Research avenues
The questions your generation will settle
Each YouthShare lab opens its research avenues here. They start from what young people live through, from Seoul to Lagos and from Lima to Paris, and go looking for what public debate leaves in the shadows.
How to use these avenues
Choose
Start from an avenue that connects with your discipline, your city or your experience.
Sharpen the angle
Anchor the question in a country, a city, a sector, a period. A good topic fits in one precise sentence.
Propose
Present your topic when you apply on our partner platforms. An idea linked to one of our labs is welcome, including beyond this list.
The Digital Palaver
Understanding what artificial intelligence changes in our lives, our languages, our studies and our first jobs, and deciding what we expect from it.
Discover the labGrowing up with an artificial friend
Chatbot companions, emotional support apps, assistants available at any hour: what becomes of friendship, loneliness and learning about relationships when a machine always answers.
Questions to dig into
- Who designs these companions, and on what business model?
- What do the young people who use them say, from Seoul to São Paulo?
- What protections exist for minors, and who enforces them?
The languages machines leave out
Quechua, Wolof, Tagalog, Uyghur: languages spoken by millions remain scarce in training data. What a machine learns to understand shapes what its users can say.
Questions to dig into
- Who funds corpus collection, and who owns the result?
- What does a language lose when its speakers switch to English to talk to a machine?
- Which communities are already building their own tools?
The right to be forgotten versus language models
A photo, a message, a teenage mistake: a model trained on the web keeps a trace. The legal question meets a technical one that is still open.
Questions to dig into
- What do the GDPR and laws in other regions provide?
- Can data be removed from a model that has already been trained?
- Who is responsible for an answer that exposes a person?
The hidden workforce of artificial intelligence
Data labelling, content moderation, response rating: often poorly paid work, spread across Nairobi, Manila, Caracas and Bogotá, keeps conversational assistants running.
Questions to dig into
- What working conditions and psychological protections do moderators have?
- Where does the responsibility of outsourcing companies end?
- How are these workers organising?
What is homework worth in the age of writing assistants?
When a tool writes an essay in seconds, schools must restate what they assess: thinking, reasoning, the ability to defend an idea.
Questions to dig into
- Oral exams, projects, supervised tests: a step back or a new pedagogy?
- What gap opens between pupils with access to paid tools and the rest?
- What teachers are already seeing in their classrooms.
First job, first algorithm
Automated CV screening, video interviews scored by software, online tests: many young people meet the job market through a machine first.
Questions to dig into
- Which criteria do these tools learn from past hiring?
- What right to an explanation does a rejected candidate have?
- How do young people adapt their applications to be read by a machine?
The farmer and the algorithm
Automated credit, weather forecasts, crop prices on a phone, from India to Kenya and Brazil: AI can make farmers more autonomous, or more dependent on platforms.
Questions to dig into
- Who owns the data on fields and harvests?
- Which services stay useful offline?
- How do cooperatives negotiate with technology providers?
Where does our data sleep?
Submarine cables, data centres, cloud computing: the physical geography of the internet decides under which laws our messages, photos and medical records live.
Questions to dig into
- Which countries require data to stay on their territory, and with what effects?
- What does a data centre in an arid region cost in water and energy?
- Who controls the cables that connect the continents?
Deepfakes and consent
Faked intimate images, cloned voices, fabricated videos: cases in Spain and South Korea have targeted school pupils. Law, schools and platforms move at different speeds.
Questions to dig into
- What does criminal law provide, country by country?
- How quickly do platforms take this content down?
- How do schools talk about it, and at what age?
Bias has an accent
Voice and face recognition, machine translation, credit scoring: measuring how systems handle faces, accents and names, and what that means for access to services.
Questions to dig into
- How can bias be measured in a verifiable way?
- Who audits these systems, and against which standards?
- What recourse does a misrecognised person have?
Making the dead speak
Avatars of the deceased, “deadbots” fed on messages and videos: the technology promises to prolong a voice. It touches grief, family memory and funeral traditions.
Questions to dig into
- Who consents: the person before death, or the family?
- What do psychologists say about the effects on grief?
- How do cultures of remembrance in Asia, Africa or Latin America receive these tools?
Frugal AI
Lightweight models that run offline, on a phone: designing under energy and connectivity constraints becomes an advantage for innovators in poorly served regions.
Questions to dig into
- How well can a model that fits on a phone perform?
- Which uses come first: health, education, farming?
- Who trains developers in these approaches?
The New Agora Lab
Confronting points of view, arguing, and building positions of one’s own on what makes a society.
Discover the labDebating when everyone has their own feed
Recommendation algorithms fragment the common space. Rebuilding places where disagreements meet becomes a democratic issue.
