Lockdown practices: a portrait of young people in the family during the first lockdown in Portugal

Abstract

Governments introduced protective public health measures, including lockdowns and social distancing, in response to the unprecedented global crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. For young people, such measures are particularly painful, as they entail an interruption of their transitions to adulthood, which generally require taking up their position in the public space and emerging as a recognised social peer, either through leaving the parental home, initiating an intimate relationship or getting a full-time job. In Portugal, where such transitions are often postponed, and young people cohabit with parents for much longer, lockdown meant withdrawal from the public space and living in an intensive family collective. This brought many challenges and created tension. Based on the results of a non-representative online survey on the impacts of the pandemic in Portugal, this article focuses how young people aged 16–24 adapted to the 2020 lockdown, using the conceptual lens of familialism. The results show that familialism remains a key support system in adversity, evidencing intergenerational solidarity through everyday practices of resilience and (self-) care, renewing and remaking social bonds. Individual distancing practices are deployed backstage, however, mitigating and nuancing the overwhelming hold of familialism.