While considering the ongoing changes in the SWANA region, the conference has the ambition to lay the foundation for new research projects on youths that explore how the challenges and intersections within existing approaches can contribute to advancing research. We are looking to bring together researchers to consider the legacy of earlier youth mobilizations on today’s youth, whilst discussing new and emerging research which enables theoretical, methodological, and spatial ways of understanding the lived experiences and futures of young people in the region. We will examine the extent to which this category can be mobilized as an analytical tool in its own right, and we question its conceptual relevance, as well as its limits and its potential blind spots.

Argument

In the past fifteen years following the Arab uprisings, a flurry of academic interest has centred on youth in SWANA and their role in the socio-political landscape as the region underwent significant upheaval (AlSaleh, 2015). Since then, researchers have sought to move discussions beyond the dichotomous analyses of the social category of ‘youth’ as highly polarised archetypes, ranging from the figure of a ‘threat to society’ to that of a ‘youth activist’. Scholars have explored youth through daily life, focusing on aspirations, education, work, family, relationships, peer groups, social spaces, new media, urban interactions, and placemaking (Assaf, 2020; Deeb and Harb, 2013; Gasparotto, 2021; Schielke, 2020). Moving beyond political frameworks, they highlighted youth’s diverse experiences, showing that their condition is shaped by the ever-evolving worlds they navigate (Bonnefoy & Catusse, 2013). These studies have explored the value of analysing youth as a social prism, highlighting their role in revealing both continuities and disruptions within evolving societies (Sukarieh and Tannock, 2008). Intersecting with other categories such as gender, class, or religion, new perspectives from and for the Majority World have also highlighted the need to consider youth in their diversity as they navigate colonial or postcolonial contexts (Cooper, Swartz and Mahali, 2018; Philipps, 2018; Linn et al, 2024).

Approximately one-third of the SWANA population today is between the ages of 15 and 30 and therefore continues to be of interest and concern to media, government and research. Global changes and the current upheavals in the region—the collapse of the regime in Syria, the annihilation of Gaza, and the war in Lebanon—compel us to critically reassess young people’s experiences, roles and futures in contemporary societies.

This conference aims to take stock of these developments. While considering the ongoing changes in the SWANA region, it seeks to lay the foundation for new research projects that explore how the challenges and intersections within existing approaches can contribute to advancing research. We are looking to bring together contributions based on past and ongoing field research to consider the legacy of earlier youth mobilizations on today’s youth, whilst discussing new and emerging research which enables theoretical, methodological, and spatial ways of understanding the lived experiences and futures of young people in the region. We will examine the extent to which this category can be mobilized as an analytical tool in its own right, and we question its conceptual relevance, as well as its limits and its potential blind spots.

This symposium invites contributions from various social science disciplines (Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Urban Studies, Architecture, and Planning), grounded in a nuanced understanding of local contexts without ignoring global entanglements, aiming to serve as a dynamic meeting space for researchers working in and on the region. By reflecting on previous and actual transformations that reshaped the Arab world, it will provide a critical foundation for identifying new research directions and methodological approaches. The event constitutes a first step in building a collective research agenda that responds to the evolving realities faced by young people in the region. Following the conference, participants will be encouraged to develop articles that engage with these pressing questions, laying the groundwork for future scholarship and interdisciplinary exchanges.

Conference themes

Between Past and Present: Intergenerational legacies of youth engagement and civic life

How have the experiences and practices of earlier youth movements shaped contemporary forms of civic participation and identity among younger generations? This panel explores how significant historical moments of youth engagement continue to influence the new generation, shaping their expectations, social roles, and visions for the future. Scholars will examine how today’s youth perceive, negotiate, reject, or embrace these inherited legacies in their civic and social lives. Based on trajectories of previous generations’ experiences and reflections on new modes of participation, researchers will describe how intergenerational dialogue can reinterpret these moments and highlight the tensions, continuities, or transformations that emerge as young people navigate their place within these narratives.

New or emerging lenses: questioning youth as an analytical category

Actual crises/end of crises push us to interrogate youth political participation, forms of solidarity, aspirations, urban spatialities, mobilities, and imaginaries. How do global discourses and digital networks influence their identities and sense of belonging? Building on existing methodological frameworks, and considering ongoing transformations in the region, what new avenues and fields of research are emerging? What does it mean to study SWANA youth today? In light of intersectional perspectives and recent research that examines youth in relation to other categories—such as the state, violence, and the city—is it relevant to consider youth as a useful lens through which to interpret social reality? Given that youth is neither a fixed nor universal category, but a relational and intersectional one, participants will explore the kinds of social phenomena it allows us to analyse.

