Philipp Horn
(University of Sheffield)
Olivia Casagrande
(University of Sheffield)
Format:
Panel
Streams:
Gender & generation
Sessions:
Wednesday 6 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Alternatives to urban development: Youths between multiple crisis and future visions.
Panel P10b at conference DSA2022: Just sustainable futures in an urbanising and mobile world.
The panel explores the implications of multiple crisis for urban youths and discusses future visions and alternatives to urban development proposed by youth collectives and movements. We invite papers from authors from distinct disciplines who work on these topics in different global settings.
Long Abstract:
Our urbanising world is characterised by multiple crisis. Climate change, informalisation, political polarisation, deepening racial divides, and growing epidemiological risks characterise our present and shape our urban future. Such a dystopian reality has particularly adverse effects for youths who represent the urban majority in the global South and increasingly in the global North-East. Urban youths, especially those living and working informally, experience deepened levels of inequality, stress linked to climate and health, socio-economic precarity, and political exclusion. Yet urban youths are not passive victims but take their lives in their own hands. Through locally situated practices, everyday routines but also engagement in urban protests and movements transcending the local scale (for example, Know Your City TV, Fridays for Future, or the International Indigenous Youth Council), they call for urban development alternatives that confront our present condition of multiple crisis. Urban development alternatives are understood here broadly as future visions and approaches concerned with issues of self-determination related to material access, use and control of cultural, economic, political, physical or social resources and the potential of collective organisation for more socially, economically and ecologically just cities.
This panel explores the implications of multiple crisis for urban youths and examines different alternatives to urban development proposed by them. We invite contributions that address one or more of the following questions: How do multiple crisis affect urban youths? What are the hopes, desires, and imaginations of urban youths and how are they articulated through everyday practices, protests and engagement in (trans)local movements? What alternatives to urban development result from such practices? How does a focus on urban youth activism and futurism help us to rethink concepts of the just and equitable city?
We invite papers on the above-mentioned topics that focus on different global urban settings and mobilize distinct disciplinary, conceptual and methodological perspectives. We invite contributors to submit academic papers but are also open to alternative submissions such as recorded talks or short films. Independent of their format, contributions (1) must offer a clear response to at least one of the questions highlighted in the above call for papers and (2) introduce a question/ argument to be discussed further in the synchronous discussion. Contributions must be uploaded and shared online in advance with participants, session chairs and conference attendees. Recognizing differences and disparities in terms of access to software/ internet connection, we accept different submissions (including papers of up to 1,000 words and video/ audio recordings of up to 10 minutes in length). The 40-minute synchronous panel discussion at the DSA conference will take the format of a Q&A, whereby the panel chairs will kick off with a series of contribution-specific questions and comments followed by discussion with the wider audience.
Rising aspirations among youth have resulted in the rise in demand for high schools, colleges, and other educational institutes. Thus, small towns with better educational infrastructure grew faster during 2001-11, and India's second urban turn is driven by aspirations rather than farm distress.
Paper long abstract:
India's second urban turn posited as an outcome of agricultural decline and rural distress, which has forced villagers to shift into the non-farm economy in search of livelihood. However, small-town economies are struggling due to low productivity, weak infrastructure, and penetration of multinationals, hardly offering a meaningful alternative to rural youth. Thus, mere economic determinants cannot explain the growth of small towns, and these models should include the effect of rising aspirations, changing social preferences, and desires to become part of the 'urban middle class' among rural and semi-urban youth. It has led to higher demand for education that can impart skills required to be part of their globalized dreams. Thus, young adults are moving to nearby small towns with private schools, coaching institutes, and other educational institutes to educate and impart skills required for themselves to be part of the "urban" dream. Using Census and DISE data for more than 3,000 small towns in India, we show that the availability of a higher number of private high schools and access to colleges is the essential determinant of small-town growth across all categories. Further, we show that small-town growth increases if neighboring villages have a weak educational infrastructure. In contrast, the effect of other determinants, such as physical and financial infrastructure and the non-farm economy, is either statistically inconclusive or minuscule. Thus, rising aspirations are critical in explaining India's multifaceted puzzle of second urban turn.
This paper analyses how urban youth in Zimbabwe have grown up, learnt to live with and respond political violence and authoritarianism in a context of protracted economic crisis. It uses the concept of political socialization and focuses on politicized urban markets as 'sites of socialization'.
Paper long abstract:
In post-independence Zimbabwe, urban markets have become important spaces for generating livelihoods for urbanites due to protracted economic crisis. However, urban markets have also become politicized spaces: they are the stage for unfolding political crises and authoritarian politics in cities. In Harare, since the ruling party lost control of the city council to the opposition party, informal markets have become spaces for violent ruling party patronage: a strategy for the ruling ZANU-PF party to regain control. Urban markets transformed into a terrain of political struggles between ZANU-PF and the main opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change. This paper examines how the large number of young Zimbabweans who work at urban markets experience these manifestations of urban authoritarian politics, based on qualitative research in Harare from 2019 to 2021. Using the concept of youth political socialization, we explore how young vendors have grown up learning to live with political and economic crisis, and how they have learnt to respond to contemporary forms of authoritarianism in urban spaces. We argue that, while the impact of economic crisis is strongly felt and this increases the need for accessing livelihood opportunities through ruling party patronage, many young people resist authoritarian politics. We discuss a range of responses to authoritarianism: from perfect performance, to compliance and resistance. Findings contradict the existing dominant discourse on 'violent youth' . For the discussion, we ask how youth can be supported to initiate alternative livelihoods and forms of political expression in challenging, repressive political contexts.
