Deconstructing Generations: Concluding Remarks

What Is a Generation in Movements?

The research investigates first the meaning of generations for movements. In social movement studies, generations have been used to refer to the demographic compositions of a movement (or movement organization), as well as to its composition in terms of wave of recruitment (Whittier, 1997, 2013). A homogeneous generational base can be seen as a potential for strong identification (as happened with the movement of the 1960s; della Porta, 2018), but generational heterogeneity can also broaden the basis of reference (e.g., in the global justice movement; della Porta, 2009), especially when the possible competition across generations within movements is kept at bay within inclusive spaces.

Our research allowed, first of all, to understand the meaning activists gave to generations in movements as well as cross-generational tensions and their management (see article by Portos in Part I of this double issue). In the perception of the activists, generations seem a relatively interesting concept, which is, however, understood as short, eventful, and movement specific, being very much linked to the direct experience with specific moments of mobilization and eventful protests (see Zamponi’s and Milan’s chapters in Part I and Part II, respectively, of this double issue). While in some cases these coincide with global peaks of protest, in other cases they are movement specific and country specific.

So, for instance, the meaning of generation tends to be quite peculiar in movements that emerge as quite institutionalized around the founders’ generation (as in the case of the environmental movement in Italy). Generational belongings even signal borders, for instance, between environmental movement organizations (with older and more established generational components) and animalist or critical consumerist ones (see Bertuzzi in this issue). So, while young people are certainly present in the Italian environmental movements, some of the main organizations seem to have more difficulty in attracting young people, or at least for a rejuvenation of their conceptions and practices of activism. There is no decline in youth participation, however, in the movements against the construction of big infrastructure that, as communitarian movements, tend to involve also the younger cohort—with often a pivotal role in direct action and radical framing.

Generations assume a different meaning instead for those movements that experience a rebirth under the lead of new generations, as is the case with the women’s movement in Spain or Italy or Poland. In this case, however, country differences might be quite important in defining the characteristics of the movement as it is embedded in broader cycles of protests, with more inclusiveness in Spain and less in Italy.

So, remaining with the women’s movements, stereotypes about the members of the other generation seemed more present in Poland and Italy (within a context of declining or fragmented mobilizations) than in Spain, where the massive protest of the May 15 movement, with the large presence of Millennials, resonated in the successive waves of mobilization of the feminist movement against violence on women. Cross-generational tensions are, however, present also in Spain, where activists point at the difficult understanding between generations. So, according to an interviewee,

The older generations endorse an enlightened vision of feminism, that is of women’s rights oriented toward citizenship. They consider the queer turn has allied with the patriarchy emphasizing body and sexuality, and linked it to the identity. However, they [the veteran activist] link identity to citizenship. They see taking the right to sexuality as identity in a highly disruptive way . . . for them it is a patriarchal drift of the sexual liberation in the 1960s. (Int.ES.F1)

Where mobilization is high—with a momentous wave of protest that an activist describes as “a sweet moment”— it seems however easier to build bridges and revitalize (or, meaningfully said, re-generate) the movements through the commitment of a new generation with an increased sense of sorority. An intermediate cohort can help broker between the youngest and the oldest. So, a Spanish feminist noted:

We’re reaching now a time of convergence and collaboration . . . we share spaces, the academia has opened. For instance, at the Unit of Equality [of the URJC] we have one of the persons from 7N, we have congresses, workshops . . . we invite over people from [the social center with an important feminist collective] La Ingobernable, 7N, etc. . . . they come and there is a relationship. But it’s always the youngest and the middle-aged generations who are the nexus between the older activists who put in motion the Instituto de la Mujer that came from PSOE and the new movements, associated with the 15M and Feminismos Sol, younger cohorts, which are very grassroots, linked to social centers, neighborhoods, etc. Without that intermediate generation there will be very little dialogue . . . you can go to the social media and see the “beautiful things” [ironic] they tell one another, but I believe it’s mostly because they don’t know each other. I believe that without that intermediate generation there would have been very little dialogue. (Int.ES.F1)

The definition of generations by movement activists is, as mentioned, eventful. The direct experience of intense moments of protest is used (for instance, in Italy) to distinguish within the demographic generation of the Millennials. In particular, a sharp line is drawn between those who are 30 years old and above, and have therefore participated in the protests in the alter-globalist movement and in the student protest respectively at the beginning and at the end of the 2010s, and those who are instead younger, and could not directly live such experiences. The “older” Millennials thus present themselves as the sons and daughters of anti-G8 protests in Genoa and of the hopes that movement triggered. Additionally, the student mobilization against neoliberal reforms known as the Wave is considered as a fundamental experience that changed the way of organizing in a more horizontal way and with a refusal of delegation. References such as Generation Genoa and the Generation Wave address the imprinting experiences in those years, an experience of mass mobilization that their younger siblings miss. The idealized past is then considered as marking a difference with those who did not have the fortune to live through big mobilizations that implied—as a British activist noted—an experience with a patrimony of practices that is not repeatable (see article by Hall on the United Kingdom).

