Unsettling Youth Participation in Relational Space and Commons: Case Study Lusatia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13133/2532-6562/19116Keywords:
Youth participation, Structural transition, LusatiaAbstract
This paper examines youth participation in structural transformation in Lusatia, a post-coal region in eastern Germany. It argues that institutional frameworks rely on territorial and linear logics of participation that do not
resonate with those they are meant to engage. Drawing on spatial theory and the commons, a relational perspective is proposed to explain the disjunction
between scripted participatory formats and the contingent, affective, and situated ways in which young people relate to space and the future. While institutions and research often emphasize access, representation, and impact, this paper foregrounds empirical insights that show how participation frequently fails to engage with the multiple and uneven rhythms of everyday
life. Reframing participation in relational terms opens a contingent terrain for more situated engagement with futures as at once inherited, envisioned, forged, enacted, and contested.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Tihomir Viderman, Rafael Maximiliano Flores de Leon, Silke Weidner, Dominik Ringler, Anna Grebe, Gerd Kaufmann
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