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Turning a blind eye to Bosnia, Tajikistan, Kosovo and the Persian Gulf—or even to the chronicle of barbarism foretold in Srebrenica—the global order doubled down on upholding its triumphalism. The world, it was believed, merely required a bit of time and just a few adjustments. The Washington Consensus would cement a new framework of cooperation and a new development orthodoxy: industrialisation, liberalisation, privatisation, free competition and open markets. Criticism of the colonial model would be displaced by paternalistic aid, while wealth would come to be understood as a universal opportunity, requiring only fiscal discipline, lofty aspirations, and dutiful homework. It was not only the golden age of charitable NGOs, but also naïve environmentalism: the new generations of the time were raised with a reformist, enlightened optimism, confident that small gestures—such as avoiding CFCs or separating plastics from organic waste—were all that was needed to protect nature.

Photo_ Sheila Sund_ CC BY 2.0

From the heart the Global North to its very margins, as well as in more than a few corners of the South, the youth coming of age at the turn of the century discovered the world through expectations—maybe the promises—of certainty, abundance and peace: safe, free from the fears and prejudices of previous generations, and above all, nurturing dreams and hopes; certain that access to the information and resources brought fforth by such progress was within reach. The mantra of universal rights proclaimed then that all human beings had their rights guaranteed, regardless of race, sex or religion [3].[3] “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948. Economies continued to grow, despite the occasional hiccup. And anyone who put in enough effort could take it for granted that they would live as well as, if not better than, their parents had.

It will likely come as no surprise to the reader that this was little more than the climax of a civilisational mirage. Ironically, one of the most influential global cultural phenomena of this zeitgeist, the film The Matrix (1999), offered a dissonant premise. While humanity celebrated a technological heyday and the triumph of consumer society, its protagonist must face the fact that reality is a mere illusion, a permanent distraction carefully crafted to mask a system of domination that consumes human lives as if they were mere resources. Transformed into a cult classic and etched into the imagination of millennial youth, the film was interpreted more as a philosophical allegory than as a genuine warning about mass distraction and the perils of a headlong rush into technology.

Indeed, the dream would be as short as one might expect, ushering in a slow but steady awakening. Introduced as a defence of freedom, the “War on Terror” of the new millennium swiftly morphed into a global project of permanent exception, outsourcing conflict to regions such as the Middle East and West Africa—all while cynically advocating a hegemonic model which had, in truth, long benefited economic centres by externalising armed conflicts, social experiments, environmental hazards and structural risks to the peripheries. This course of events laid the groundwork for “preventive” military invasions, illegal detention centres, mass surveillance, the criminalisation of dissent, and the suspension of constitutional rights—all of which would meet their match in the 2008 financial crisis: the final piece of the puzzle in a perfect storm of social disenchantment.

Having grown up under the promise that investing in education would yield material security, meritocracy, professional relevance, and democratic participation, the youth of the Global North witnessed their sacrifice upon the altar of economic orthodoxy. Across much of the Global South, despair and resistance to the prison of structural conditions would cause the seams of social contracts to burst. Thus, in 2010, the generational confusion and the outrage of youth around the world found one another in nascent digital spaces, mutually inspiring peaceful mobilisation. From the Arab Spring to the vast array of Occupy movements, disillusionment and indignation once again donned that distinctive mantle of millennial hope, seeking joy and dance, as much as revolution. And it failed: the post-political [4][4] Swyngedouw, Erik (2010). Apocalypse Forever? Post-political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change. Theory, Culture & Society, 27(2-3), p. 225. Also: Wilson, Japhy & Swyngedouw, Erik (2014). The Post-Political and Its Discontents Spaces of Depoliticisation, Spectres of Radical Politics. Edinburgh: University Press. inertia of Western democracies assimilated this reformist impulse until it was neutralised, smothered in the proceduralism and technocratic debate that underpinned social resignation. As wealth concentration soared, a collapsed middle class convinced itself it had lived beyond its means. Representative political systems did all they could to wear down social leaders, deploying the narratives, technologies and judicial manoeuvres they built in the previous phase to criminalise and suppress protest. Authoritarian regimes, for their part, crushed youth-led revolutions into suffocation and submission, getting embroiled in massacres, failed democracies and more than a few civil wars.

