| Summary: |
JUSTFUTURE aims to analyse how young people envision
their roles in the transformations towards sustainability that need to be implemented over the next few decades. Understanding young people's imaginaries of the future and
conceptions of agency for shaping it is at the core of the research plan to be carried out. Looking at citizenship as a 'communicative achievement' (Hausendorf & Bora, 2006), the
project also has an action-oriented dimension as it intends to contribute to youth groups' abilities for reflecting on and expanding their civic and political engagement with climate
change and sustainability. By doing so, it will help to create opportunities for young people to envision, plan and build futures,
Against a background of systemic problems that are producing various forms of unsustainability and at a time when democracies are being tested by different forms of nationalism,
populism and xenophobia along growing socio-economic inequalities, and are facing the system-shaking crisis generated by COVID-19, there is a pressing need to reflect on the
politics of sustainability transformations, and to leverage existing, emerging and yet-to-be imagined opportunities for fundamental alterations in social and economic systems in ways
that are democratic and just. Addressing recommendations from several scholars (e.g. Fazey et al., 2018; West & Worliczek, 2019), JUSTFUTURES mobilizes social sciences research
to further understanding and facilitate democratic change towards climate-safe, just and resilient societies. It will do so by opening up spaces of dialogue and co-production between
the scientific community and a critical stakeholder in sustainability transformations: young people. |