فاطمه محمدزاده

Hope and hopelessness are reflections of an individual's consciousness and understanding of society and the way they interact with the social order, not a mere emotional understanding. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the problematic nature of hope and hopelessness to recognize the conditions that cause hopelessness and prevent the realization of youth's hope, their lived experiences, and the interpretations they make of their situation.Qualitative research and data were collected by the purposive sampling method, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 26 youth from Tabriz city to gather data, which were then analyzed using thematic analysis techniques.The results indicate that the live experience of youth of hope and hopelessness is influenced by conditions such as living in the shadow of economic instability, living with political adversity, and the lack of subjectivity. The youth's strategy to avoid hopelessness and achieve hope is pragmatic-critical activism: individual activism, confrontational compromise, and migration. They seek to create and reconstruct possible alternatives and give meaning to their lives by adopting this activism according to the real and practical conditions of life and in opposition to structural constraints. Hope, and even for some, hopelessness, is seen as a feasibility for activism in confronting social, political, and economic inequalities and the unfair distribution of opportunities and life chances.Therefore, policymakers must expand opportunities for youth agency and reduce structural limitations, as well as develop strategies to strengthen and facilitate these conditions and encourage their participation in the process of social meaning-making.