity to give it a structure and transform it in a political way needs also to be considered. This proved to be true across the decades, from the welfarist roots to the emergence of deep ecology (Devall, 1991; Naess, 1973), political ecology (McCormick, 1991), and also environmental justice movements (Martinez-Alier, Temper, Del Bene, & Scheidel, 2016; Sze & London, 2008). Moreover, such evolution has been supported by the affirmation of Green parties in various Western democracies (Carter, 2018; Mason & Crighton, 1986), even if with different levels of contentious relations and the possible domestication of grassroots movements within institutional approaches (della Porta, Fernández, Kouki, & Mosca, 2017): the Grunen in Germany, the Verts in France, or the Verdi in Italy are typical examples.¹

Italian Environmental Activism: The Individual and the Collective Dimension

Briefly focusing on the historical evolution of Italian environmentalism, the first associations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—such as the Touring Club Italia or the Lega Nazionale per la Protezione degli animali—date back to the end of the 19th century: They were characterized by a conservationist approach and a middle or even high-class composition. After World War II, in a period of economic boom, other important similar associations developed, such as Italia Nostra (1955) or the Italian branch of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF; 1966). However, it is during the cycle of protest beginning in 1968 that the environmental movement assumed a certain consistency and a more contentious approach. I refer, in particular, to its ecological components, able to build alliances and propose frame bridging operations with other social movements, proving the ability to connect materialist and postmaterialist issues, and, in the best-case scenarios, to overcome the “classic” labor/environment contraposition. Notable cases of intersections between environmental and labour issues are the protests conducted by Potere Operaio in Porto Marghera during the 1970s or by the ICMESA (Industrie Chimiche Meda Società Azionaria) workers after the Seveso disaster (1976). Moreover, in the same period, relations between the environmental movement and the student movement also developed: a paradigmatic example is represented by the journal Medicina Democratica. In parallel with these new visions, during the same period other more classical NGOs were founded and assumed an important role in the Italian panorama: LAV (Lega Antivivisezione) in 1977, Legambiente in 1980, GreenPeace Italia in 1986, to name only a few. These associations maintain an institutional approach and important links not only with the Verdi but also with other important parties, in particular the Partito Radicale. In contrast, the more contentious groups – closer to the international deep ecology or radical environmentalism – considered and actually consider as strictly connected the diffusion of a capitalist economy and the environmental crisis (Klein, 2015), in contrast with the so-called gospel of eco-efficiency promoted by the more institutionalized environmental organizations (Martinez-Alier, 2014). Such more radical perspectives not only influenced the Italian territorial movements (della Porta & Piazza, 2007) but were also central in the diffusion of political consumerism (Forno & Ceccarini, 2006; Tosi, 2006). This last element, not just in Italy, implies a growing consciousness in the general population and a diffusion of environmental concerns; on the other hand, it also means a partial loss of relevance of organizations, or at least the rise of different channels for the diffusion of environmental activism (Micheletti & McFarland, 2015). These changes particularly affected the younger cohorts, more exposed and possibly more open to such phenomena.

(Political) Generation(s) in Movement(s)

Before considering youth participation in the environmental movement(s), a general preliminary premise needs to be made. When speaking of youth participation within SMOs, it is important to distinguish between youth-led organizations, entirely youth-based organizations, adult-dominated organizations, and “general” organizations without specific generational peculiarities (for a review, see Earl, Maher, & Elliott, 2017). In this article, I refer to the latter, but it is worth also specifying the presence of entirely youth-based organizations among the environmental movement: for example, the Youth Climate Movement (YouNGO) and its numerous national branches, such as the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, or the U.K. Youth Climate Coalition, to name the most active.² There is no equivalent in Italy, but a youth section of the Italian Climate Network has been created.³ The discourse is valid not only for such formal youth-based NGOs but also for more radical youth environmental groups that are developing in other European countries but not in Italy⁴: Current examples are the youth transational movement Fridays for Future, leaded by the 16 years old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, the protest conducted in the Hambach forest in Germany⁵ and the Extinction Rebellion mobilization in the United Kingdom,⁶ both of them among the most relevant environmental protests of the present days and consistently composed by young activists.⁷

As commonly shared in the sociological literature (Earl, Maher, et al., 2017; Goldstone, 2015; Leccardi & Feixa, 2012), the point of reference for discussions about age, generations, and cohorts is the well-known essay of Karl Mannheim (1952) on the “problem of generations.” On one hand, Mannheim identified a “generational actuality,” meaning a specific historic period coinciding with the epiphany of a certain cohort; on the other hand, he spoke of “generational units” made up of different types of individuals of the same age who adopt different visions of the world that endure throughout the life course, giving birth to distinct cultural movements.

