Section 3: Precarity, Fragility, Resilience and Resistance

Section 3 explores how young people living in precarious situations and cast as the ‘abject’ are resisting and fighting back in Manchester and Bologna using arts activism or creating refuge for marginalised groups. The precarity and fragility of the young people in the three groups in this section, brought about by profoundly unequal and unjust material and socio-economic realities, and the hostility of the socio-political environments in which they exist (just), underpin their social and political participation. The three groups utilised consciousness-raising methodologies and ‘language creation from below’ to create a counterpublic, embraced the tensions of participation within a process of social learning that harnesses the power of anger, and developed ‘resilience as renewal’ to remodel and transform social structures. The section describes the prefigurative practices that emerge in groups of young people on the margins as they agitate for fairness, justice, and change.