Finally, in the narratives of the dissident struggles, a “rebellious” generation can recognize another rebellious generation, as seems to be happening between the young activists mobilized in the anti-austerity protests and those that had lived through the “magic years” of the 1960s. This has, for instance, emerged in the United Kingdom with the young people mobilized in the campaign in support of Jeremy Corbyn within the Labour Party. So an “old” 1968 activist traces the signs of rebellion in the millennial generation:

What you have now is a generation, it feels to me, that has got the optimism that we had in the ‘60s. . . . I never lost my sense that things can change for the better. I always believed in it. I always felt it was possible. You had to create the circumstances though, not wait for them. I spoke earlier about socialist humanism, and I somehow fuse that in my mind that with the existentialist ideas that you have to act to make a change. It seems to me that all of that has been imbued in this new generation, and I think there probably is something we can learn from each other to build a future. So it is an interesting moment. There’s a generation ready. It feels to me like those younger than about 30 have huge optimism. In the middle age range of political activists there is pessimism. (Wainwright, interview with John Trickett, in della Porta, 2018)

In their turn, Millennial activists who participated in the youth organization Momentum in support of Corbyn locate 1968 as the basis of their struggle. As a Millennial from that organization stated,

I think rather than the thing that was often portrayed in the media, ‘68 sparked the 2015 moment more than any other era before it. Of course, all different eras influence things in different ways, but I think the sense of a break from the status quo, a sense of reimagining the future, and a sense of individuals being empowered to shape their own lives . . . these things were sparked there. (Wainwright, interview with founders of Momentum, in della Porta, 2018)

In sum, while reflecting on generations is important for activists, their understanding of generations is specifically related to the movements’ histories, which creates specific generational (un)balances, tensions, and negotiations of those tensions. In addition, activists pointed toward the internal heterogeneity of generations, in terms of class, gender, and ethnic composition.

Millennials: A “Screwed” Generation?

Generations are defined by broad historical changes that especially affect young people, who are assumed to remain “imprinted” by a particular circumstance. Critical junctures produce in fact path-dependent effects also through the socialization of new cohorts (Inglehart, 1977; Mannheim, 1952). Looking at biographical effects of participation in heightened periods of activism, research on the outcomes of movement activism has singled out the long-lasting effect in terms of norms and values as well as life paths, with a tendency toward “persistent activism” (Downton & Wehr, 1997). Within a micromobilization perspective, research has also pointed toward the importance of the effects of big events on everyday life (della Porta, 2017), as well as the meaning attribution as an important filter between grievances and mobilization (della Porta, 2015).

Focusing on the meaning of “Millennials” for activists, our research has indicated that, in the perceptions of activists, the Millennial generation is characterized as a precarious generation at the social level, a lonely generation at the cultural level, a threatened generation in its interactions with the state, and a betrayed generation in terms of its relations with the institutional Left.

The precarious conditions of the “screwed generation” emerge in all narratives in all the covered countries (although less so in Poland), which pointed toward a “negative” identification as a generation. As an activist singled out, Millennials are characterized by an exclusion from the citizens’ rights of the older generations:

Young people today face a particular set of problems and challenges—although perhaps every generation does it in some way- that are quite acute: stagnant wages, highly challenging housing conditions, increasing inequality, the deterioration of public services and public institutions, spiraling mental health problems, casualization and destabilization of labor, and more. . . . Today’s young people are facing the consolidated and collectively materializing effects of the economic policies of the last few decades, and this is perhaps how their position is unique. (Int.UK6)

Work is perceives as hyper-exploitative: “8 to 10 hours per day for a very low salary (of 3 euros per hour).” The result is poverty and extreme stress—living in a world that is considered physically massacring to the youth (see, e.g., Zamponi’s article). Those in their 30s especially describe themselves as a generation destroyed by the new norms on precarious work, which left them no possibility to plan a future. The crisis is cutting through class boundaries, even if its social consequences are still differentiated, with particularly dramatic consequences for ethnic minorities. In fact:

The common trait is the working environment, the existential precariety, the subtraction of free time, the commodification of the time you do not have… [contrariwise] we strive to appropriate our time in the way we choose, a self-determination of how to spend time without following commercial logics. . . . at the same time, I think it is impossible to find general identity characteristics. . . . we can also add a sort of “start-up identity” we are criticizing in this period. (Int.ISCS6)

