The Crisis Generation: the effect of the Greek Crisis on Youth Identity Formation

This study aims to explore the impact of the Greek Crisis on the ways young Greeks form their identities. The prolonged effects of the Greek crisis (2008-today), have been undoubtedly experienced by all Greeks (regardless of class, age, gender, location, occupation). However, older adolescents/younger adults (born between 1995 and 2000) constitute the first generation (termed Crisis Generation) to be raised during the Crisis and form their identity within this district social, political and economic reality. This study focuses on the subjective experiences of 20 participants born during this period, in an attempt to reveal their perceptions of how the crisis has contributed to their own identity formation. This study proposes that the Crisis Generation is characterised by a unique process of identity formation consisting of: a misleading passiveness, profound lack of apathy, misread and hopefully ephemeral sense of being trapped in a social and political reality which was not formed by them and explicit ability of planning a future identity away from the crisis through personal and social accounts of action.