Generational Consciousness and Political Mobilisation of Youth in Taiwan

This article is a contribution to theoretical reflection on the notion of generation applied to the study of youth in Taiwan. Starting from the polysemy of this concept, which has remained problematic for the social sciences since the nineteenth century, it shows that beyond the simple demographic cohort, the young people born in the 1980s and 1990s form a new “actual” generation, in the sense of Mannheim, i.e. characterised by objectively distinctive traits and a generational consciousness that contrasts with their elders. It also seeks to explain the process of formation of this generational consciousness and its implications for political mobilisation.