Youth Activism in Europe and Russia: Motivation, Barriers and Effects of Social Involvement

Today young people reject formal politics, preferring to find new ways of politics and social engagement. The purpose of this work is to analyze the motivation, barriers and social effects of the inclusion of young activists, stigmatized on the basе of lifestyle, gender / sexual / religious identity. The work is based on the analysis of secondary qualitative data by the method of meta-ethnography synthesis. The data was collected in the project “PROMoting youth Involvement and Social Engagement: Opportunities and Challenges for conflicted’ young people across Europe ” in 2017-2018. The results of the analysis showed that personal experience of stigmatisation is an important motivation for social engagement. The family also often contributes to the activism of young people, but sometimes it becomes a barrier to social inclusion. In addition, the community structure itself can also be an obstacle. However, inclusion in the community allows young people to create a more positive image of themselves, as well as increase social and cultural capital. However, the reverse side is a new wave of conflict and stigmatization, because of the visibility of private, that is a form of political struggle for young people.