Introduction

Young Italian adolescents born in the early years of the twenty-first century – usually identified as ‘Generation Z’ – have grown up amid constant crises. The economic recession generated by the explosion of the subprime mortgage crisis and the failure of major US banks in 2008, the increasingly evident negative effects of climate change, the experience of the pandemic caused by the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the severe restrictive measures implemented by the government to limit its spread, and recently the geopolitical turbulence linked to Russia's assault on Ukraine and the Israeli reaction to the Hamas terrorist attack: these compose a scenario of uncertainty, and they generate specific forms of anxiety in terms of sensitivity and emotions (Scribano 2021; 2022). Furthermore, the growing pervasiveness of information and communication technology, the importance assumed by social media, the centrality and novelty of the forms and languages of online communication and the transformations that information technology has introduced into daily life in the sphere of work and interpersonal relationships configure a set of experiences that potentially constitute the basis for a new generational identification (Mannheim 1952). Following Karl Mannheim, it is possible to hypothesise the configuration of a specific generational collocation, such as the sharing of unique experiences, which cannot be adequately understood, described and faced by referring to the conceptual and communicative baggage developed by previous generations (Colombo and Rebughini 2019).

Adopting a generational perspective to interpret the experience of contemporary youth requires developing a heuristic tool that makes it possible to highlight the discontinuities with respect to the experience of previous cohorts; discontinuities that entail a search for a new lexicon and new interpretative tools, and the development of a new relationship with oneself, others and reality which involves the tendency to act, think and feel according to specific and recognisable methods or lifestyles.

The chapter analyses how the injunctions to be autonomous, active and creative – characteristic of an individualised society – are internalised and elaborated by young people living in the Milan area of northern Italy. The data presented are based on a nearly 10-year research project, conducted from 2015 to 2023, that involved around 100 young people aged between 18 and 30 (Colombo, Rebughini and Leonini 2017; Colombo, Leonini and Rebughini 2018; Colombo and Rebughini 2021; Colombo Rebughini and Domaneschi 2022).

Ethnography and feminist methodologies and methods have become central in these studies. I acknowledge my personal areas of concern and interest as a researcher. I cannot isolate myself from these studies. I presented myself as a liberal-nationalist feminist, who grew up in an educated family in Pukhtunkhwa, as a daughter who went to school and completed her higher education with the support of her feminist-nationalist Baba (father), who encouraged her to escape the traditional roles of Pukhtun women. My Baba's extreme love and belief in me made me a woman of audacity and nerve. Thus, my research is based on my own life experiences that led me towards gender issues and social justice for Pukhtun women. It is interesting that as an author I share common goals and some common experiences to give voice to the unvoiced, and I positioned myself as an ‘in-between’ researcher:

I further explained the in-between researcher position in this chapter to familiarise my readers with the use of this term in research. However, here I discuss how my story has a place in this book – who I am and where I am coming from – and how it has had a deep impact on the selection and development of my research questions, contexts and participants in both studies. As a researcher, I am well-placed to conduct these studies because of my own personal background, nationality, family heritage and gender. As I men-tioned, I grew up in this area, went to school and completed my MA degree at the University of Peshawar.

Introduction

The first two decades of the twenty-first century can be characterised by the increase in poverty, the massiveness of social programmes (De Sena 2011), the different forms of digitalisation of life and the centrality of consumption (Scribano 2015). Added to this, in 2020, was the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving consequences of different kinds (social, health and economic), among which the increase in global poverty stands out. Although a few years have passed, the geopolitical scenario of the Latin American region has not managed to recover pre-pandemic conditions. Some elements at a global level have also worsened this scenario: the slowdown in economic growth, slow job creation, as well as an inflationary effect on food and energy that worsens the situation of lower-income sectors (CEPAL 2022).

