Feeling the future: an exploration into studying youth futures

The aim of this paper is to offer a contribution in the search for appropriate ways to disentangle the intangibility of the future – especially amongst young people, who have been hit particularly hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. It draws on a large research project which investigates how young people in several Italian cities look at their futures ([Mapping youth future]). Theoretically, we refer to one of the possible ‘modes of engagement’ with the future (Mandich, 2020; following Thevenot, 2007) that we address via the idea of feeling the future, thereby bringing elements of affectivity into the discussion. We analyse narratives generated through visual elicitation interviews conducted with young, mobile Italian people, in a close dialogue between youth studies and sociology of the future. We pay particular attention to reflexivity enacted by young people in constructing their narratives of their futures. To draw out our findings in some depth, we focus on two interviewees whose insights on the future we characterise as ‘a felt experience in the present’ and ‘a shared imaginary’.