Young people are not only hyper-exploited in the labor market (when not excluded from it) but also face the retrenchment of the welfare state, in terms of housing, transportation, and even health. Social discrimination is in fact perceived as a generational destiny that cannot be escaped even through education as traditional channel of social mobility. So, a British activist stated,

I was never in secure employment, I never earned an average wage. I am part of that generation where most graduates don’t get graduate jobs, we are financially less wealthy than our parents, we don’t think about ever owning a house in our lifetime like our parents did, we are just struggling within London. (Int.UK1)

The comparison with their parents’ generation is all the more frustrating as it implies not only deprivation in the present but also loss of hope in the future. As a British activist noted, after 30 years of attacks on welfare:

There was more security for my parents’ generation, you’d get a contract for work. . . . I’ve never had a contract for any of the jobs I’ve done. The precariousness of everyday life is something my parents wouldn’t go through that much. (Int.UK7)

The self-definition as a generation with no future is in fact internalized. An activist noted,

We became aware that, for most of us, the future we took for granted would not be there. We realized that, after few years, a lot of things would not be there, for instance a job and acceptable living and working conditions, let alone the possibility to do what we dreamt to get. (Int.ISCS4)

For the Millennials, especially in the South, the alternative is then often seen as either finding precarious work, “that eats you alive” and takes time out for possible political activism, or migrating. Precarity certainly reduces the capacity to imagine and project. This is different in Poland, where precarity is much less mentioned by the activists. As Poland was less affected by austerity measures, insecurity and regression in human rights are discussed in political terms, associated with the rise to power of the radical right-wing Law and Justice Party. So an 18-year old feminist from Warsaw described what crisis meant for her: “They are killing the courts, they undermine human rights, they destroy the basics of democracy. Law and Justice Party stole our national symbols, I don’t feel comfortable to wear national colors anymore, because it is not mine anymore.” (Int. PL8)

Insecurity has had a detrimental effect at the cultural level, with the spread of a sense of solitude as Millennials pay for their condition of exclusion with psychological tension. The young activists see themselves (and are seen) as characterized by a strong sense of alienation, with difficulty in identifying with a common destiny. Mass disillusionment follows a sense of atomization, an existential “smarrimento,” resignation. Being subject to blackmail, fearful of losing or not finding a job, the generation is said to be angry but discouraged, missing a capacity for imagination, with instead a feeling of solitude and an individualization that jeopardize collective action. So, it is a generation of lonely people, without any longer durable roots but rather passing through various places. Yet, it is also passionate for the environment, open, fluid, and curious.

The precarious youth is moreover a threatened generation—often stigmatized as a danger to others. Especially migrant youth (or second- or third-generation citizens from migrant parents and ethnic minority young people) point toward the securization of the state’s interactions with young people. Within the logic of anti-radicalization policies, prevention often implies suspicion of the young, especially when they are “different” from the dominant majority.

Growing up in a state of emergency, young people feel dispossessed not only of their future but also of their freedom. Especially young people belonging to ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom lament their exclusion from the very conceptualization of not only the British nation but also the European identity, which is a White identity. In the United Kingdom, in particular, the War on Terror brought about deep surveillance, such as the Prevent policies, since 2003, imposed on workers in the public sector asked to monitor and report signs of radicalization. Faced with a “state as an octopus,” youth belonging to ethnic minorities in particular feel that they are considered as “guilty until proven innocent.” As one of them mentions:

There’s has been this level of invasion of state services . . . my friends who are lecturers don’t want to act as if they were part of the police force. Prevent has corrupted the nature of university . . . also it is part of an attack on trade unions rights and the welfare state. Prevent has been also instrumental in corrupting the meaning of citizenship, dissent . . . it has been instrumental in creating a sell-out class. (Int.UK1)

Besides minorities, a perception of permanent control and a strong push toward conformity seems widespread among young activists. Preventive penal law has reduced freedom. Repression and social pacification, with also attacks on labor rights, are in fact often mentioned, as is the perceived need of surviving the state. Seen as problematic (violent, looters, consumerist, do not vote, antisocial, lacking of proper ethics, values, potentially home-grown terrorists), activists see the state as restricting civil liberties and criminalizing the youth. In a sort of conditional belonging, they have to prove they belong by proving commitment to Western values.

