International meeting of youth work professionals on the topic of the shift to the right in Europe.

In December 2025, around 30 professionals from open youth work, youth education, youth social work, street work, media work, youth participation, and school social work from several European countries met in Kassel to discuss the shift to the right in Europe.

Chris from Kassel, Arja from Rovaniemi, Wiktoria from Poznan, Nikolaos from Thessaloniki, Denise from Padova, and 25 other professionals wanted to exchange experiences on dealing with right-wing positions in their own environments, establish contacts, and explore opportunities for further international cooperation when they came to Kassel in December 2025 for the professional meeting of the “International Youth Net – Network for Youth Mobility.”

Guidance and support for youth workers

Extremism, right-wing views, and racism are on the rise in European societies.
Right-wing parties in various European countries sometimes identify real problems, but are generally uninterested in their causes. Instead, immigrants are declared the problem and national “(dominant) culture” the solution.

In everyday life in many European countries, people with different sexual orientations, disabled people, immigrants and refugees, members of religious minorities, and homeless people experience exclusion, are often subjected to ridicule and mockery, or experience direct physical violence. Although “inclusion” is on everyone’s lips in all EU countries, many ‘deviations’ from the defined “normal” are not accepted by growing sections of the population.

In their daily work with young people, youth workers in youth centers, public spaces, schools, and seminars are repeatedly confronted with right-wing attitudes such as rejection of immigrants, racism and nationalism/religious fanaticism, or the exclusion of people with different sexual orientations.

Although youth workers generally have a clear stance, they often feel overwhelmed when it comes to responding appropriately to expressions of right-wing ideology and countering them with arguments and suitable methods.

This project aimed to support youth workers in finding constructive ways of dealing with young people who espouse racist, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, or nationalist “ideologies.” It also aimed to empower them to provide emotional and argumentative support to young people who are affected by exclusion. They exchanged views on the current situation in the participating regions and discussed the reasons that give rise to and enable right-wing tendencies.

High rents, low wages, rising food prices

The participating professionals reported on the concerns and hardships that trouble both old and young people in the countries. These include restrictions in the health care systems, unemployment, the high cost of living (e.g., constantly rising rents and food prices coupled with stagnating wages) in all participating countries, endless proposals by politicians to cut social welfare benefits, (planned) restrictions on pension payments, fear of job loss, and precarious working conditions. Housing shortages with extremely high rents in tourist hotspots were also mentioned, because landlords there can earn significantly higher rental income from short-term tourist stays than from renting to the local population, whose wages are only sufficient for significantly less expensive rents. Our Finnish colleagues also reported an increase in violence among young people and a growing glorification of violence (youngsters are apparently emulating their leaders, who throughout Europe, in both the East and the West, declare violence to be the only effective means of conflict solution).

These are legitimate concerns and understandable hardships, which many people believe they can solve by supporting parties that openly promise to further dismantle the social components of society.

Discrimination and xenophobia

The theoretical input of a philosopher and journalist on (extreme) right-wing orientations and explanatory approaches to xenophobia, homophobia and queerphobia, ableism and other forms of discrimination against groups of people enabled an in-depth examination of attempts to explain the causes and background of extreme right-wing orientation.

Can social-psychological explanations (a sense of security in violent circles, hostility toward government and skepticism of democracy in the family environment, broken “promises” by politicians, the appeal of violence, etc.) explain openness to right-wing positions?
Or is it not, after all, the patriotism that is so highly valued by everyone, which we are taught from childhood, that makes migrants (with false passports and false genes), “slackers,” cosmopolitans (who do not love their country), and moral or sexual deviants (LGBTQ) as unreliable subjects when it comes to the national cause, making them so unbearable to fans of the AfD, Fratelli d’Italia, and True Finns? Populists reject the pluralism of lifestyles and values because they only know one people with a unified will—that of the nation. Is this perhaps the radical consequence of education in patriotism and pride in the fatherland (for which even former Green foreign ministers would now willingly die) by democratic parties and institutions that always act in the national interest (but which nevertheless face criticism from the right for not really acting in the national interest and not caring enough for “their” people – those with the right genes)?

Project visits and “narrative conversation groups”

In order to explore practical options for prevention and response, the experts visited the KSV fan project, the media and soccer project “Streetbolzer,” and the counseling center for queer people “T*räumchen.” Contacts were also made with the girls‘ house „Mädchenhaus“, and the concept of the freestyle hall met with great interest.

At the “Narrative Conversation Groups” workshop, conducted by the Berlin-based association Cultures Interactive, participants learned how the association engages in conversation with groups of young people and takes their everyday concerns, attitudes, and perspectives seriously. Without moral judgments, the association addresses these issues in group discussions, which take place once a week over the course of a school semester, for example, by asking questions such as “What led you to this attitude?” and “What happened that made you see topic xy in this way?”
Youth encounters, exchanges of experts, cooperation with schools – local and international projects for 2026 and 2027 to counter right-wing tendencies

Presentations, project visits, project presentations, and workshops stimulated discussions and ultimately a series of new project ideas.
At the end of the five-day expert meeting, plans were in place for at least eight new projects and the first steps towards implementation, concrete appointments were made, agreements were reached on applying for financial support, e.g. from Erasmus+ for several youth exchanges, several job shadowings (individual visits by experts to a partner organization lasting several weeks to learn about objectives, everyday work, working approaches, and activities by looking over the shoulders of local colleagues), another expert meeting, and local projects in some of the partner cities and regions. Dealing with right-wing tendencies, exclusionary attitudes, and rejection of any deviations is always at the center of these projects.The colleagues from Finland, Italy, Poland, Greece, and Germany are very satisfied with the results of the meeting.
For example, Wiktoria and other colleagues from Finland and Germany are planning three German-Polish-Finnish youth exchanges under the title “Streetculture,” Paulina is working on the implementation of a Polish-Italian project on the topic of “Women in Politics,” Chris will accompany Arja in her everyday street work in Rovaniemi, Finland, for 14 days, and then Arja will come to Kassel for 14 days to learn about street work there.

Participating organizations:

  • Simmetecho/I participate Larissa (Griechenland)
  • Comune di Padova – Progetto Giovani (Italien)
  • Stowarzyszenie Forum Kultur Poznan (Polen)
  • Rovaniemen Kaupungin nuorisopalvelut (Finnland)
  • Stadt Kassel, Kommunales Jugendbildungswerk (Deutschland)

This project received financial support by the European program Erasmus+ Youth