Youth liminality for a world reorder in times of crises

In our complex era marked by climate change crises, ongoing political tensions and health pandemics, to mention just a few, youth have been at the forefront of organizing significant mobilizations worldwide. These have included, among others, climate marches (O’Brien et al. 2018), uprisings against governments (Honwana 2019), and resistance of pandemic measures (Aitken 2022). What if youth, as a moving category on the international scene, were also part to the solution to unravel the problematic hierarchies shaping our world order? This contribution precisely aims at tackling this question, by analyzing to which extent transnational youth, and its liminal nature, are able to transcend the classical oppositions between North and South, between climate and biodiversity, between male and female, between the present and the future. The research proposal relies on an in-depth analysis of youth actors in the international negotiations on climate change, biodiversity and on the sustainable development goals under the Youth Earth FNRS research project. Such in-depth analysis includes interviews with about 200 youth actors, a survey of 100 of youth participants to these processes as well as observations at these three international negotiating processes. While themselves spanned across these oppositions, youth are also trying to develop new dynamics for a more horizontal and comprehensive world order