Besides the worlds that they traditionally inhabited in the past, today young people move through a complex web of social worlds. These are articulated in networks and are also, in many instances, traversed by conflicting and inconsistent logics. Within the context of highly differentiated and fragmented social formations, institutions that were once instrumental in shaping the lives of young people, such as their family and school, have seen their traditional roles questioned and now must share their capacity to influence with other structures of sociability. These new youth worlds have emerged and grown in the daily lives of young people, based on shared aesthetic, cultural, religious or political, consumer, leisure, professional or educational values and practices, which are determined by their class, gender, ethnicity and neighbourhood, among many other factors.

The primary goal of these seminars is to discover the worlds inhabited by today’s youth, their personal experiences and the biographical consequences of these everyday places in which they live. If you have research work on the realities of youth that you would like to present and discuss, please contact us (opj@ics.ulisboa.pt). We also invite everyone to attend these seminars!

Coordination: Maria Manuel Vieira and Vítor Sérgio Ferreira

School plays a central role in the social processes and dynamics of contemporary societies. It is traversed by many of the issues faced by modernity – from social inequalities to gender, from democracy to citizenship, from integration to social exclusion, from the establishment of elective affinities and groups to the social construction of identities.

As a mandatory and universal institution that must be attended by the youngest, school has actively contributed towards the emergence, consolidation and extension of ‘youth’ as a phase of life and as a social condition. Today, however, the act of learning is no longer exclusive to this phase of life and being a young person is not uniquely defined by being a student. To be young is, presently, an increasingly diverse and indefinite period in life, which far transcends the educational space. Inside or outside the sphere of school, the universe of youth asserts itself actively and is refracted in numerous experiences, cultures and transitions, embodied by different groups.

The “Youth, School and Modernity” workshops aim to foster discussion about the present complexity and diversity of these youth worlds, and to gather different approaches (disciplinary, methodological and thematic) in order to contribute to a broad-ranging and richer understanding of the educational processes and youth transition processes.

Format: Workshops with limited admission, to discuss a text based on an on-going study focusing on the themes of “youth” and “education”.

Coordination: Maria Manuel Vieira and Vítor Sérgio Ferreira