Questions to dig into
- What does research on filter bubbles show?
- Which experiments in cross-camp debate have worked?
- What role for public media and schools?
Is sortition the future of democracy?
From Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly to France’s Citizens’ Convention for Climate: citizens chosen by lot deliberate and make proposals. Their place is still being invented.
Questions to dig into
- What became of their proposals?
- What changes when young people sit in these assemblies?
- How can sortition and elections work together?
Voting at sixteen
Austria, Brazil, Scotland and others have opened the vote before adulthood. The observed effects feed a debate that returns in many countries.
Questions to dig into
- Does early participation last over time?
- What role does civic education play?
- What arguments divide supporters and opponents?
Climate civil disobedience
Road blockades, museum actions, occupations: the legitimacy of these acts and the response of states vary from country to country.
Questions to dig into
- Where does the line between protest and offence lie, and who draws it?
- Do these actions advance the cause or set it back?
- How do courts judge the activists?
Leaderless movements
From Chile to Hong Kong, from Sri Lanka to Kenya: youth movements organised online have held the streets with no designated leader.
Questions to dig into
- How do they decide, and how do they negotiate?
- What remains of these movements a few years later?
- How do those in power respond?
Committing for the long haul
Eco-anxiety, activist burnout, online harassment: engagement wears people down. Some forms of action protect those who take part.
Questions to dig into
- What do activists who lasted have to say?
- What support do organisations offer?
- How is experience passed from one generation to the next?
What boys learn online
Influencers, communities, models of masculinity: young men also form their bearings on social media, and schools and families are looking for their place.
Questions to dig into
- Which messages reach teenage boys, and why?
- Which educational initiatives get results?
- What do young men themselves say?
The neutrality of schools
Secularism, prayer, flags, history curricula: every country answers the same question differently, how to shape citizens while respecting each person’s beliefs.
Questions to dig into
- How should schools teach the subjects that divide society?
- What does religious diversity in the classroom change?
- Who decides what history curricula say?
Laughter as a political weapon
Memes, cartoons, stand-up: humour exposes power and can lead to prison. Its place says a great deal about the state of a democracy.
Questions to dig into
- Which comedians have been prosecuted, and for what?
- Can a meme sway an election?
- Where is the line between satire and hate?
Debating everything, with everyone?
Cancelled talks, contested speakers on campus, debate platforms: the question of where free speech ends and legitimisation begins comes up everywhere.
Questions to dig into
- Who decides to invite or disinvite?
- What does free speech law say, country by country?
- Which debating rules make it possible to hear the other side?
The right to the city
Public space, rents, curfews, night transport: who gets to live in and occupy the city, and at what price?
Questions to dig into
- Which cities involve young people in planning decisions?
- What does gentrification change for those who grew up in a neighbourhood?
- What place do young people have in public space at night?
Repairing after political violence
South Africa, Colombia, Rwanda, Argentina: truth commissions, transitional justice and memory shape the lives of generations born after conflict.
Questions to dig into
- What do young people know of the violence their parents lived through?
- How do schools teach these periods?
- What do victims ask for, and what do they receive?
The Southern Compass Lab
Documenting the realities and solutions of the Global South, and what they teach the rest of the world.
Discover the labAfrica’s single market: a promise for whom?
The African Continental Free Trade Area as seen by small producers, women cross-border traders and infant industries.
Questions to dig into
- What concrete obstacles do goods meet at borders?
- Which sectors gain, and which suffer?
- What can young entrepreneurs expect from it?
Money as a question of sovereignty
From the CFA franc to the eco, from Ecuador’s dollarisation to Zimbabwe’s: what the choice of a currency says about economic independence, and what it changes for households.
Questions to dig into
- Who sets monetary policy, and for whom?
- What does a family go through when inflation runs away?
- Do central bank digital currencies change the picture?
Debt and climate
Debt-for-nature swaps, disaster pause clauses, restructurings: financing adaptation while protecting the future of the most exposed countries.
Questions to dig into
- Who are the creditors, and how do they negotiate?
- What do the first debt-for-nature swaps, from the Seychelles to Ecuador, show?
- How can young people influence these decisions?
The strength of diasporas
Diaspora remittances support millions of families, from the Philippines to Mexico and Senegal.
Questions to dig into
- Why is sending money so expensive, and how can the fees come down?
- How can a share be channelled into productive investment?
- What political weight do diasporas carry?
Processing minerals at home
Cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, nickel in Indonesia, lithium in Chile and Bolivia: producing countries are seeking to capture the value of the energy transition.