Social policies, as interventions located in space-time and in a particular accumulation regime, are mediations of the state that seek to influence the conditions of production and reproduction of forms of life in society. They are developed from positions and visions of the world, establishing meanings and emotions. Over the last decades, they have been modifying their objectives, population, forms of provision and justifications. In these modifications, the incentive to consume or its increase acquires great mention and importance in the modality with the greatest reach and coverage in the region: cash transfer programmes (CTPs). Added to this is the wealth of interventions created to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The scenario mentioned in Argentina assumes its own particularities. Therefore, in this chapter, based on multi-method research carried out in the Municipality of La Matanza (Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina), we will analyse, first, the meaning assigned – by its recipients – to the CTPs – in the pre-pandemic and pandemic context, as well as the emotions about consumption after receiving those interventions. This will allow us to characterise the economic situation of the recipients and the emotions that are organised before, during and after the pandemic and in the face of their consumption practices's restructuration.

The municipality under study is the largest and most densely populated in Greater Buenos Aires. Given that it is the largest urban complex in the country, with an estimated population of just over 11 million inhabitants (INDEC 2022), that is, almost 25 per cent of the total population of Argentina.

The films in this chapter address themes of futurities, digital technologies of the moving image, socio-cultural movements and cultural restitution. In an interview with the journalist Oulimata Gueye, the Kenyan writer and film director Wanuri Kahiu debates science fiction and whether the layered contemporary meanings and interpretations of Afrofuturism are a trend. Kahiu said she considers science fiction to be a longstanding feature of the African oral tradition, stating there have always been

Wanuri Kahiu, Pumzi, Kenya, 2009, 20 Minutes

In the short film Pumzi (meaning breath in Swahili), the Nairobi-based director imagines a future dystopian world and inadvertently ventures via science fiction into the lively genre of Afrofuturism. In the scenario, survivors of a World War Three, the ‘Water War’, live in a hermetic underground soci-ety. This future is a totalitarian, technocratic culture governed by military personnel. The protagonist, Asha (Kudzani Moswela), like all citizens, must wear tubes to recycle her bodily fluids in a context of extreme water scarcity and chooses to break free to the contaminated surface.

Asha, a scientifically trained conservator, works alone in an almost empty laboratory of a sanitized natural history museum. She is a member of a hierarchical and fully technocratic society, lodged far underground after a water war contaminated the surface. Water is so scarce in this quiet chthonian environment that she and her co-inhabitants use grafted-on tubing to recycle their bodily fluids through frequent exercise. When Asha receives an anonymous, unauthorized parcel containing a jar of soil with high humidity content and no radioactivity, she contacts her superior who appears remotely on a screen without uttering words. Communication is transmitted and monitored by an unknown process. Her superior does not believe Asha. She orders her to throw the sample away and to take her dream suppressant medication. Asha breaks the rules and plants a seed in the soil, waters it and observes it grow.

Most architects, urbanists, landscape architects and designers broadcast and disseminate their work by means of public speaking tours. In recent years, this practice has been augmented by recorded versions that can be streamed anytime and often are embedded into their company websites. Rwandan architect Christian Benimana, who leads the Africa Studio in the Boston-based architectural practice Mass Design, gave a talk to a large audience in Arusha, Tanzania, on August 2017, as part of the popular Ted Talk series.

In his talk, entitled ‘The Next Generation of Architects and Designers’, Benimana speaks of the African continent's urgent near-future needs to match the population growth, which he estimated would require 700,000,000 sustainable housing units, more than 300,000 schools and 85,000 medical clinics to be built by 2050. He translated those numbers into seven medical clinics, 25 schools and about 60,000 housing units per day. Benimana is optimistic that this massive task can be achieved sustainably by African architects who understand the landscape and the population's needs. He illustrates his talk with examples of his own work, such as a new prototype project, the Kasungu Maternity Village, attached to the Kasungu District Hospital in Malawi. Completed in 2015, it provides shelter and antenatal care for expectant mothers from their thirty-sixth week, which helps reduce maternity casualties.

He also presented the work of other architects in the Ted Talk, which includes a prototype project by the Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi, whose Amsterdam- and Lagos-based design and development practice NLÉ proposed the Makoko Floating School project of A-frame triangular structures on barges to serve as schools and community centres for Makoko's floating informal settlement in Lagos, and Diébédo Francis Kéré in Burkina Faso, who designed the Lycée Schorge secondary school (completed 2018) in Kougoudou, a region with a population of about 200,000. The school was built from locally sourced materials using local construction processes and involves and serves the local community.