Inter­gen­er­a­tional Jus­tice Prize 2013/20114: “Youth Move­ments for Inter­gen­er­a­tional Justice”

The Foun­da­tion for the Rights of Future Gen­er­a­tions (FRFG) and the Inter­gen­er­a­tional Foun­da­tion (IF) will award the Inter­gen­er­a­tional Jus­tice Prize 2013/14, endowed with €10,000. It is financed by the “Stiftung Apfel­baum” and award­ed every two years. The prize mon­ey can be divid­ed up amongst win­ning entrants as the jury sees fit.

By means of this award, the FRFG and IF aim to pro­mote a dis­cus­sion of inter­gen­er­a­tional jus­tice in soci­ety, and – by pro­vid­ing a sci­en­tif­ic basis to the debate – estab­lish new per­spec­tives for decision-makers.

The top­ic of the 2013/14 prize was: “Youth Move­ments for Inter­gen­er­a­tional Jus­tice”. The offi­cial poster can be found here.

Final results:

The jury award­ed eight contributions:

Miri­am Stehling and Mer­le-Marie Kruse received the first award for their work “Occu­py als Jugend­be­we­gung für Gen­er­a­tio­nen­gerechtigkeit? Medi­atisierte Aushand­lun­gen des ‚Poli­tis­chen‘ durch junge Men­schen”.

Son­ja Thau received the sec­ond award for her work “Der Ara­bis­che Früh­ling als Ruf für Gen­er­a­tio­nen­gerechtigkeit”.

Thomas Toz­er received the third award for his work “Youth Move­ments for Inter­gen­er­a­tional Jus­tice A study into the nature, cause and suc­cess of youth move­ments, and why they are required by inter­gen­er­a­tional jus­tice and democ­ra­cy”.

Five spe­cial awards received:

Anna Braam for her work “Die Occu­py-Bewe­gung im Lichte der Gen­er­a­tio­nen­gerechtigkeit”.

Paul Schul­meis­ter for his work “Struk­turelle und ide­ol­o­gis­che Unsicher­heit­en der Jugend­gen­er­a­tion. Dynamiken und Brüche bei Jugend­be­we­gun­gen”.

Mar­lene Hein­rich und Mar­i­on-Chris­tine Tot­ter for their work “Movimien­to Mul­ti­col­ori­do (Bunte Bewe­gung). Die Bewe­gung 15‑M und ihr Ver­such ein­er gerecht­en Welt”.

Chris­tiane Hoth for her work “Die „Gen­er­a­tion Y“ und der movimien­to estu­di­antil in Chile”.

Mie Scott Georgsen for her work “Con­tentious Youths? A Case Study on The Gezi Park Protests and the Maid­an Upris­ing”.

Sub­mis­sion Requirements

The dead­line for sub­mis­sions was 15 Octo­ber 2014.

Tar­get Group

The Inter­gen­er­a­tional Jus­tice Prize is pri­mar­i­ly aimed at young schol­ars (stu­dents, post­grad­u­ates and PhD stu­dents) and any­one else who is inter­est­ed in get­ting involved with sci­en­tif­ic or more non-aca­d­e­m­ic ques­tions in the field of inter­gen­er­a­tional jus­tice. You are always wel­come to work in a team.

The fol­low­ing text pro­vid­ed some ideas for a submission:

 The late 1960s were clear­ly marked by a wide­spread and rad­i­cal youth move­ment, often referred to as the “Gen­er­a­tion of ’68”. How­ev­er, their chil­dren (and even their grand­chil­dren) have shown con­sid­er­ably less polit­i­cal engage­ment, and have fre­quent­ly been dis­missed as self-indul­gent, lazy and apo­lit­i­cal. But is this sit­u­a­tion about to change? Young peo­ple world­wide are tak­ing to the streets and mak­ing them­selves heard. The new youth protests range from stu­dent riots and the cli­mate activism via the Occu­py Move­ment and the Span­ish “¡Democ­ra­cia Real YA!” move­ment to the Arab Spring and the recent upris­ing at Tak­sim Square in Istanbul.

