Pink-Pilled Citizenship in Turbulent Times: Bounded Solidarity, Security Trade-Offs, and Illiberal Choices Among Young European Women

Contemporary politics is increasingly framed as technical, inevitable, and “common sense,” which can push citizens—especially young people—into a depoliticised, spectator role. Yet across Europe’s turbulent times—marked by democratic backsliding, polarisation, heightened tensions around migration, and digitally mediated misinformation—new, gendered forms of political re-engagement are emerging. This paper examines how a subset of young European women, often assumed to be the most reliably egalitarian and pro-welfare constituency, come to learn, imagine, and perform citizenship through conservative and radical-right projects. We conceptualise this process as pink-pilled citizenship: a shift in which belonging, participation, and moral agency are re-articulated through narratives of security, care, and social order, producing a selective, morally “bounded” form of solidarity. Using original cross-national survey data from seven countries (Poland, Austria, Hungary, Czechia, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy), we employ a conjoint experimental design in which young women repeatedly choose between political profiles that vary in their support for civil liberties, rule of law, and electoral standards. These behavioural choices are analysed alongside measures of majoritarian authoritarianism, nativism, attitudes toward migration, distrust and alienation, and value hierarchies (freedom–security; freedom–equality). The findings identify distinct constellations of young women for whom right-wing frames restore conflict, clarity, and recognition in an otherwise depoliticised landscape, making illiberal options appear as meaningful citizenship practice rather than democratic deviation. By linking value declarations to behaviour under real normative conflict, the paper contributes a gender-sensitive account of how citizenship is being reshaped at the intersection of digital transformations, insecurity, and polarised belonging—highlighting implications for democratic legitimacy, representation, and civic/citizenship education in contemporary Europe.