Finally, this is an orphaned generation from the political point of view. Growing up with a strong sense of lack of representation in institutional politics, young activists stigmatize, in particular, their betrayal by the institutional Left, unwilling and/or unable to defend citizens’ rights for the weak—in Italy stigmatizing the “Center-Left semi-death” and a “most evil Right.” So, especially where no massive wave of protest mobilized against austerity, young activists lament their trauma of defeat:

All of us lived the trauma of defeat: the fact that nobody amongst us is nowadays able to be enthusiastic in doing politics at a different level than an ARCI circle, or of a small social movement, the fact that we do not identify ourselves with political parties and we do not have a precise point of reference I think depends from the fact that we lived a drama of being orphaned of a Left that betrayed our generation and that, at a certain point, did not exist for us as a point of reference anymore. And probably something that united us a lot was the fact that we were the first to experiment on our skin the disillusion of facing a future that has little to do to a little group of persons, and leave a lot of people aside. (Int.ISCS7)

This brings about a broad mistrust in representative forms of democracy. In Spain, the disappointment with existing forms of representative democracy is expressed in a strong critique of the “pacted transition,” and of the generation that is considered as responsible for it. This explains, an older activist noted, the young people’s suspicion about representative institutions, as the young activists’ idea of democracy

is defined by their suspicion. Democracy, what’s democracy? You tell us we’re entitled to everything and then we get nothing. . . . That’s why discourses on smashing the pacts of Transitions that parties such as Podemos are putting forward resonate among the younger activists. This system that has been sold to me as democracy, I can’t trust it because of my living conditions . . . (Int.ES.F1)

Similarly, the mistrust of representative politics has spread also to those organizations that were for a long time embedded in that system as institutionalized feminist groups, in the case of Poland, or the mainstream unions. In fact, the mistrust of traditional unions is quite high. Again in Spain, but this can be generalized, older activists regret the young activists mistrust of unions. As one of them recalled, this rejection for those actors that dominated politics on the Left for a long time is present among the young activists of the women’s movement:

In the platform for the 8M strike, one year ago they did not want to engage with unions. It took us a lot of effort to convince the younger activists that if there are no unions, there is no proper strike. Who calls for a strike are unions. . . . But it creates internal tensions. For instance, in a feminist march, women are at the forefront, they lead it. Then, parties and unions are sent to the back end of the walkout. (Int.ES.F5)

The mix of social and political forms of exclusion challenges the capacity to organize and act in the forms that had dominated repertoires of collective action of the social movements in the previous waves of protest, pushing the young activists to look for new models and places. So, an Italian activist observed:

It was difficult to organize in the places where it was usually done before, in the working places as well as in the university. Things have changed so much from an economic point of view. It’s harder when you are at the university and you have to stay there and you cannot waste time because the economic condition of families, and your own, have changed. It is this general framework that unites and can act as a common thread for a whole generation. (Int.SCS9)

In sum, the Millennials are seen as characterized by experiences of exclusion and repression: They present themselves as belonging to a precarious, lonely, threatened, and orphaned generation—socially weak, culturally alone, and politically abandoned.

Mobilizing Millennials

While all those (actual and/or perceived) generational characteristics did jeopardize the capacity to protest yet the youth mobilized, sometimes even en masse. In order for this to happen, new conceptions and practices have to develop, not only to address the challenges of precarity, loneliness, repression, and betrayal but also to resonate with some generational tastes in collective action (Earl, Maher, & Elliott, 2017). As movement practices are not (mainly) instrumental, but rather (at least to a certain extent) aim at some degree of coherence between means and aims, mobilization forms follow emergent norms (della Porta, 2009, 2019).

Our research singled out some characteristics of these mobilizations, that using the toolkit of social movement studies we can summarize in terms of specific repertoires of contention, organizational models, and mobilizing frames.

Conclusion

With our research we aimed at understanding how young people—so called Millennials—do mobilize, against the odds: How they adapt to a challenging situation in terms of closing opportunities and declining resources, by experimenting with new repertoires of action, organizational models, and collective framing. In doing this, we have addressed the question of the emergence of a precarious generation, with its effects upon the building of new identities. To address this set of questions, we have aimed at bridging research in youth studies—with attention to the characteristics of the youth, specific demographic connotations, as well as the development of broad generations, with social movement studies’ concern with the contextual opportunities, repertoires of contention, and interpretative framing.

Admittedly, our aim was explorative, rather oriented at finding connections between different fields of studies than at testing specific hypotheses. The empirical research has been moreover focused on young people, in a historical period characterized by several crises, a (broad) regional area, and some progressive movements. Acknowledging these limits, we aim indeed at opening the path for further comparative research that could take into account the specific generational dynamics of different generations, expanding the focus beyond Europe. Comparing young activists with nonactivists at the individual, micro-level would allow to locate activist Millennials within the broader population of their peers. In-depth analysis of mono-generational as well as multigenerational social movement organizations, and of the effects of the entering of new generations with new waves of protests, would allow to investigate relevant dynamics at the meso levels (e.g., Bosi & della Porta, 2012).