Youth in the city: Fostering transcultural leadership for social change

Youth in the City (YITC) is an international, multidisciplinary research initiative that promotes digital participatory action research (PAR) with multicultural and migrant youth as an effective response to the xenophobic content that readily spreads on social media and in public discourse. We work with young people across the world to reclaim urban space and imagine shared transcultural futures through participatory mapping, co-designed creative interventions and digital storytelling. In 2019, we conducted the first project in Prato, Italy. Home to over 120 different nationalities (Ufficio di Statistica, Comune di Prato, 2020), the city is one of the most studied cases of multiculturalism in Italy and has become, over the years, “a European ‘hotspot’ for migration and integration issues” (Baldassar et al., 2015, p. 8).