More recently, such a conception of the generational unit has been challenged and partially modified, with the argument that it is not common age that necessarily matters but the common moment of involvement in a social movement (Glasius & Pleyers, 2013). I here adopt this perspective, and in particular the definition of political generation proposed by Nancy Whittier (1997) as the combination of “all micro-cohorts that participate in a given wave of protest” (p. 762). As specified by the author herself, in fact, “although the micro-cohorts that make up a single political generation differ from each other, their perspectives overlap as a result of basic commonalities in their movement experiences” (p. 762).

Youth Participation and Environmental Issues

Against this background, only limited scholarship has analyzed the relation with and the belonging to SMOs of young and adult activists (Earl, Maher, et al., 2017). This is particularly true (and regrettable) in the case of environmentalism: In fact, those “new” forms of engagement grew ever more diffused in recent years, such as the already mentioned case of political consumerism, which has proved to be increasingly relevant especially among younger cohorts (Micheletti & McFarland, 2015; Stolle, Hooghe, & Micheletti, 2005). Moreover, young people are extremely affected by some environmental issues, and in particular by climate change (Corner et al., 2015; McAdam, 2017). This generational dimension has been analyzed looking at the life courses of single activists (Fisher, 2016) and at the progression of environmental participation across generations and decades (Dunlap & Mertig, 2014) but also, more recently, in the framework of the massive involvement of young environmental activists within the Global Justice Movement (GJM; della Porta, 2015a).

Environmental participation has been studied both within organized forms (Dalton, 1994; Rootes, 1999; Saunders, 2013) and looking at lifestyles (Haenfler, Johnson, & Jones, 2012), direct actions (Scarce, 2016), and forms of boycott (Wicks, Morimoto, Maxwell, Schulte, & Wicks, 2014) or even buycott (Forno & Graziano, 2014; Neilson, 2010). This topic is not only related to youth activism but more generally refers to the different repertoires available along the continuum lobby/protest (Diani, 1995; Rootes, 2003): Not only the possible positive combination of these two elements has been stressed (della Porta & Rucht, 2002) but also, in some cases, their incompatibility due to different ideological perspectives (Doherty, 2005). However, differences in the repertoires adopted according to the age of activists is a shared assumption in social movements literature (della Porta, 2015b; Earl, Maher, et al., 2017): The fundamental differences in terms of political participation between young people and adults have been identified in the more or less contentious practices and approaches to political involvement (Williams, 2016; Winston, 2013), and in the relationship with institutional politics (Fisher, 2012).

Finally, remembering the suggestion of Nancy Whittier and looking at the different levels of activists’ “biographical availability” (McAdam, 1989), (youth) participation should be correctly considered in a dynamic perspective. Various networks and socialization agencies allow individuals to approach political engagement: from family (Gordon, 2008; Youniss et al., 2002) to school (Andolina, Jenkins, Zukin, & Keeter, 2003; Youniss et al., 2002), passing not only through social class (Mohai, 1985) or peer group (Gordon & Taft, 2011) but also through new alternative forms of political participation (della Porta, 2017). The importance of previous and contemporary networks has clearly emerged among environmental activists (Diani, 1995; Saunders, 2007, 2013), both in its positive nature of resource mobilization (Dunlap & Mertig, 2014) and in its possible capacity to generate a variegated (and also fragmented) archipelago (Diani, 1995) characterized by different and sometimes opposed visions of the world and of environmental issues.

Given this theoretical overview, in the following paragraph I briefly present the nature of the areas, groups, and organizations selected for this study. Then, in the empirical section, I analyze two specific elements among those investigated—namely, identity self-perception and forms of action of young activists—considering their different involvement in formal NGOs, grassroots campaigns, or local groups. Subsequently, in line with Whittier’s proposal to consider generational belonging as a process and not as a static element, I briefly look at the “political careers” and collective memories of previous protest cycles, and in particular of the GJM.

