Addressing Global Social Inequalities from the Diversity of the Local Context: Social Innovation of and for Young People in Barcelona

We are currently living in a society very much shaped by a heterogeneous, fluid and shifting nature, which defines young people´s actions and interactions, and the way they address emerging challenges. Amongst these, the current crisis is no doubt the main challenge young people are facing today, which in Spain has been articulated into new patterns of social inequalities. These are characterised by unforeseen rates of unemployment, discontinuities in education trajectories, delays in emancipation from the parental home and a dramatic decay in welfare provisions.

Cosmopolitan cities like Barcelona are locations where such inequalities are especially evident yet in situations that encompass significant intra-territorial differences. Such divergences are also reflected in the responses to social inequalities, mainly depending on the neighbourhoods’ urban development and social infrastructures. What’s more, the diversity of inequalities and of the responses to these is also reflected in the wide range of social innovation that emerges.

Stemming from the data gathered within the Citispyce investigation, this paper draws on the experience of young people living in Barcelona, in the face of current social inequalities. It argues how the diversity of approaches to social inequalities and their articulation into social innovation strategies, whilst global and interactive, still rely on the local context of each neighbourhood. Each social environment reflects specific historical developments that imprint the management of public resources and the way social needs are addressed. This, in turn, reflects the way young people experience, face and confront global social inequalities at the local level.