Under the Allegories on racism manifestation project, the project consortium aims to raise awareness of, and tackle psychological effects of gendered racial discrimination, gendered racism and internalised racism. To inform ourselves, we started by conducted narrative research on the manifestation of gendered racism in European societies and the impact of the perceived gendered racism on the mental health of racialised and LGBTIQ+ youth. With this research report, we thus aim to ensure that placing racism within the human rights context of European societies takes a new path in public discourses.

That is, creating spaces for racialised youth to talk about and their experiences. But we are not talking about racist events, we are rather shifting our focus to mental health and wellbeing: the psychological effects of racist events on racialised youth’s mental health and wellbeing. So, sought to identify, analyse how such psychological effects hinder inclusive and diverse representation, engagement and participation of the racialised youth in different aspects of civic life. Gained insights have been crucial in creating non-formal educational resources to tackle illiteracy on issues of race, racism, and mental health.

And by using such educational resources in youth work, racialised youth can thus learn how internalising racism affect their mental health and wellbeing. So, our goal is to inspire racialised youth to take actions to tackle the often-invisible effects of the lived experiences of racism. Though rooted in racist European societies that produce complex forms of racial oppression that put the Whites at the top and Blacks at the bottom of racial ranking in Europe, to date, academic debates on the role of adverse experiences of racism as a source of increased mental health risk factors among racialised youth remain largely neglected, and untested in the European literature, education and research. Read more on Gendered racism in Europe!