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Una Mullally: Why youth won’t play along with the ‘recovery’

This generation knows emigration and high rents – and sees protest as form of expression

Does the Government know it has a politicised generation on its hands? A generation for whom going to a protest is as natural as going to a match or a gig? A burgeoning housing movement shows that for young people in Ireland, social change is not going to stop at what conservatives flimsily label “identity politics”.

Why are young people in Ireland, in the midst of a so-called “recovery”, not playing along? A generational shift has occurred that both the political and media establishments have not yet truly grasped. The large social movements – where the bulk of foot soldiers were young – that fought for and won marriage equality and legal abortion in this country were not one-offs. We are in newly charted territory, and young people are the cartographers.

There are many reasons why this is happening, but in order to understand it, you have to grasp the collective psychology of a generation that came out of school and college to be met with unemployment and mass emigration. This took an emotional toll, but it also built resilience, and instilled a profound mistrust in neo-liberalism. If you are 25 years old now, you were born in 1993, and were 15 when the Irish bank guarantee happened. The Celtic Tiger might as well be a myth. Much of the Celtic Tiger generation – those in their 30s, 40s and 50s – wants its nice things back. The recession-austerity generation’s ideals are shaped by issues. Their values are different. Not being overly invested in the pursuit of capital, profit, or “stuff” dramatically undermines the rhetoric of centre-right parties because they’re speaking a different language.

Sense of fairness

Altruism, solidarity, and a sense of fairness seems to permeate this generation. Irish electoral politics is not unique in that it demands a large degree of self-interest to target and corral various demographics into voting for various parties. But what happens when a generation does not put self-interest first? This is, after all, a generation of straight people who canvassed for their LGBT peers, and a generation of young men who marched for young women’s reproductive rights.

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Then there’s the Dublin factor – although perhaps I am more inclined to view this whole thing though a blue-tinted lens as I live in the city. Many young people in Dublin are seething. While superficially Dublin may appear to be booming, very little of the development is actually for young people. New restaurants and bars are expensive and are aimed at 30- and 40-somethings. Young people are watching their nightclubs being demolished for hotel developments. Student housing built by international companies charging exorbitant rents is totally out of their reach. Many young people are experiencing the claustrophobia of having to live with their parents because they can’t afford the out-of-control rents in the city. This is the underbelly of urban life in Ireland, and it is rumbling. These are all quality-of-life issues that cause stress and palpable resentment. But the response is not helplessness. Despite being kicked and battered by their parents’ generation, despite being made shoulder the burden of the financial crash, young people in Ireland did not throw their hands up or turn on each other, but emerged to form alliances to shape a new society with equality at its core.

Broader than Dublin is a sense of Irishness and a patriotism that is mature, confident, inclusive, and in dialogue with a diaspora heavily invested – albeit remotely – in a new Ireland. Why wouldn’t young people be patriotic? They are, after all, shaping a society that is progressive, so in return, being invested in that is an obvious consequence. The refrain “Gwan Ireland” is no longer ironic.

Savvy

This generation is far savvier at using online tools of communication than the political establishment is. This is a massive issue for any Government seeking to “control the message”. It is now normal for protests to be organised and attended with a day or two notice. Traditional media speaks to older people (and itself), while a huge cohort of young people communicate outside of these channels. There are risks with media fracturing in this way, particularly around misinformation, but an Amanda Palmer lyric springs to mind: “They don’t know that we are the media.”

The victories that protest achieved – water charges, marriage equality, the repeal of the Eighth Amendment – tell young people a very clear story: you can go out into this country and affect change. That sense of collective power is potent. Of course housing is more complex, with less singular goals, but if you are a striker who scores every Saturday, you’re going to head into the next match pretty confident. Idealistic? Sure. But it’s also true.

There is a notable intersection between the activism that took place during the marriage equality campaign, the Repeal movement, and now a housing movement. All three of these things impacted our society, but bluntly, marriage equality mostly impacted same-sex couples, and abortion rights mostly impacted women. Housing impacts everyone. And if you take young people’s spaces away from them through poor housing policy and profit-squeezing-development, they’ll meet on the streets.