The Sample

Nineteen semistructured interviews (see the appendix) were conducted with Italian environmental and territorial activists belonging to not only different groups and organizations going from grassroots mobilizations engaged in local and territorial issues to anarchist groups, but also institutional and formal NGOs. In particular, the sample was clustered into three sectors: NGOs, locally unwanted land use (LULU) groupings, and political ecology groups (PEGs). Within these three single sectors further important differences emerge between the groups/associations considered. The objective, however, was not to systematically verify this stratification but only to give a general internal structure and underline the differences among the Italian environmental movement(s).⁸ The analysis is based on reports from single activists, normally with a central role, a relevant experience, a considerable level of involvement, and an informed perspective. However, other members—and especially the young activists I asked them about—could possibly disagree with their individual opinions.⁹

NGOs: In this category, I include the more institutionalized associations that normally follow an institutional approach but, in some cases, also conduct more visible actions, even against the law but always with an explicit claim of responsibility and in every sense positioned in the democratic public arena. I consider three environmental associations—one Italian and the other two branches of international NGOs—and three animal welfare associations.

LULU movements: With this label, I refer to local movements born in opposition to big and useless infrastructure (or, at least, perceived as such by the activists), promoted and run by committees of citizens. However, these local movements should not be considered as NIMBY—not in my backyard—actors (McClymont & O’hare, 2008) but, on the contrary, as NOPE—nowhere on planet Earth—or NIABY—not in anyone’s back yard—(Schaffer Boudet, 2011), as they have learned to adopt political frames and to shift the scale of their claims, bridging local and territorial issues with social, economic, and political ones (della Porta & Piazza, 2007, 2016) and often embracing the perspectives of the environmental justice movement (Martinez-Alier et al., 2016).¹⁰

PEGs: This area gathers together subjects very different from each other, but sharing a strong general critique against neoliberal perspectives, starting from issues related to health, environment, agriculture, and other animal species and bridging them with anticapitalist discourses. Almost all of these groups could also be called sustainable community movement organizations, using the definition coined by Forno and Graziano (2014), due to their focus on alternative forms of political consumption (Earl, Copeland, & Bimber, 2017), their conviction that “the modern industrial economy and agricultural system are damaging both the environment and society” (Forno & Graziano, 2014), and their adoption of the classic slogan “think globally, act locally” (Rootes, 2013). However, the presence of some groups with specific characteristics favored the more extended label of PEGs.¹¹ I consider in this broad category a small anarchist group focused on food sovereignty, two subjects belonging to a national network of independent farmers, a national branch of an international campaign against trade agreements, an animal rights group, and an umbrella coalition including different Southern Italian organizations interested in health and environmental issues (Table 1).

Table 1.

Groups Analyzed Divided by Area.

NGOs	WWF, Legambiente, GreenPeace, LAV, Essere Animali, Animal Equality
LULU movements	No Tav, No Tap, No Muos, No Ponte, No Grandi Navi, No Triv, Mamme No Inceneritore
PEGs	Eat the Rich, Campi Aperti, Mondeggi, Forum Ambiente Salute, Oltre la Specie, Stop Ttip

Note. NGOs = nongovernmental organizations; LULU = locally unwanted land use; PEGs = political ecology groups.

Identities: A Generational One?

Among the Italian environmental movement(s), the self-representation of young activists as a specific entity is not widespread: Numerous young people are involved, but generational identity—that is, as Millennials—is not a central element in their self-perception. Beyond this lack of generational self-perception, there is also another (more conceptual) reason why the Millennial identity of environmental activists could not be considered particularly relevant: I refer to the fact that the same concept of Millennials does not resonate among respondents. Generally speaking, they intend it either as a generic synonym of young people or as related to those individuals born from the year 2000 onward.

