Demonizing the Nightlife

Abstract

In this chapter, and adopting the cases of Lisbon (Portugal) and Barcelona (Spain), we aim to examine how the advent of so-called “pandemic politics” has been accompanied by the emergence of a punitive institutional-civic front that situates both young people and nightlife as the main drivers of communitarian contagion. In addition, we examine the rise of (sometimes violent) mass outdoor summer drinking parties, which might be considered as an expression of youth disobedience against the continuous criminalization performed by so-called punitive institutional-civic front that accuses young people of being the new Black Death preventing the return to normality. This chapter closes by arguing that young people have reconfigured their relationships with authority figures as a backlash effect against “pandemic politics” and the institutional criminalization imposed by the pandemic lockdown. In this sense, we underline that there is a huge lack of comprehension of the need for youngsters and early adults to socialize and a corresponding urgent and imperative need for an alternative, de-criminalizing, and non-punitive governance of the nightlife during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.