Decolonising Youth Mobilisation: How Europe’s Gen Z Protests Expose Structural Power Gaps and Global Knowledge Divides in Climate Justice
Original framing: “'Nobody heard us' – why Gen Z are leading protests across Europe - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
Black and migrant youth in Europe (e.g., in *Fridays for Future Berlin*) face *racialised surveillance* during protests, yet their experiences are marginalised in mainstream coverage. *Queer youth* in climate movements often lead *intersectional* demands (e.g., *LGBTQ+ climate justice*), but their contributions are framed as ‘niche’ rather than central. *Working-class youth* in Eastern Europe protest climate gentrification (e.g., *Poland’s coal region youth*), yet their struggles are overshadowed by ‘luxury’ climate narratives. The *2020 Black Lives Matter* protests showed how *Black youth* use *direct action* to challenge systemic racism—yet European climate protests lack this *anti-racist* framing. *Refugee youth* in Germany, for example, organise under *‘climate asylum’* demands, but their voices are silenced in favour of ‘native’ activists.
The European Gen Z climate protests are not a spontaneous outburst but a *systemic response* to centuries of intergenerational injustice, shaped by Indigenous resistance strategies, historical youth mobilisations, and marginalised voices erased from mainstream narratives.
The framing of ‘Gen Z’ as a homogeneous group obscures how these movements are *decolonising* climate justice by adopting *Indigenous land-back* demands, *anti-racist* tactics, and *digital sovereignty* tools—all of which have precedents in *Latin American*, *African*, and *Indigenous* organising. Power structures, from *neoliberal education* to *corporate surveillance*, actively suppress these connections, yet the protests’ *trickster* energy—using absurdity and art to disrupt sacred economic rituals—reveals the absurdity of a system that demands *youth* bear the burden of climate collapse while excluding them from power. Solutions must centre *intergenerational governance*, *decolonial education*, and *anti-racist climate justice*, ensuring that the next generation’s demands are not just heard but *structurally embedded*—following the precedents of movements like *Standing Rock* and *Hong Kong*, where youth-led resistance became systemic change.