Mimesis and sharing: learning political imagination in everyday interactions

Concerning youth engagement in institutionalised settings, academic and institutional discourses have clearly stressed the need to ‘train’ young people to participation. Activism in grass-root social movements organizations (SMOs) is, on the contrary, often interpreted as a ‘call’ that needs only commitment and impetus to be fulfilled. While not dismissing the relevance of passion and spontaneity in informal civic and political practices of participation, the chapter starts from the assumption that activism requires specific skills and competencies to be performed in an efficient way and discusses two mechanism through which these skills are acquired in daily interactions between activists. Practices of ‘mimesis’ – reflexive imitation of others’ behaviours – and ‘sharing’ – intimate moments of confidentiality between activists - are explored as experiences of informal learning through which young people acquire ‘political imagination’. The chapter draws on data collected between 2015 and 2019 through participant observations and biographical interviews conducted with young activists participating in two left-wing SMOs in Italy and Sweden.