These are important findings, especially considering the role assumed by youth activism in the past decades both looking at the international environmental panorama (Carter, 2018; Saunders, 2013; Strandbu & Krange, 2003) and also at Italian social movements (Buzzi, Cavalli, & De Lillo, 2002; Cavalli & Leccardi, 2013). The same point has also been stressed by some of the respondents themselves, as in the case of an activist belonging to Campi Aperti, the “Bologna branch” of Genuino Clandestino (a national network of resistant farmers focused on the theme of food sovereignty):

There has not been a movement in Italy where young people were not the driving force. . . . Even among those movements linked to the great ethical choices: peace, the refusal of nuclear power, but also in the great environmental struggles. (IntIE12)

Even if generalized, the absence of a generational identity assumes different impacts in the three areas identified. Among the NGOs, respondents rhetorically stressed the importance of young members, also in a quantitative sense.¹² However, this does not translate into any real peculiarity attributed to youth participation, and—when it possibly happens—it does not bring about any stress on difference in their involvement if compared with the other cohorts.

In contrast, some important differences emerged in the ideologies and political perspectives between individual NGOs. The main contraposition is probably between pure environmental organizations such as Legambiente, or WWF, on the one hand, and the animal welfare ones such as LAV, Animal Equality, and Essere Animali on the other hand, with GreenPeace in the middle. Such contraposition can be summarized in a greater focus on animals as a species or on animals as individuals (Almiron, 2019; Bertuzzi, 2018a, 2018b, 2019; Faria & Paez, 2019). However, a more general common ideological reference remains across the entire subarea: I refer to the absolute trust in formal politics and representative democracy and the idea that the best way to improve environmental issues is by reforming the current political/economic system. This common reference is able to bring together and reconcile not only various organizations but also different cohorts of activists, as reported by a “historical” member of GreenPeace Italy, whose point of view took into account a diachronic perspective based on his personal experience:

There is no generational identity, we also had historical activists of different ages; I never noticed that there was a fracture between young and old activists. (IntIE6)

A generalized refusal to recognize the existence of a generational specificity also emerged among the LULU movements and the PEGs. In these cases, not only a common idea of democracy—a direct one, however, and based on horizontal participation—but also and especially some identity dimensions were described as very relevant, much more than the common age of some members. In particular, territorial identity “obscures” other ones, acting as the minimum common denominator able to gather together individuals with very different characteristics, as stressed in the following quote from No Tap (the movement opposing the realization of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline in the region of Puglia). This is certainly true for the LULU movements that, even if within broader political frames, focus on the various local struggles at stake¹³; but the same point is also valid for the PEGs among which territorial identity is often related to agriculture or to alternative economic visions in an anticapitalist frame.

The first guy who took the expulsion warrant [foglio di via, in Italian] was 19 years old; the last lady who received a complaint [denuncia, in Italian] because she opposed the trucks, was 76 . . . The slogan that everyone has adopted “I am No Tap” is actually there, but I have to say that it is close to other things, like “I’m No Tap because I’m against the mafia” or “I’m No Tap because I’m for justice.” Age is not a discriminating element in this way of seeing things. (IntIE14)

Partial exceptions from such a general picture are represented by No Muos (a movement born in Niscemi against the installation of the Mobile User Objective System) and No Ponte (a movement opposing the bridge supposed to connect the regions of Calabria and Sicilia). The respondents, as visible in the two excerpts reported below (both of them from middle-aged important figures), often refer to a centrality of young members, also defining those movements as youth ones, and speaking of a specific identity self-perception of young activists. This should be related to the peculiarity of the region (Sicilia) where the younger cohorts are particularly discriminated against in a local context that does not allow them to properly live their present and construct their future (Piazza & Sorci, 2018).

If I had to characterize it generally, I would define No Muos as a youth movement . . . Speaking with young people, there was awareness of a denied identity, of a stolen territory . . . There has been an intertwining between generational and territorial identity. (IntIE12)

The mobilization was very transversal, but youth activism against the bridge was predominant. (IntIE13)

The specificity of the Southern Italian regions is relevant, but the relation between biographical perspectives and the precariousness of labor conditions is also widespread elsewhere and among different types of organizations. This is the only relevant issue that could reflect a generational unit à la Mannheim. Job insecurity and a belonging to what has been defined as the precariat class (Standing, 2011) emerged as a reference among all the respondents: not only did young activists stress it, but also those belonging to other cohorts reflected on the differences between the present and the past, describing their personal future perspectives as much better than the current ones.