Contemporary reality presents us with a grimly ironic perspective on this time. The generation that witnessed the collapse in real time is now leaving youth behind, burdened by the anguish of having failed to meet even the most basic requirements of adult life—that is, success. Those who follow, meanwhile, have had the fortune or misfortune of growing up with lower expectations. The cost-of-living crisis, lack of access to housing, endemic job insecurity, the demographic decline of the Global North, and epidemics of anxiety and depression are all interconnected symptoms of a world that has consolidated inequality as a paradigm. The very technology once seen as a lifeline—which catalysed democracy and protest—now consumes and monetises our attention, colonising it with an unrelenting extractive fervour. Innovation and prosperity now serve consumption and lie in the hands of increasingly concentrated and powerful oligopolies. The damage caused by social polarisation—afflicting young people in particular—has moved from an unfortunate by-product to becoming a deliberate ideological service. Hard-won achievements such as equality, feminism, and labour and asylum rights are now being targeted by projects of biopolitical engineering [5][5] Foucault. Michel (2006). Seguridad, territorio, población. Curso en el Collège de France (1977-1978). [Security, Territory, Population: a Collège de France course (1977-78)]. Fondo de Cultura Económica. obsessed with demography and control over bodies almost as much as over that of thought. Indeed, personal stories such as those of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, or Donald Trump himself now serve to illustrate how the neoliberal myth of the successful entrepreneur has been reborn as that of the leader of the reactionary oligarchy.

And though scientific truth—if not truth itself—seems under siege amidst the reign of denialism and fake news, we must resist the temptation of believing this scenario is in fact something new. The world was never as we were told—but neither was it as we told ourselves. The mirage of human rights was never felt in Iraq, Darfur, or the Sahrawi refugee camps, and the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people is owed to those who triumphantly believed the Oslo Accords were merely a matter of time and technical adjustments. The anthropogenic origins of today’s climate crisis, now destabilising ecosystems and nations alike, were first raised by the scientific community as early as 1965—a warning deliberately stifled by powerful extractive interests, whose consequences are now deafening. The price of performative politics is laid bare not only in the continuous failure of climate summits, but also in a cornucopianism [6][6] L. Simon, Julian (1981). The Ultimate Resource. Princeton University Press. This idea was later popularised by Paul Ehrlich and other ecologists to describe the boundless faith in growth and technological innovation in the face of the planet’s biophysical limits. that excuses having placed consumption at the heart of its productive model. Our fervent faith in demand, innovation and the market as necessary saviours has been met only with the false promises of green capitalism, financialisation and technological control.

Amid this generational odyssey, and drawing on diverse and global perspectives, this volume explores the resignation of today’s youth, as well as their defiance: two generations caught in a time-pressured obstacle course, dodging the impact of a seemingly endless string of “historic events.”

Migration analyst and expert Sani Ladan opens this volume with the article Youth in West Africa: Between Democratic Mobilisation and Supporting Regime Change, exploring how the backing of younger generations is driving the reordering of political power in West Africa. Since the supposed end of the colonial period, and especially over the past 25 years, dynamics such as military interventionism—and the destabilisation brought by the War on Terror,—extractive pressure in the global race for strategic resources, and the imposition of cyclical debt crises have weighed heavily on the Global South, the African continent in particular. Whether through support for democratic transitions or military coups, youth mobilisation has become a decisive force: not only fuelling collective reflection on neo-colonial interference—and migration as a phenomenon resulting from its damages—but also interrogating the obstacles that supposedly democratic institutions can present to emancipatory processes.

In Digital Solidarity and Activism Against Gender-Based Violence and Femicide in South Africa, researcher Jody Metcalfe turns her attention to the acts of solidarity that still flourish in increasingly transactional digital spaces. Her research focuses on the work of new digital activist movements exposing the epidemic of sexual violence and its links to colonial legacies. Faced with the rise of fascist ideologies, which, alongside cultures of silence, pose a global threat to the rights of women, children, young people and LGBTQIA+ communities, the author calls for recognition of the power of resistance strategies developed by vulnerable groups—while also warning of the risks of demonisation they face, and of the role of social media in reinforcing hegemonic narratives like rape culture.

