Unconventional Is the New Conventional

This chapter looks at the results emerging from the presentation of three case studies and reflects on their implications for the understanding of contemporary youths’ unconventional political practices. The prolonged and gradual process of social peripheralisation experienced by young generations since the last decades appears to have fostered deep evolutions in the relationship between them and the state-based institutions. A shift towards a more “competitive” position in relation to institutions emerges among young people whose unconventional political practices go beyond claim and protest. Prefigurative political projects aimed at creating a new world within the shell of the old are enacted in an attempt to re-appropriate and re-conquer politics. In the light of these results, the chapter discusses whether it still makes sense to talk about “unconventionality” when we look at youth political practices.