At present, Europe is a con­ti­nent of con­trasts when it comes to youth protests. There is, how­ev­er, one com­mon theme across Europe: young peo­ple are nei­ther pow­er­ful­ly organ­ised, nor are their inter­ests effec­tive­ly rep­re­sent­ed by a youth lob­by. It is at least ques­tion­able whether umbrel­la organ­i­sa­tions for the inter­ests of young gen­er­a­tions – such as the Ger­man Fed­er­al Youth Coun­cil, or the British Youth Coun­cil – can per­form an inte­grat­ing role as effec­tive­ly as the estab­lished inter­est groups of old­er gen­er­a­tions in their respec­tive countries.

The aver­age age of both par­ty mem­bers and of MPs has risen steadi­ly; young politi­cians are rare. In Ger­many, the share of under 30-year-olds with­in the Social Democ­rats (SPD) is just 7 per cent, while the cor­re­spond­ing fig­ure for the Chris­t­ian Democ­rats (CDU) is just 5 per cent. The aver­age SPD par­ty mem­ber is 59 years old, the aver­age CDU par­ty mem­ber about the same. In the UK, the aver­age mem­ber­ship age of the Labour and Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ties is 50 and 60, respec­tive­ly. In sum, young peo­ple are engag­ing less and less with estab­lished parties.

An inter­est­ing excep­tion to high­light in Europe is the Pirate Par­ty, which orig­i­nat­ed in Swe­den. It was suc­cess­ful in par­lia­men­tary elec­tions in sev­er­al coun­tries with pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion sys­tems. The aver­age age of its par­ty mem­bers cur­rent­ly stands at just under 40, which could arguably qual­i­fy as “young”.

But where estab­lished polit­i­cal par­ties have failed, youth has some­times mobilised to protest against the issues that affect them direct­ly, such as cuts in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem, high youth unem­ploy­ment and a lack of prospects in gen­er­al. In the UK, the rise in the max­i­mum tuition fee that uni­ver­si­ties may charge stu­dents – from £3,000 to £9,000 per year – led to protests in Lon­don; mean­while, in Hun­gary, cuts to the edu­ca­tion bud­get and a con­tro­ver­sial gov­ern­ment pro­pos­al to force uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents to find work in Hun­gary after the com­ple­tion of their degrees have caused many Hun­gar­i­an stu­dents to take to the streets of Budapest.

Against this back­ground the Inter­gen­er­a­tional Jus­tice Award asked:

  • What are the essen­tial ingre­di­ents that define a youth move­ment – age, aims or the tools and instru­ments employed? How do youth move­ments emerge and under what con­di­tions are they suc­cess­ful? How can one, if at all, mea­sure their suc­cess? At what point do youth protests become youth move­ments? Do the exam­ples of Occu­py or the Pirate Par­ty qual­i­fy as youth movements?
  • Which youth move­ments are close to a vision of inter­gen­er­a­tional jus­tice as defined by FRFG and IF? To what degree do youth move­ments explic­it­ly employ the lan­guage of inter­gen­er­a­tional jus­tice? What is their under­stand­ing of inter­gen­er­a­tional justice?
  • Do young peo­ple have iden­ti­fi­able shared inter­ests which could serve as the basis for a youth move­ment? If yes, which inter­ests result in polit­i­cal protest/action?
  • What role do young elites play in youth movements?
  •  In which protests do young and old peo­ple take part togeth­er – and in which do they not?
  • Why do many young peo­ple appear to be angry with polit­i­cal par­ties? What remains of the “long march through the insti­tu­tions” (Dutschke)?
  • Do school or stu­dent clubs and soci­eties, or the youth organ­i­sa­tions of polit­i­cal par­ties or trade unions have any impact on ques­tions of inter­gen­er­a­tional justice?

