Global Dialogues

Intergenerational solidarity is often framed as an appeal for empathy or mutual understanding across age groups. The panel on intergenerational solidarity—and the GGD conference more broadly—challenged this notion by insisting that solidarity cannot exist in abstraction. It must be grounded in the material realities shaping people’s lives. The panel raised a difficult question: what does solidarity mean when the world we are inheriting is defined by instability, inequality, and broken promises?

This question resonated deeply within our peer cohort at GGD Barcelona. The group of sixteen students GGD welcomed was profoundly international, representing different countries, cultures, and personal histories. Despite these differences, we shared a strikingly similar sense of economic and political uncertainty. Many of us grew up believing that each generation would be better off than the last. That assumption no longer holds. Today, young people face overlapping crises: climate destruction, the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence, political polarization, and growing social unrest. Yet these anxieties do not feel isolated or abstract. Through both the panel and our cohort conversations, it became clear that these challenges are interconnected and structural, rooted in a global economic system built on unlimited extraction, consumption, and extreme wealth inequality.

Solidarity, in this context, is not simply about empathy across ages. It is about recognizing that older generations have shaped a world in which young people inherit profound uncertainty. Genuine solidarity requires accountability: we must confront how wealth, power, and resources are distributed and engage across generations in addressing these inequalities. 

For many in our cohort, critiques of capitalism and openness to redistributive frameworks felt less like ideology and more like necessary tools for survival. Calls for intergenerational solidarity ring hollow if they do not confront how wealth and power have been accumulated and protected, often by older elites, at the expense of younger generations. Solidarity asks both generations to engage honestly: older generations must confront their role in sustaining inequality, and younger generations must work together to imagine alternatives that are fairer and more sustainable.

GGD gave me the opportunity to explore these ideas with peers from across the world. Recognizing that material realities cross national and generational boundaries, I saw how essential diverse perspectives are for building solidarity. Centering the voices of younger generations—those who will inherit these challenges—is crucial in imagining a world that can sustain both present and future generations. The dialogues left me reflecting on solidarity as not only a shared moral commitment but also a political and structural project, one that requires honesty, collaboration, and a willingness to confront inequalities embedded across generations.