Young people at a crossroads: Negotiations of environmental knowledges, practices and subjectivities in immigrant homes at a time of climate crisis (ESRC New Investigator Award ES/T015594/1)

Around the world, young people are striking from school in response to the urgent climate crisis. As young people navigate a historic crossroads of political and societal responses to the climate crisis, children of immigrants are at an additional crossroads in family trajectories, between cultural systems encompassing different sets of political and cultural values, economic possibilities and environmental characteristics. Working with young people born in Manchester and Melbourne to Global South (GS)-born parents, this project will consider the everyday negotiations of environmental knowledges, practices and political subjectivities arising between generations against the current backdrop of youth-led climate activism. The project will also explore the role that so-called ‘second generation immigrants’ and their parents might play in diversifying the dominant narratives of climate change being taught in Global North (GN) classrooms. Overall, the project will advance understanding of how intergenerational and cross-cultural tensions and opportunities for learning - writ large across societies through the climate strikes - play out in immigrant homes and in schools in Manchester and Melbourne.

This project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of their New Investigator Award programme, designed to support outstanding new researchers and academics at the start of their careers to become independent researchers through gaining experience of managing and leading research projects and teams.