‘Granted’ and ‘claimed’ spaces of participation: The political activism of young immigrant descendants

Abstract

This article – drawing on data collected during 39 semi-structured interviews with young immigrant descendant activists and other institutional and non-institutional stakeholders between 2017 and 2019 – aims to explore the spaces in which young immigrant descendants in Italy voice their concerns, ideas, and claims. Youth activism is conceptualised in terms of ‘granted’ and ‘claimed’ spaces of participation which enables the multiple manifestations of their activism and their relationships with other stakeholders to be captured. The analysis shows that processes of mobilisation from below (‘claimed’ spaces) strongly integrate with processes of top-down activation (‘granted’ spaces). These spaces are experienced by young immigrant descendants’ activists not as alternative ways of participation but as a pragmatic strategy to reach their objectives, both independently and through cooperation with different institutional and civil society stakeholders. Moreover, young immigrant descendant activists do not engage as ‘children of immigrants’: they express their claims first as young people and their activism is not restricted by their migrant origins, especially in those places – ‘claimed' spaces – created and shaped by themselves.