Questions to dig into
- What does Indonesia’s ban on raw nickel exports show?
- What are working conditions like in the mines?
- Who finances the processing plants?
The South in the world order
An enlarged BRICS, the African Union in the G20, Security Council reform: Southern countries are claiming a different place in international institutions.
Questions to dig into
- Does the South speak with one voice?
- What does the African Union’s seat at the G20 change?
- Which reforms of the Bretton Woods institutions are on the table?
Making our own medicines
Local production of vaccines and medicines, the African Medicines Agency, Indian generics: the conditions for health autonomy.
Questions to dig into
- What lessons does vaccine access during the pandemic hold?
- Which patents hold back local production?
- How are pharmacists and technicians trained?
What the South teaches the world about finance
From Kenyan mobile money to India’s UPI and Brazil’s Pix instant payments: innovations born in the South have become models.
Questions to dig into
- Why did they succeed where others failed?
- What risks do they carry for privacy and financial stability?
- Are these models being exported to the North?
Migration between Southern countries
Regional mobility, free movement within ECOWAS, refugees hosted in Bangladesh, Uganda or Colombia: a vast reality, rarely told.
Questions to dig into
- How do host countries integrate newcomers?
- What do migrants say about their journeys?
- Which regional agreements work?
Studying in the South
Morocco, Malaysia, Turkey, China and India attract students from around the world: new routes of knowledge are taking shape.
Questions to dig into
- Why these destinations, and for which subjects?
- What do these students experience when they arrive?
- What do they bring back to their home countries?
Local knowledge and science
Traditional medicine, Aboriginal fire management in Australia, farmers’ weather forecasting: bringing these forms of knowledge into dialogue with research.
Questions to dig into
- How can orally transmitted knowledge be validated?
- Who benefits when local knowledge becomes a product?
- Which programmes already bring researchers and communities together?
Mid-sized cities, where the future is decided
Urban growth also happens far from the capitals, in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Questions to dig into
- Which public services keep pace with this growth?
- What jobs are there for young people in these cities?
- How do you plan a city that doubles in size?
The New Forge Lab
Building lasting solutions in one’s own community, and learning to lead by doing it.
Discover the labThe market as a school of entrepreneurship
Market traders in Lagos, Lima or Hanoi know a great deal about risk, credit and trust. Incubators would gain from listening to them.
Questions to dig into
- How do credit and trust work in the informal economy?
- Which skills pass from mother to daughter?
- Why do so many businesses stay informal?
Funding women founders
Around the world, companies founded by women receive a small share of venture capital. Rotating savings groups, crowdfunding and dedicated funds open other routes.
Questions to dig into
- Where does investor bias come from?
- Which funds have changed their practices, and with what results?
- What do founders who raised money have to say?
Leading without a title
In a collective, an association or a volunteer project, authority is earned. These quiet forms of leadership often train tomorrow’s leaders.
Questions to dig into
- How are decisions made without hierarchy?
- How do you handle conflict between volunteers?
- What do people who led a project at twenty remember?
Building a business for one’s community
Cooperatives, social enterprises, commons: reconciling profit and purpose, and measuring impact honestly.
Questions to dig into
- Which legal forms exist from country to country?
- How can impact be measured without window dressing?
- What happens to these businesses as they grow?
Brain drain or brain circulation?
Doctors, engineers, researchers: their departure costs their countries dearly. Returns, diaspora entrepreneurs and remote work are changing the picture.
Questions to dig into
- Why do graduates leave, and why do some return?
- Which return policies work?
- Does remote work keep talent at home?
The jobs of a just transition
Coal miners in Poland, South Africa or Indonesia, car workers, farmers: training the people whose trades are disappearing for jobs in the green economy.
Questions to dig into
- Which jobs replace the ones that disappear, and where?
- Who pays for retraining?
- What happens to regions that lived off a single industry?
The right to fail
Bankruptcy law, social stigma, second chances: each society treats entrepreneurs who fail in its own way, and that weighs on innovation.
Questions to dig into
- What does bankruptcy law provide in different countries?
- How do families see failure?
- What do those who started again say?
Mentoring that lasts
What keeps a mentoring relationship going beyond the enthusiasm of the first months: methods, commitments, results.
Questions to dig into
- What does the mentor gain?
- How does remote mentoring work?
- Which programmes measure their effects?
Protecting what you invent
Patents, traditional knowledge, biopiracy: the legal tools innovators use to keep control of their ideas.
Questions to dig into
- What does a patent cost a young inventor?
- How can collective knowledge be protected?
- Which biopiracy cases have gone to court?
Ethics as strategy
Working conditions, customer data, environmental impact: does a young company gain from being exemplary from day one?
