D_04 Youth as a Generation of Crisis? Socialization in Conflict and Transformation

This work package (WP) develops both a foundational and a knowledge-transfer-oriented profile for the relationship between youth and social cohesion. Within Priority Area 2, it identifies key socialization dynamics in the youth-cultural production and reproduction of social cohesion. It focuses on adolescents as actors and as generational unit(s), examining their everyday cultural orientations, mentalities, and practices of action in times of social crises, cultural conflicts, and global transformations.

Current research on the political socialization of adolescents and young people points to dissatisfaction as well as to the fragility and ambiguity of support for a democratically deliberative order of cohesion—and thus also for a concept of “democratic cohesion.” Youth studies indicate that the presence of populist attitudes, increasingly self-organized forms of politicization, or apathetic positions document an ambivalent experience of the current social order among adolescents living under conditions of cumulative uncertainty. This is evident not only in recent election results, but also at a more fundamental level of (political) everyday culture in both formal contexts of socialization (such as family and school) and informal ones (such as social media and self-organized groups).

Within these contexts, adolescents negotiate political experiences in everyday life through discursive arenas of conflict such as migration, climate protection, or gender relations, in which symbolic and material goods are contested and political dispositions of self- and world-interpretation are produced. These dispositions may become biographically entrenched or be questioned and transformed in the context of historical or biographical events and experiences. In order to illuminate the action-guiding interpretations of these youth-culturally mediated socio-political arenas, the WP interlinks three axes of observation, which translate into the following guiding research questions: How do crises and conflicts affect political orientations toward social cohesion, and to what extent do they induce value change or generational conflicts? How do media-based socialization contexts (such as family or school) become relevant as spaces of political orientation, and how do they affect social cohesion? Which political orientations and conceptions of social cohesion underpin youth-specific practices of action and adolescents’ engagement in different organizational forms, and what interactions between them become visible?

Ullrich Bauer and Baris Ertugrul analyze familial dynamics of adolescents’ political socialization, focusing on two socio-moral macro-milieus discussed in social theory that position themselves in a generically traditionalist or universalist manner on (socio-)political conflict issues. They examine how adolescents, depending on their milieu-specific experiential contexts, perceive this political and polarized public sphere and integrate elements of it into their patterns of social interpretation. The analytical focus lies on the logics of enactment of generational transmission and transformation processes within families at the micro level, enabling macro-level scaling to processes of social change (including the integration of quantitative youth panel data).

The sub-project by Holger Backhaus-Maul, Jörg Dinkelaker, and Cathleen Grunert examines in greater depth which conceptions of social order and participation are expressed in adolescents’ engagement-related practices in the context of the socio-ecological crisis and broader dynamics of social transformation. Particular attention is paid to intra- and intergenerational disputes over conceptions of social cohesion and socio-ecological transformation pathways in selected regions (see Regional Panel B_08).

Andreas Petrik investigates the socialization dynamics of French adolescents in the school context. Using the “village founding simulation”—a method tested in Germany—the study aims to document collective processes of social cohesion among adolescents (in the Paris and Marseille metropolitan areas) with a focus on democratic and anti-democratic types of politicization. These processes will be reconstructed through argumentation analysis and compared with German data. Teaching and diagnostic strategies for practitioners will be developed based on the findings of this study. In the medium term, this is expected to lead to an international, subject-specific exchange of methods and findings aimed at strengthening democratic resilience.

Isabell Otto, together with Meike Hein, investigates how media-cultural forms emerge in social media interactions through which adolescent users negotiate generational cohesion and process social transformations. The focus is not only on circulating content, but also on practical knowledge and media literacy that promise reach and participation within platform economies. The project further examines how socially formative spaces (such as family homes or schools) and actors (such as adolescents, parents, or teachers) are visually staged in social media posts, discursively produced through specific terminologies, and how youth-cultural modes of negotiating cohesion, boundary-making, and belonging become visible in this way. The influence of popular cultural elements and cinematic traditions on self-staging practices is also explored.

Sonja Ganguin and Johannes Gemkow empirically address the fundamental question of which forms and practices of cohesion are produced in and through social media, and how media-based socialization contexts become relevant as spaces of political orientation.

Within the WP, Andreas Klee turns to potential sites of adolescents’ political participation, where experiences of political self-efficacy are at stake.

Finally, Gert Pickel examines political value change in intra- and intergenerational comparison, with a particular focus on the methodological development of a quantitative instrument for measuring attitudes.