Exploring polycrises through young people’s voices: lessons from vulnerable Brazilian communities during the Covid-19 pandemic

This article examines the Covid-19 pandemic as, and as part of, polycrisis through the voices, experiences and adaptations of children and young people in São Paulo’s favelas. Based on participatory research with 44 youth aged 9–29 in Heliópolis and Paraisópolis (2022–2023), we analyze how overlapping health, educational, socioeconomic, political-institutional, and environmental crises intersected in their everyday lives. Through participatory research, we explore data through three key dimensions: time (tensions between urgency and stagnation), risk and uncertainty (navigating amplified vulnerabilities), and intersectional burdens (how race, gender, class, and territory shaped unequal experiences). Our findings reveal how young people responded through community-based mobilizations—such as the Street Presidents and Observatório De Olho Na Quebrada—demonstrating their roles as political and epistemic agents who develop adaptive strategies amid chronic structural oppression. We argue for centering youth voices in polycrisis scholarship, challenging universalizing frameworks by showing how spatial contexts produce differential vulnerabilities and resistances. For marginalized Brazilian youth, crises constitute not exceptional ruptures but intensifications of colonial legacies, demanding analytical frameworks attentive to power, temporality, and place. Our analyses expand theories of polycrisis while highlighting children and young people’s participation as vital for reimagining futures.