However, only some activists belonging to specific groups (especially some of the PEGs) consider the environment itself and particularly agriculture as a possible “job opportunity” and source of income. When it is mentioned, this aspect is also shared at a transversal generational level, meaning that it is not a peculiarity of youth cohorts as opposed to older ones, or vice versa.

Other sociodemographic variables were defined as much more important than age with respect to the identity construction of the Italian environmental movement(s)—for example, gender. In fact, a fundamental element is represented by “maternal identity,” especially among the LULU movements. Many of them have a specific group within, called “Mamme No-XXX” (Mothers No-XXX).¹⁴ They do not label themselves as Donne (Women) but as Mamme (Mothers), and this is not an impartial definition: They stress a preoccupation not only for their own children but also, more generally, for future generations. Such aspects represent important questions for gender studies and for the history of feminism more generally. This is not the right place to investigate them (see the articles of Daniela Chironi, Bogumila Hall, and Martin Portos in this edited issue), but one point should be considered with attention: The “normal” evolution of these groups of Mamme from a concern for their children and territory to a more general perspective as “mothers of the Earth” in an anticapitalist global (and not NIMBY) way resonates with the local/global dialectic and scale shift that more generally characterizes the LULU movements and the PEGs (della Porta & Piazza, 2007; Rootes, 2013).

We had this idea of the mother as a person that takes care of future generations, and then we considered that it could also be media effective to label our group like this. (IntIE9)

Concluding on this first dimension, the process of identity construction is not only a cause but also a product of social movements and especially of grassroots activism (Flesher Fominaya, 2010), and the identity is constructed around opposition to a system rather than to a specific adversary (Gamson, 1992). Neoliberal politics are in this case the common adversary for the LULU movements and the PEGs, and this aspect gathers together young and adult activists without important generational fractures. In the case of the NGOs, the same unifying role is played by trust in representative democracy, an element equally shared by members of different ages. A generational transmission of welfarist frames and approaches (or, on the contrary, of contentious ones) from adult to young activists has been identified.

Forms of Action: (Not Only) a Matter of Age

In the previous pages, I described the generalized absence of a common identity among the Italian environmental movement(s) with respect to the age of activists. Partial exceptions were mentioned in relation to job precariousness and future job perspectives, especially in some geographical contexts. What also emerged is the actual relevance of the SMOs (or at least of different movement subareas) in shaping frames, ideologies, and visions of the world: They do it by referring to common issues (the LULU movements and partially the PEGs) and common ideas of democracy (the NGOs and, in the opposite direction, the LULU movements and especially the PEGs).

In contrast, the main (partial) generational peculiarities are connected to the forms of action: As might be predicted, young activists are normally more contentious than adults. However, some exceptions emerged, which can be mentioned as counterintuitive examples and as a proof of the difficulty of generalizing in such a variegated range of collective actors. For example, in the case of Mondeggi—a squatted farm based around Florence—young activists were found for a certain period to be the more cautious and older ones more contentious, overturning the commonsensical perception of the adult/youth dialectic.

At that point something very funny happened: the army of the retired said: “enough with this, tomorrow we go there, break the doors and occupy!”; we young people were a bit more organized, a little bit more prepared to organize these things and we said “let’s do it in September!” We young people became fire-fighters, the old ones told us “you’re only able to chat, we are for the action.” (IntIE10)

Beyond these single exceptions, the LULU movements and the PEGs in particular share a generalized preference among their young members for contentious action, but this aspect does not translate either into real generational fractures or strong conflict. The potential conflicts have always been overcome and the different components of the movement respected their mutual diversities, as reported by both the following excerpts, the first one from a young activist belonging to No Grandi Navi—the movement born in Venice to contrast the passage of big ships in the Lagoon—and the second one from an older activist of the Forum Ambiente Salute—an umbrella coalition including different Southern Italian organizations interested in health and environmental issues.

