Beyond the Norm: political education for transformative youth action

This paper aims to shed light on some of the challenges and complexities inherent in researching the political education of young people from diverse social backgrounds. In our research, we have defined non-normative groups in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation/identity and immigrant status. Each group member opposes the universal subject (male, white, European, cisgender, heterosexual). Anyone who does not align with the norm tends to be subalternised and dehumanised, forced to play a double social role. On the one hand, they are subjected to super-exploitation, and on the other, they become the targets of hate speech used to unite the far-right. Therefore, there is a need to expand projects that promote civic and political participation in resistance to these discourses and are oriented towards a horizon of social change. Our research comprises three distinct but complementary studies. The first study observed a mock election project in a secondary school with 800+ students. The project involved a series of workshops and debates on political issues and engagement with political parties, culminating in holding mock elections parallel to Portugal's 2022 legislative elections. A second edition was carried out in 2024 and showed a growing trend in young people's preference for the Portuguese far-right party (CHEGA). More than the result of the mock elections, what is relevant to our research is the rise in the social validation of populist and conservative discourse, even among youth. The second study involved semi-structured interviews with experts in the different non-normative groups defined above. Four dimensions were determined using thematic analysis: i) discriminatory culture; ii) disparity between laws and their application; iii) hate speech, conservatism and the far-right; and iv) youth and transformative power. The interviews suggest the complexity and the impossibility of a practical civic and political education project for youth that does not include diversity in its scope. School and public spaces have different meanings for different groups. While for women, the public space guarantees a certain level of security given the problems they face in the private space, for racialised people, it is often a hostile environment. For the LGBTQIA+ community, it is a space of silencing and invisibility. Currently, in Portugal, as elsewhere, conservative moral discourses try to interdict the debate under a veil of protecting youth and children from the onslaughts of a supposed 'gender ideology'. In turn, racialised groups, in the name of isonomy, tend to be integrated if they are subordinate to the norms or considered unsuitable for the paths addressed to the majority group. The third part of the research (in progress) combines this theoretical framework with a conjuncture analysis, establishing an emancipatory praxis. To this end, Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) promotes the collective construction of knowledge in context while creating concrete conditions for emerging new political sociabilities and organic intellectuals. The findings will shed some light on how youth can play a role in restraining the advance of far-right discourses and their social validation by strengthening political participation based on solidarity, diversity and democratic values.