 

Literature in English

Bark­er, Col­in, Alan John­son, and Michael Lavalette. 2001. Lead­er­ship and social move­ments. Man­ches­ter Eng­land New York: Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Press.

Con­nery, Michael. 2008. Youth to Pow­er. How Today’s Young Vot­ers are Build­ing Tomorrow’s Pro­gres­sive Major­i­ty. New York: Ig Publishing.

Donk, Wim B., ‎Bri­an D. Loader, and‎ Paul G. Nixon. 2004. Cyber­protest: new media, cit­i­zens, and social move­ments. Lon­don New York: Routledge.

Fom­i­naya, Cristi­na, and Lau­rence Cox. 2013. Under­stand­ing Euro­pean move­ments: new social move­ments, glob­al jus­tice strug­gles, anti-aus­ter­i­ty protest. Lon­don: Rout­ledge, Tay­lor & Fran­cis Group.

Good­win, Jeff, and James M. Jasper. 2009. The social move­ments read­er: cas­es and con­cepts. Chich­ester, UK, and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

John­ston, Hank, and John A. Noakes. 2005. Frames of protest: social move­ments and the fram­ing per­spec­tive. Lan­ham: Row­man & Lit­tle­field Publishers.

John­ston, Hank. 2009. Cul­ture, social move­ments, and protest. Farn­ham, UK, and Burling­ton, VT: Ashgate.

Karat­zo­gian­ni, Athi­na, and Andrew Robin­son. 2010. Pow­er, resis­tance, and con­flict in the con­tem­po­rary world social move­ments, net­works, and hier­ar­chies. Lon­don and New York: Routledge.

Kolb, Felix. 2007. Protest and oppor­tu­ni­ties: the polit­i­cal out­comes of social move­ments. Frank­furt and New York: Cam­pus Verlag.

Tay­lor, Astra, and Kei­th Gessen. 2011. Occu­py!: Scenes from occu­pied Amer­i­ca. Lon­don: Verso.

Wel­don, S. L. 2012. When protest makes pol­i­cy: how social move­ments rep­re­sent dis­ad­van­taged groups. Ann Arbor, MI: Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Press.

Literature in German 

Beitzer, Han­nah: Wir wollen nicht unsere Eltern wählen. Warum Poli­tik heute anders funk­tion­iert. Rowohlt: Rein­bek bei Ham­burg 2012

Blas­berg, Ani­ta: Die schon wieder! In: Die Zeit Nr. 17/2013

Boese, Daniel: Wir sind jung und brauchen die Welt. Wie die Gen­er­a­tion Face­book den Plan­eten ret­tet. Oekom: München 2011

Con­nery, Michael: Youth to Pow­er. How Today’s Young Vot­ers are Build­ing Tomorrow’s Pro­gres­sive Major­i­ty. Ig Pub­lish­ing: New York 2008

Jüne­mann, Annette/Zorob, Anja (Hg.): Ara­bel­lions: Zur Vielfalt von Protest und Revolte im Nahen Osten und Nordafri­ka. Springer VS: Frank­furt am Main 2013

Kraushaar, Wolf­gang: Der Aufruhr der Aus­ge­bilde­ten. Vom Ara­bis­chen Früh­ling zur Occu­py-Bewe­gung. Ham­burg­er Edi­tion: Ham­burg 2012

Luh­mann, Niklas: Protest. Sys­temthe­o­rie und Soziale Bewe­gun­gen. Suhrkamp: Frankurt am Main 1996

Reiss­mann, Ole et al.: We are Anony­mous: Die Maske des Protests – Wer sie sind, was sie antreibt, was sie wollen. Gold­mann: München 2012

Shell Deutsch­land (Hg.) 2010: 16. Shell Jugend­studie. Koor­di­na­tion M. Albert, K. Hur­rel­mann, G. Quen­zel u.a. Frank­furt: S. Fischer

Wal­ter, Franz: Die neue Macht der Bürg­er. Was motiviert die Protest­be­we­gun­gen? Rowohlt: Rein­bek bei Ham­burg 2013