A reflection on the everyday knowledge(s) and adaptive practices of youth in dialoguing with resource insecurity and disaster risk in the urban periphery of Sao Paulo, based on a case study with 30 young people aged 12 to 18. A reflection on alternatives to urban development and improved well-being.
Paper long abstract:
Young people in cities the majority global South grow up a context of multiple crises that have a detrimental impact on their well-being. Unhealthy and unsustainable patterns of urban growth coupled with the harmful impacts of climate change produce key challenges such as insecure and unsafe access to food, water, and energy. Moreover, the intersectionality of factors such as socio-economic status, age, race, gender, and disability reinforces patterns of exclusion. To navigate these challenges, young people in situations of vulnerability have developed important everyday practices to engage with and adapt to resource scarcity and environmental risk. Using (remote) participatory research methods, we have engaged approximately 30 young people aged 12 to 18 from the urban periphery of Sao Paulo in a reflection on their everyday environments, challenges, everyday adaptive actions as well as their future visions for youth-friendly cities. By enabling a critical reflection on social change, participatory research methods can play a fundamental role in empowering young people as co-producers of knowledge in a process of getting from problems to solutions. Our research shows that that young people have developed important ways of adapting to resource scarcity through everyday adaptive actions (e.g., by saving water, local food production, and collective community support systems for recovery after flooding). Our reflection on living (well) with unsustainable urban environments furthermore raises the question of which alternatives to urban development are needed to improve (youth) well-being; and how then, improved well-being can lead to a more sustainable urban development?
In Guararí, Costa Rica, urban youths implement adaptation strategies to face the multiple crises including climate change impacts and economic issues such as awareness campaigns and entrepreneurship, in collaboration with governmental and no-governmental institutions.
Paper long abstract:
The climate crisis is causing a series of increasingly evident events, and the urban areas of Costa Rica are also impacted. Moreover, the increasing poverty exacerbates the vulnerability of its population including the youth. Although the country develops and implements local policies, measures, and programs for urban areas to face climate change (CC), Costa Rica urban areas remain vulnerable, which is why population's actions are key to address CC impacts. This raises the question: What strategies do urban youths implement to face the multiple crises?
In Guararí, urban youths face great challenges due to already existing socioeconomic issues exacerbated by climate change, limiting access to opportunities. However, youths created environmental groups with the support of local organizations, which then have created other strategic alliances with governmental and no-governmental institutions. Hence, they implement adaptation strategies, not only to face the negative impacts of climate change and environmental issues, but also to take advantage of opportunities. They acquire and spread knowledge about climate change and environmental issues, encourage the change in customs towards sustainable habits, as well as undertake entrepreneurship as a result of the acquired knowledge.
As a consequence, the youth of the poor areas are represented in Business and Educational Alliances, training in conservation, working on issues such as "greenhouse effect and climate change", managing to cover issues to implement the initiative of the creation of a Community Youth Network on environmental issues, in support of public institutions.
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Olivia Casagrande (University of Sheffield)
Short Abstract:
The panel explores the implications of multiple crisis for urban youths and discusses future visions and alternatives to urban development proposed by youth collectives and movements. We invite papers from authors from distinct disciplines who work on these topics in different global settings.
Long Abstract:
Our urbanising world is characterised by multiple crisis. Climate change, informalisation, political polarisation, deepening racial divides, and growing epidemiological risks characterise our present and shape our urban future. Such a dystopian reality has particularly adverse effects for youths who represent the urban majority in the global South and increasingly in the global North-East. Urban youths, especially those living and working informally, experience deepened levels of inequality, stress linked to climate and health, socio-economic precarity, and political exclusion. Yet urban youths are not passive victims but take their lives in their own hands. Through locally situated practices, everyday routines but also engagement in urban protests and movements transcending the local scale (for example, Know Your City TV, Fridays for Future, or the International Indigenous Youth Council), they call for urban development alternatives that confront our present condition of multiple crisis. Urban development alternatives are understood here broadly as future visions and approaches concerned with issues of self-determination related to material access, use and control of cultural, economic, political, physical or social resources and the potential of collective organisation for more socially, economically and ecologically just cities.
This panel explores the implications of multiple crisis for urban youths and examines different alternatives to urban development proposed by them. We invite contributions that address one or more of the following questions: How do multiple crisis affect urban youths? What are the hopes, desires, and imaginations of urban youths and how are they articulated through everyday practices, protests and engagement in (trans)local movements? What alternatives to urban development result from such practices? How does a focus on urban youth activism and futurism help us to rethink concepts of the just and equitable city?
We invite papers on the above-mentioned topics that focus on different global urban settings and mobilize distinct disciplinary, conceptual and methodological perspectives. We invite contributors to submit academic papers but are also open to alternative submissions such as recorded talks or short films. Independent of their format, contributions (1) must offer a clear response to at least one of the questions highlighted in the above call for papers and (2) introduce a question/ argument to be discussed further in the synchronous discussion. Contributions must be uploaded and shared online in advance with participants, session chairs and conference attendees. Recognizing differences and disparities in terms of access to software/ internet connection, we accept different submissions (including papers of up to 1,000 words and video/ audio recordings of up to 10 minutes in length). The 40-minute synchronous panel discussion at the DSA conference will take the format of a Q&A, whereby the panel chairs will kick off with a series of contribution-specific questions and comments followed by discussion with the wider audience.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 6 July, 2022, -