There has been an acceptance of the different practices. Objectively, without the great strikes, direct actions, mass mobilisations, roadblocks, the visibility would have been lacking and therefore also the political legitimacy of the movement. However, I do not think that even the most radical areas have perceived as negative the institutional attempts performed by some sectors of the movement or even the possibility of taking legal actions. Despite the differences in practices, there has never been a situation of conflict. (IntIE12)

These kinds of conflicts, it doesn’t seem to me that they are so strong: even if a group of young activists make some bullshit, that it would have been better if they haven’t, the old ones will however defend them. (IntIE5)

Moreover, especially in the case of the LULU movements, contentious actions are often understood as effective if flanked by lobby activities. Furthermore, the possibility of some kinds of “institutional support” is admitted, visible, for example, in those electoral candidates that are expressions of the local committees themselves. Such support, however, is to be understood as a further attempt—together with protest—to influence political decisions and never as an endorsement toward a “friendly government” that is considered as inexistent. This is a shared narrative across different generations of activists, and it has been expressed with strong conviction by adult activists in particular, as in the following quote of a No-Tav activist.

There are no “friendly governments.” There is no government different from the previous one. (IntIE15)

Moving to the NGOs, the register totally changes. Being welfarist subjects (namely, subjects opting for small-wins politics and reformist approaches), they tend to look toward young people—not specifically Millennials, but even at younger generations—especially when they organize activities within schools. In this sense, some programs of the previous Italian government such as Alternanza Scuola-Lavoro (a much discussed policy that established certain mandatory periods of unpaid work experience during school years) were mentioned positively in the interviews. Young people are described as potentially interested in environmental issues, especially when it comes to “doing something”, even a simple operation of tidying or similar activities. These previous aspects are well summarized in the next quote from the President of Legambiente.

We work a lot with the schools; the students participate in our activities especially when it comes to getting their hands dirty, when we promote volunteer-based environmental activities. They don’t want to go to a conference on recycling . . . In the 2000s I noticed that young people can be motivated if you let them do practical things. (IntIE8)

More practical activities organized in collaboration with schools are mentioned also by some PEGs, and especially by those more related to the theme of agriculture. However, they present at least two peculiar characteristics if confronted with those promoted by the NGOs: first, they are organized in collaboration with local institutions and do not have a national dimension; and second, such collaborations do not translate into an automatic trust in other institutions, especially in a trust in the current economic political system as a whole. In fact, the NGOs were able to maintain a critical perspective on environmental issues without questioning other aspects of capitalist modernity; in contrast, the PEGs use these opportunities to inform young students/citizens of possible alternative solutions, both in an environmental and in a socio-economic perspective.

Another aspect shared by young members of the NGOs and the PEGs is the consistent use of the Internet and new media, as attested by the two quotes reported below: the first from the President of WWF, the second from a middle-aged activist of Oltre la Specie, an historical contentious and anticapitalist Italian animal rights group. It is however worth specifying that the contents that they diffuse are extremely contrasting, both online and offline.

There is a type of activism that moved from the headquarters to the new media. (IntIE19)

The big difference with the previous season, however, seems to be linked to the disappearance of pressure campaigns based on direct action and mass mobilization, in favour of a work of denunciation through the mass media and the circulation of images and videos on the social media. (IntIE17)

The activists—youths and adults without relevant differences—of the LULU groupings, on the contrary, remain critical and suspicious of the role of new media, stressing not only their possible pros but also their cons. However, looking at the interviews in their totality, the use of the Internet did not emerge as a particularly relevant dimension, or at least it was rarely discussed. This might seem unexpected if looking at the recent history of social movements (Gerbaudo, 2012; Gerbaudo & Treré, 2015) and also specifically at environmental movements (Hodges & Stocking, 2016): It is both due to the peculiarities of some of the groups selected and to the absence of a specific question in the interview guideline.

Beyond the previously mentioned partial similarities between different subareas such as the NGOs and the PEGs, the contrasting elements remain considerably more numerous and concern not only ideological references and forms of action but also the use of different resource mobilization instruments. For example, the NGOs have specific programs dedicated to young members, such as the seasonal voluntary camps (https://www.legambiente.it/campi-di-volontariato/; http://wwfnature.it/) or the youth cards involving some kinds of discount related to environmental and also cultural initiatives (https://www.youngercard.it/cg/progetto/673/).

In conclusion, looking at the forms of action, the current relevance of different movement subareas and SMOs in shaping the individual forms of (youth) activism proved to be relevant. More so than in the case of identity self-perception, we can detect some generational differences, but these do not translate into effective fractures or unresolvable conflicts.

