Collective Practices and Strategies around Leisure of Contemporary Basque Young People: The Phenomenon of Lonjas

Diego Carbajo Artículo en Actas de Congreso 2019 CEIC, Grupo Consolidado

Benjamín Tejerina, Cristina Miranda de Almeida e Ignacia Perugorría (eds.). Sharing Society. The Impact of Collaborative Collective Actions in the Transformation of Contemporary Societies

In the last decades, groups of youths in the Basque Country (Spain) have been renting former commercial premises as spaces for leisure and sociality. According to recent data, at least the 20% of young people of the Basque Country is member of this kind of collectivities. The institutionalization of this forms of collectivity is closely related to processes such as: a) urban transformations; b) the extension of youth; c) the precarisation of labour and housing markets; d) the implementation of some regulations over the uses of public spaces in the last decade and; f) some cultural features of the Basque Country. Grounded on two quantitative broad research produced by the Basque Youth Observatory and a qualitative research I coordinated for the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, the objective of the paper is to analyse this phenomenon as a collective strategy that fights back against the processes of precarisation experienced by young people. Thus, the presentation will provide evidences of how phenomenon takes the form of a collective and creative response that enables young people more afordable leisure and consumption far from the adult-world surveillance. It will also go in depth on how the premises emerge as autonomous and communal social spaces where diferent learnings such as sharing and managing common goods, or making collective decisions take place. Lastly, the paper seeks to contribute to the conference with some developments for the debate around the concept of agency and the possibility of social change without political articulations or claims.

Carbajo, D (2019). Collective Practices and Strategies around Leisure of Contemporary Basque Young People: The Phenomenon of Lonjas. En B. Tejerina et al. Sharing Society. The Impact of Collaborative Collective Actions in the Transformation of Contemporary Societies (p.p. 126-132). Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea