Abstract
Concerning youth engagement in institutionalized settings, academic and institutional discourses have clearly stressed the need to “train” young people to participation. Activism in grass-root social movements organizations (SMOs) is, on the contrary, often interpreted as a “call” that needs only commitment and impetus to be fulfilled. While not dismissing the relevance of passion and spontaneity in informal civic and political practices of participation, the chapter starts from the assumption that activism requires specific skills and competencies to be performed in an efficient way and discusses two mechanisms through which these skills are acquired in daily interactions between activists. Practices of “mimesis”, reflexive imitation of others’ behaviours, and “sharing” – intimate moments of confidentiality between activists – are explored as experiences of informal learning through which young people acquire “political imagination”. The chapter draws on data collected between 2015 and 2019 through participant observations and biographical interviews conducted with young activists participating in two left-wing SMOs in Italy and Sweden.
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Notes
- 1.
This project has received funding from the European Union under the Marie-Sklodowska Curie grant agreement no 701844 and the Horizon 2020 RIA grant agreement no 649416.
- 2.
The term “centri sociali” refers, in the Italian context, to a particular kind of political experience. In general, social centres are abandoned buildings that are squatted and converted into self-managed and counter-cultural spaces that propose political and social initiatives (Mudu, 2012; Genova, 2018).
- 3.
Due to the informal nature and fluid participation that characterise SMOs, it is not possible to know the exact number of people taking part in the activities.
- 4.
No TAV is an Italian protest movement born in the early nineties of the twentieth century. The movement criticizes the construction of infrastructures for high-speed rail (commonly known as TAV) between Italy and France. Over the years, the TAV infrastructures have become a symbol of the inadequate management of common goods and public spending. Many protest events and demonstrations have been organized by No TAV activists. Sometimes these events have resulted in harsh confrontations with police.
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Pitti, I. (2022). Mimesis and Sharing: Learning Political Imagination in Everyday Interactions. In: Bečević, Z., Andersson, B. (eds) Youth Participation and Learning. Young People and Learning Processes in School and Everyday Life, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92514-7_8
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