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Cosmos

The Centre on Social Movement Studies

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TIME Trajectories of Involvement and Mobilization of Emerging generations

TEAM

Lorenzo Bosi and Carla Mannino

START YEAR 2025

END YEAR 2027

TIME aims to study how youth approach civic and political participation, and how their paths of engagement evolve over time. Within the COSMOS Lab, the study aims to contribute to the creation of a permanent observatory on youth participation in the Florentine area. Through in-depth qualitative research, the project analyses how this generation builds its own political and personal identity in a context characterized by increasing uncertainty: the climate crisis, pandemic effects on educational paths and social relations, and an international political landscape marked by conflicts, inequalities, and authoritarian drifts.

In the initial phase, a panel of interviewees will be established, including individuals affiliated with different organizations, groups and associations active in the metropolitan area of Florence, as well as non-affiliated ones. The project envisages a second round of interviews five years later, allowing researchers to observe individual trajectories from a longitudinal perspective. Bridging social movement literature and youth studies, the project addresses central themes within the field of biographical outcomes of activism, exploring not only the initial motivations for participation but also the ways in which young people experience and interpret their ongoing engagement.

                                  

FUNDING

Scuola Normale Superiore

 

News

Publications

Edited Volume - 2026

Conspiracism and Political Conflict

Manuela Caiani, Marco Solinas, Hans-Jorg Trenz

Monograph - 2025

Free download for "Contentious Politics of Global Health Movements"

Donatella Della Porta, Stella Christou

Journal Article - 2025

Communication creates partial organization: A comparative analysis of the organizing practices of two climate action movements, Youth for Climate and Fridays for Future Italy

Marco Deseriis, Lorenzo Zamponi, Diego Ceccobelli
This article focuses on a neglected aspect of the climate action movement Fridays for Future, namely, the relationship between its mediated communication practices and its early organizational processes. Drawing from a strand of organizational communication that underscores the constitutive dimension of communication to organizing processes, we analyze the significance of mediatized leadership and networked communication for the foundation and early development of two national chapters of Fridays for Future: Youth for Climate (YFC) Belgium and Fridays for Future Italy (FFFI).

Journal Article - 2025

Power resources, territory and labour conflicts in the logistic sector

Donatella Della Porta, Marco Antonelli