Beyond the single exceptions mentioned, the more contentious perspectives of young people never translated in real conflicts or have always been discussed and overcome internally thanks to shared transgenerational references: macro-environmental concerns within a total trust in representative democracy and reformist lobby activities among the NGOs, ecological issues within a political frame among the LULU movements, and radical anticapitalist grassroots daily politics among the PEGs.

Political Careers and Collective Memory

To look at the generational dimension in a dynamic way, during the interviews I also investigated the different “trajectories” of young and adult activists.

Among the environmental NGOs, numerous young members were experiencing their first political engagement and possibly, once inside a welfarist association, looked for other more contentious (local) groups. The older activists, in contrast, developed their experiences in previous environmental campaigns, even if some of them had also participated in the 1968 or 1977 political mobilizations.

Among the local committees, the situation is quite different. The young activists come especially from social centers or antagonistic milieus. Some actually participate both in a LULU movement and in the activities of a local squatted social center: The typical examples are represented by the very strong relations between Askatasuna/No Tav (in Turin) and Morion/No Grandi Navi (in Venice). Moreover, numerous members of the LULU movements and the PEGs between 30 and 45 years old have been involved in the GJM. Conversely, adult activists have much more variegated political carriers but, in some respects, similar to those of their peers belonging to the NGOs: The majority of them, in fact, come from previous environmental experiences and some participated in the 1968 or 1977 political mobilizations.

In spite of the different paths, all the respondents recognized the central importance of the GJM. At the same time, especially those that were more involved—and particularly the Millennials—were critical toward some of its main aspects and outputs: Their criticism is focused on the failure of the countersummits, that a posteriori are perceived much more as an identity testimony than as an effective way to contrast the globalization process and propose an alternative to it. This is a shared assumption also among other social movements, but in the case of environmental activism, it refers specifically to the impact that the international countersummits had in environmental terms (de Moor, 2017).

A great part of that generation understood that with the big demonstrations, the counter-summits, you didn’t get a fucking thing. It was a lot of wasted energy: you made a big conference, not really sustainable from an ecological point of view, with 250 people going to Rome every month for a demonstration, without obtaining anything. Many people said: “enough with this, let’s do things on our territory.” (IntIE2)

Such reflections are widespread, but they especially come from those Millennials involved in a PEG or possibly from those that now belong to an NGO but who 10 or 15 years ago used to be involved in grassroots campaigns and mobilizations: a situation quite widespread, for example, among the animal welfare associations. As mentioned in the case selection, (the majority of) the PEGs considered in this research can also be labeled as sustainable community movement organizations, and in fact, following Forno and Graziano’s (2014) analysis, they arose “along the lines traced by those organizations—associations, cooperatives, small and medium-sized enterprises, and so on—that during the GJM had actively contributed to translate conscious consumerism and grassroots advocacy into political action.”

On the contrary, the NGOs, and especially the animal advocacy field, are moving in the opposite direction: In fact, numerous grassroots animal rights activists moved to animal protection associations in order to professionalize their activities and acquire more technical knowledge, while abandoning some wider political frames and ideological connections (Bertuzzi, 2018a, 2018b, 2019), as explained by a 33-year-old member of Animal Equality Italia.

All of us come from grass-roots activism, but then we decided to professionalize our activity to be more effective and visible. (IntIE1)

Beyond the GJM, the respondents—especially those belonging to the LULU movements and the PEGs—also consistently mentioned the relevance assumed in the Italian context by the “Onda” (Wave) student movement (Caruso, Giorgi, Mattoni, & Piazza, 2010; Piazza, 2014). The memory of previous mobilizations, in fact, is perceived as very important and capable of constituting a partial gap among different political generations of activists, those “who were there” and those who were not, as precisely explained in the words of an activist of No Grandi Navi:

Those like me who were born in the late Seventies had two things that the Millenials had not: we saw a global movement and also experienced a movement of national dimensions such as the Onda . . . 20 years old guys have not seen the power of movements, have not experienced mass movements, they did not participate in demonstrations with 300-400 thousand radical activists. This type of experience does not exist any longer, so it is much more difficult because one does not understand what kind of benefit comes from building a social movement with all the legal and physical risks, but also the sacrifice of time that it implies. (IntIE11)