Also examining the sex-gender system, philosopher and politician Ángela Rodríguez “Pam” critically addresses, in her article Between Imposture and Legitimacy: Young Women in Public Life, the recent development of feminist consciousness and the generational contrasts that this qualitative leap has entailed. In the midst of a struggle to consolidate feminist achievements against the reactionary backlash, she highlights the dynamics that have nonetheless perpetuated the gender gap—from historical androcentrism to the persistence of a care economy sustained by unrecognised female labour. From class, sexuality and gender to ethnicity and race, the political cultures of representative democracy continue to replicate the tacit delegitimisation and scrutiny of non-hegemonic subjects, particularly when they access positions of power. The disruptive questioning of youth stands in direct opposition to this singular legitimising narrative [7][7] Donna Haraway argues that “master narratives”, often associated with Western, patriarchal, and capitalist systems, are harmful because they impose a singular, often biased, view of the world, marginalizing diverse experiences and knowledge. Haraway, Donna J. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.—one that is fundamentally patriarchal, colonial, classist and adult-centric—not only exposing the randomness of its rites, but also challenging its structures. In other words, imagining new political horizons of possibility.

Taking the baton of the issues discussed above—namely, dizzying digital risks, hegemonic divides, and the transnational scale of neo-colonialism—MP and activist Tesh Sidi offers a personal and generational account of the price of growing up too fast. A Generation Born Old is a cross-cutting narrative about exsistential contrast: a childhood marked by responsibility, split between life in a refugee camp and the otherness of being hosted by a well-off family; the experience of Spanish youth scarred by the neoliberal stigma of meritocracy, and a Sahrawi one, heir to the miseries of a prolonged conflict and the weight of a dream of nationhood. This intimate testimony captures the bitter aftertaste of aspirational mirage and a fading political horizon. However, like the previous article, it also defies nostalgia, instead calling for active organisation, capable of birthing a new era and rejuvenating collective desire.

Turning to a key issue of our time, activist and economist Zaid Jaloudi undertakes a detailed examination of the tradition of student protest in the United States (US). In The Cost of Solidarity: Suppression of Pro-Palestinian Voices in U.S. Academia, the author contrasts its historic role in exposing crises of legitimacy—not only within US higher education but across its entire democratic system—with the brutal levels of persecution and repression witnessed during the 2024–25 anti-genocide protests. Jaloudi warns of a phenomenon now spreading throughout the rest of the world. Far from signalling the “end of history,” the normalisation of arbitrary anti-terror narratives and judicial states of exception has led to the active dismantling of Western democracies. Whether in pro-Palestinian demonstrations from the US to Germany, or in the exemplary prosecution of climate activists in the Netherlands and the UK, young people are being forced to transform moral and existential emergencies into a principled commitment to the right to dissent.

Lastly, turning to the growing dehumanisation within state repressive systems, in The Youth Who Arrive Alone: Narratives and the Dehumanisation of Migrant Minors in the Canary Islands, lawyer and activist Loueila Sid Ahmed centres her focus on the narratives of power directed at another primary youth cohort: migrants—in particular, those making the journey from Africa to Europe. This article examines the interplay—and the convenience—between media and political discourse in Spain, serving as a case study for a phenomenon that extends far beyond national borders. From double standards in reception to numerical fallacies and narrative devices, it examines how migration itself is selectively criminalised, and how specific migrant populations are targeted, simultaneously excusing state inaction and covering up a host of illegal practices. Through a stark portrait of the so-called “Atlantic route”—from Africa’s western coast to the Canary Islands— the author urges us to rehumanise the narrative, to consider not just the numbers, but the lives they obscure. The conditions that push these young people to face extreme hardship and mortal danger, often to the point of trying again and again.

In a broad sweep that spans technological dilemmas, structural disillusionment, nostalgia, and calls to resistance, this volume explores the struggle of youth in its most critical dimension. The planet continues to signal the limits of neoliberalism, extractivism and colonialism. And youth are not only the ones truly listening, but are reading these signs with honesty and urgency. Where previous generations, comforted by their blue pill, saw mirages of abundance, today’s youth see the cracks in the system, without ever needing to swallow the red one.

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