Youth and demolition: the impact of social movements formed by the youth in communities facing threat of demolition.

Abstract

The research focused on how social movements formed by the youth impact their communities when there is a threat of demolition. With the flow of capital from investors and the concentration of jobs in the cities, people from the provinces tend to move to the cities in search for better economic opportunities. But the sad reality is that people who migrated tended to be more exposed to poverty. With the lack of spaces for development in the urban centers, the government set its eyes on the spaces that are occupied by the urban poor which led to a lot of violent demolitions, as the urban poor fought for their homes and their way of life. To be able to make their lives easier, the urban poor community helps each other in order to uplift the quality of their lives. They can be seen as one movement created by poverty to be able to make better of their situation. The research employed a phenomenological approach to be able to understand the lived experience of the people during times of demolition and how the social movement formed by the youth was able to impact the community when there was a threat of demolition. The researcher also used the triangulation method to cross-reference the information gathered through in-depth interviews and discussions. The research looked into communities which have been victims of demolition and ones that were able to fend off the threat of demolition to be able to know how the movement of the youth made an impact in their respective communities.