Youth Agency and Radicalization: Unpacking the Voices, Hopes and Complexities of Embodied Subjectivity

The concept of youth agency concerning radicalisation and counter-radicalisation has gained prominence in contemporary academic discourse. While radicalisation has often been framed as a process of passive victimhood among youth, recent scholarship highlights the importance of young people as active agents in both their susceptibility and resistance to extremist ideologies. Young people possess unique capacities for self-expression, critical thinking and political engagement. These qualities make them not only vulnerable to extremist ideologies but also potential leaders in combatting such ideologies. This chapter presents the findings of a survey conducted with young people in schools across six European countries: Belgium, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania and the United Kingdom. The survey explores young people’s attitudes towards and experiences with extremism and radicalisation, as well as factors and experiences related to resilience against extremism. It also investigates forms of social polarisation linked to pathways to extremism, considering various socio-demographic factors and other themes that emerged from prior research in the PARTICIPATION project. These themes include encounters with hate speech, conspiracy theories, social and cultural diversity, and the impact of online experiences and cultures. The aim was to capture attitudes towards extremism and radicalisation as well as attitudes towards cultural diversity, gender equality and conspiracy theories by looking at young people as drivers of radicalisation or counter-radicalisation within complex forms of individual and collective subjectivities.