• A
  • A
  • A
  • ABC
  • ABC
  • ABC
  • А
  • А
  • А
  • А
  • А
Regular version of the site

Seminar of Professor Hilary Pilkington ‘Youth receptivity to radical right agendas: A European perspective’

Event ended

This presentation will review key findings from survey, interview and ethnographic research on receptivity of youth to radical (right) agendas undertaken for the FP7 MYPLACE project. It will demonstrate what we can learn from large, transnational and multi-method research on youth political attitudes and activism. It concludes that support for extreme and radical right ideologies and movements is a minority position among youth across Europe but that views and experiences lie on a continuum rather than reflecting a tolerant ‘mainstream’ and a separate and dangerous extremist fringe. It will suggest that these findings have implications for both how we approach issues of youth extremism and radicalisation in future research as well as for the kind of policy responses that we develop. It argues, specifically, that, especially in the case of young people, engagement with radical or extreme ideas is best understood not as a linear process of radicalisation but as complex, situational, fluid and dynamic.

Hilary Pilkington is Professor of Sociology at The University of Manchester. She has been coordinator of a number of internationally collaborative research projects including, most recently, the FP7 MYPLACE (Memory, Youth, Political Legacy and Civic Engagement) project which studied young people’s political engagement and activism in 14 countries of Europe. Her own research focuses on youth and youth subculture, youth political participation, activism and extremism and her recent empirical research has included ethnographic studies of youth activism in the anti-Islamist English Defence League and of racist skinhead and punk subcultures in Russia.

Current projects:

H2020 DARE (Dialogue about Radicalisation and Equality) project: http://www.dare-h2020.org/.

H2020 PROMoting Youth Involvement and Social Engagement (PROMISE) project: http://www.promise.manchester.ac.uk/en/home-page/.

Venue: St. Petersburg, Griboedova canal embankment, 123, lit. a, room 410

Working languages: English.

Lecture is held by the Centre for Youth Studies and the Centre for Science and Academic Development, National Research University Higher school of Economics – St. Petersburg.

All interested are invited (please, get registered at: cys@hse.ru)