Questions to dig into
- Do customers really reward ethics?
- What does ethics cost at the start?
- How do you stay true to your principles as you grow?
Making a living from content
Video makers, streamers, creators on social media: many young people dream of living from it. Income, social rights and dependence on algorithms raise the question of a status.
Questions to dig into
- How much do creators really earn, and what does their income depend on?
- What social protection does this work have?
- What happens when an algorithm changes its rules?
Leading young
Very young elected officials, NGO founders, company heads: what youth brings to power, and what power demands of it.
Questions to dig into
- How are young elected officials received in parliaments?
- Which mistakes recur among first-time leaders?
- How do you keep your freedom of speech while holding power?
The Impossible Futures Lab
Taking seriously the climate and social futures we are told are unrealistic, and documenting the paths towards them.
Discover the labWorking less for the climate?
The four-day week, trialled in Iceland, the United Kingdom and Japan, touches working time, consumption and travel.
Questions to dig into
- What do the trials so far show?
- Does less work mean fewer emissions?
- Which jobs can adapt, and which resist?
Having children on a warming planet
Eco-anxiety and decisions about parenthood: what young people say, what demographers observe, how cultures and religions respond.
Questions to dig into
- Is this choice a moral, a political or a private matter?
- What do surveys of young people show?
- How do family traditions weigh on the decision?
Do future generations have rights?
A Future Generations Commissioner in Wales, climate cases won by young people in Germany and the United States: the law is looking for ways to represent those yet to be born.
Questions to dig into
- How can a court defend people who will be born tomorrow?
- Which institutions already represent the future?
- What do these rulings change in public policy?
A green Sahel
The Great Green Wall, agroforestry, water management: what it takes for a re-greened Sahel to become a real trajectory.
Questions to dig into
- What do regions where farmers brought trees back show?
- Who pays, and who decides on the ground?
- What role for young people in rural areas?
The city after the private car
From Pontevedra to Bogotá, from Copenhagen to Seoul: cities are giving their streets back to pedestrians, bicycles and public transport.
Questions to dig into
- Which steps, and in what order?
- What happens to shops and deliveries?
- Who gains, and who protests?
A climate dividend
Taxing carbon and paying the proceeds back to every resident, as Canada did from 2019 to 2025: financing the transition while protecting low-income households.
Questions to dig into
- What does Canada’s experience show, up to its abandonment?
- How can a revolt like France’s yellow vests be avoided?
- Is such a scheme possible in an economy with a large informal sector?
The rights of nature in court
From the Whanganui River in New Zealand to the Atrato River in Colombia, by way of Ecuador’s constitution: ecosystems are becoming legal persons.
Questions to dig into
- Who speaks for a river before a judge?
- Are these rulings enforced?
- What do they owe to Indigenous cosmologies?
Counting what counts
Well-being, natural capital, free time: building the indicators that would guide public decisions in place of GDP alone, as Bhutan and New Zealand have tried to do.
Questions to dig into
- What do these indicators measure, and who chooses them?
- Have they changed budget decisions?
- How can they be made readable for citizens?
Feeding and regenerating
Agroecology, alternative proteins, less food waste: a food system that feeds everyone and restores the soil.
Questions to dig into
- What yields does agroecology achieve, according to the studies?
- Do alternative proteins suit every food culture?
- How can waste be cut from farm to plate?
A status for climate-displaced people
The treaty between Tuvalu and Australia opens a new path. Creating international protection for those the climate drives from their homes remains a legal work in progress.
Questions to dig into
- On which legal foundations could this status be built?
- What does the Tuvalu–Australia agreement provide?
- What becomes of a state whose territory disappears?
Water, tomorrow’s commons
Sharing transboundary basins from the Nile to the Mekong, water pricing, local governance: writing the scenario of water managed as a commons.
Questions to dig into
- How are rivers that cross several countries shared?
- What do cities that took back control of their water service show?
- What is a fair price for water?
Desirable sufficiency
Making sufficiency a project of freedom and reclaimed time: narratives, public policies, cultures.
Questions to dig into
- Which cultures already value moderation and sharing?
- How can sufficiency be discussed without guilt?
- Which policies make it accessible to all?
Your topic starts here
Read the publishing charter, then propose your topic on our partner platforms.
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JeVeuxAider.gouv.fr
France’s public volunteering platform. Our remote and on-site missions are published there first.
See our assignments JeVeuxAider.gouv.fr (opens in a new tab) -
Idealist
The international platform for non-profit engagement, for applications from anywhere in the world, in English.
See our assignments Idealist (opens in a new tab)