The previous quote also resonates with Nancy Whittier’s modification of Mannheim’s conception of generational unit, mentioned in the previous pages: It is not having the same age that automatically gives the same vision of the world, but on the contrary the contemporary moment of entry in a specific social movement (Glasius & Pleyers, 2013) or the common experience of a specific critical juncture (della Porta, 2017). Of course, it is more likely that a Millennial—or a Baby Boomer or an “official” member of other generations—has shared some common experiences with activists of the same age, but if this does not happen, the fact of having shared the same experiences overcomes the age effect.

The importance of previous mobilizations is related to specific elements: one is the increase of police repression and its consequent influence not only among the general population but also among the LULU movements and the PEGs themselves. Newcomers (which does not automatically mean the younger) are described as being much more aware of police repression compared with those who began their political activism in the 2000s (della Porta & Fillieule, 2004). This is clearly stated by a young activist belonging to Eat the Rich, a grassroots group of anarchist inspiration based in Bologna and focusing on the theme of food sovereignty by means of a contentious antisystemic approach: Even though young (27 years old), she refers to even younger activists comparing the perceptions and personal experiences of police repression.

A person that begins now to be a militant is very well aware of the repression regime, much more than me when I started doing politics. (IntEI4)

Conclusions

Generational belonging is not a fundamental element among the Italian environmental movement(s), especially if compared with the other case studies considered in this edited issue, among which the group of (young) peers often shares specific identity self-perceptions, and whose forms of action are in conflict with and opposition to those of adult activists (see in particular the articles by Chiara Milan and Martin Portos).

Among the environmental field, the Millennials’ identity configures as a partial exception to the rule of a generational identity and self-perception among the critical young Europeans. The only diversities between cohorts are related to the forms of action preferred and (possibly) adopted, while the common perception of job precariousness is not translated into a single frame, and especially not into a generational blaming of the previous cohorts.¹⁵ The respondents mentioned no generational tensions; on the contrary, it is also possible that other peers could be considered as effective enemies much more than adult activists (see also the article of Lorenzo Zamponi on these aspects).

Collective identity is rather based on shared political cultures and ideological references; such elements, in the case of the Italian environmental movement(s), overcome the generational gaps. Other sociodemographic variables are more relevant in shaping internal peculiarities among the associations and groups investigated, as we saw, for example, with regard to gender. However, the real focus for collective identification can be identified, on the one hand, in the common reference to an idea of representative democracy and environmentally driven welfarist policies among the NGOs; and, on the other hand, in the territorial belonging not only for the LULU movements but also for the PEGs, even if the latter hold a more (alter)global approach.

Political involvement and the process of generational transmission (Taft & Gordon, 2018) correspond with the absence of real gaps connected to age, while visions of the world and the operation of issues framing promoted by the SMOs prove to remain relevant not only in a general sense but also specifically looking at youth activism (Earl, Maher, et al., 2017). In the case of the NGOs, this could be seen in the huge numerical presence of young members: These organizations and their adult members currently prove to be able to transmit their visions of the world to the younger cohorts, maintaining the typical cultural references of the historical environmental welfarism. But new visions of the world have also emerged thanks to new organizations or more generally contentious collective actors, such as the LULU groupings or the PEGs: Even with some changes across time, they have proved the ability to resist already for several years (and some also for several decades). Among them there is no decline in youth participation; on the contrary, young activists assume an important role—even if within a communitarian dimension—especially adopting more radical frames and forms of action.

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author received financial support from the Scuola NormaleSuperiore and the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research.

Notes

Author Biography

Niccolò Bertuzzi is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore and a member of COSMOS (Center of Social Movement Studies). His main research interests are political sociology, social movement studies, sociology of onsumerism, environmental sociology and human-animal studies. He conducted researches on the Italian animal rights movements, the mobilization against Expo 2015 in Milan youth participation, and visions of Europe from below. He obtained his PhD in Applied Sociology and Methodology of Social Research at the University of Milano-Bicocca, and studied at the Universities of Bologna, Turin, Paris-Sorbonne, Barcelona-Pompeu Fabra and Nacional de Bogotà.

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