Youth, space, and design: toward a spatial research agenda

This theme invites contributions from architecture, urban design, urban anthropology, and planning that explore how young people shape, contest, and reimagine urban environments. It foregrounds design as both a method and a mode of research, engaging with space-making, infrastructure, and informal practices through the lens of youth. Contributors may address questions of spatial (in)justice and examine how youth navigate marginalisation in planning and design processes. Topics may include participatory mapping, speculative and visual methods, youth-led design in formal and informal settings, and the role of the city itself as a research site. The aim is to situate built environment fields within collaborative, situated approaches that critically explore the politics of place, imagination, and spatial transformation.

Participation and decolonization: The methodologies used to analyse youth

Within the past decade there has been a notable shift towards engaged, collaborative works with young people to support capacity building and skill development (workshops, trainings, focus groups, etc.). Whilst these are celebrated for creating more equity in research relationships and further opportunities for young people, in constrained economies with high youth unemployment, what futures are young people being ‘upskilled’ or trained for? Contributors to this panel will critically engage with their uses of these methodologies, the extent to which these participatory methodologies can be considered neocolonial, and how young people are determining the direction of youth research. Using a reflective approach, scholars will discuss how research practices with young people have evolved to be more inclusive and non-extractive, and how centring youth voices has brought new understandings of youth in the region. What methodological shifts are needed to move beyond homogenising frameworks?

Submission Guidelines

Please send a 300-word abstract (in English or Arabic) with your name, affiliation, and short bio (max. 100 words) to: m.gasparotto@ifporient.org,

before 15^th October 2025.

For questions, contact: m.gasparotto@ifporient.org

We especially encourage early-career researchers and practitioners from the region to apply. The main speaking language of the conference will be English, but please contact the conference team if you would like to discuss opportunities to present in other languages.

Calendar

• Deadline for abstract submissions: 15^th October 2025
• Notification of acceptance:1^st of November 2025
• Registration deadline: 31^st of November 2025
• Conference dates: 6–7 January 2026

Publication Plans

Following the conference, participants will be invited to publish selected contributions in a special issue with a peer-reviewed journal indexed in Clarivate Analytics or Scopus, potentially Levant or Contemporary Levant.

Scientific coordinators

• Dr. Mariangela Gasparotto (Ifpo)
• Dr. Hala Ghanem (Hashemite University)
• Dr. Sarah Linn (Manchester Metropolitan University)

Bibliography

AL-SALEH Asaad, Voices of the Arab Spring: Personal Stories from the Arab Revolutions, New York,

Columbia University Press, 2015.

ASSAF Laure, “‘Abu Dhabi is my sweet home’: Arab youth, interstitial spaces, and the building of a cosmopolitan locality”, City, 24, Vol. 5–6, 2020, pp. 830–841.

BONNEFOY Laurent and CATUSSE Myriam (eds.), Jeunesses arabes du Maroc au Yémen. Loisirs, cultures et politiques, La Découverte, Paris, 2013.

COOPER Adam, SWARTZ Sharlene and MAHALI Alude, “Disentangled, decentred and democratised: Youth Studies for the global South”, Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 22, N. 1, 2018, pp. 117

DEEB Lara & HARB Mona, Leisurely Islam. Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi‘ite South Beirut, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2013.

GASPAROTTO Mariangela, « Les géographies variables de l’alcool dans un territoire morcelé, le cas de Ramallah (Palestine) », Les Cahiers d’Outre-Mer, 283, 2021, pp. 95-122.

LINN SARAH, GHANEM Hala and ABOLOU Abdallah Sami, “Spatialities of shabaab: exploring the intersections of lifestage, space and mobility amongst refugee young people in urban Jordan”, Children's Geographies, 2024.

PHILIPPS  Joschka,  “A  Global  Generation?  Youth  Studies  in  a Postcolonial World”, Societies, Vol. 8, 2018.

SCHIELKE Samuli, “Being Good in Ramadan: Ambivalence, Fragmentation, and the Moral Self in the Lives of Young Egyptians”, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 15, 2009, pp. S24S40.

SUKARIEH Mayssoun and TANNOCK Stuart. “In the best interests of youth or neoliberalism? The World Bank and the New Global Youth Empowerment Project.” Journal of Youth Studies, Volume 11, Issue 3, 2008, pp. 301-312.