From the Asia-Pacific and North Africa to Latin America and Eastern Europe and most recently in India, youth-led demonstrations have swept the world in recent years. Dubbed the ‘Gen Z demonstrators’, they are seen all over front pages together with images of heated clashes and, often, burning government buildings in the background: An entire generation rallied against corruption, social injustice and widespread dissatisfaction with governments they see robbing them of a future.
Much of the analysis has been attributing the novelty of the Gen Z uprisings to the shared grievances of the protesters and their digital organisation. But the motives for dissent are so widespread that they offer little insight into why they erupted in these specific places at those particular moments.
Known for their leaderless organisation and their shared pop-cultural symbols, the uprisings can be interpreted as part of a broader Gen Z-led call for social justice, accountability from governments and institutions, and the eradication of corruption.
No study or statistics may be accurate enough to explain the timing of all these uprisings. However, it is no coincidence that this many protests erupted in such a short span of time. In our hyperconnected world, each of these movements has helped ignite a spark of transnational enthusiasm that contributes to inspire the next one elsewhere.
Look closer at who is filling these squares, and a quieter pattern emerges. Across Nepal, Indonesia and the Philippines, a generation raised by grandparents, aunts, or a single parent while the other parent worked overseas, is now refusing to wait any longer for the future that absence was supposed to buy them.
A Generation Runs Out of Patience
In the Asia-Pacific region the mobilisation of the Gen Z protests in Nepal, Indonesia and the Philippines were all driven by similar underlying factors. The high youth unemployment rate was one of these factors, especially in Nepal and Indonesia who rank among the highest. As opposed to the aging Asian superpowers of Japan and China, the median age in all three countries is below 30.
In Indonesia, the revelation of a new monthly allocation of 50 million rupiah for Indonesian parliamentarians was the catalyst for the protests of August last year. The wave of anger spread to several cities after Affan Kurniawan, a 21-year-old motorcycle taxi driver was run over and killed by an armoured police vehicle just near the parliament in Jakarta on 28 August 2025. The unrest eventually abated following the reversal of the policy that had triggered it, though the situation remained tense.
In South Asia, the youth took over the streets of Nepal on the first few days of September 2025. Although the protests were initially triggered by a ban on major social media platforms, the grievances were far more profound. A sense of injustice coupled with the lamentable practices of corruption and nepotism led the younger generation to overthrow the ruling government. The response was brutal: over 70 people were killed during the demonstrations, many of them shot dead by police officers, with some still wearing their school uniforms.
On 5 March 2026, almost 19 million people cast their votes and of these, nearly a million were first-time voters, following interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki’s decision to lower the minimum voting age from 18 to 16. The rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah (Balen) won the snap election, becoming the country’s youngest prime minister at the age of 35. With his equally young party, the four-year-old Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), he will lead the Himalayan Republic into an unknown future.
The Philippines were already watching the protests in neighbouring Indonesia with apprehension, fearing that they would escalate at home. A series of mass demonstrations known as the Trillion Peso March took place on 21 September, 30 November 2025 and 25 February 2026. Tens of thousands rallied in the capital Manila to demand the resignation of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr amid a widespread corruption scandal linked to government spending on flood-control projects.
The date of the first rally was a symbolic choice, marking the anniversary of the declaration of martial law in 1972 by President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., father of the current president in office, Bongbong Marcos. ‘End the political dynasty’ was one of the slogans chanted during the protests, which were attended by a diverse range of people, including citizens, church groups, civil society organisations, labour unions, and political coalitions.
A Generation Raised by Remittances
The Asia-Pacific is a paradise destination for many from the Global North, but a place of departure for growing numbers of people. The Philippines have the largest migrant workers population in Southeast Asia (6.1 million), followed by Indonesia (4.6 million) and Myanmar (3.7 million).
Migration is a key pathway to upward social and economic mobility, and at the same time overseas migrant workers are equally important for the economies of their countries of origin. According to the latest Asia-Pacific Migration Data Report (2025), several of the world’s largest remittance recipient countries are located in this region with the Philippines ranking among the top five globally in 2024 and Indonesia and Nepal in the top 20.
Remittance flows contribute to support households in the country of origin. It is well-known that an increasing number of migrant workers, particularly female migrant workers, are moving within East and Southeast Asia, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Myanmar to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, to work as domestic and care workers.
These women make up a critical workforce in the receiving countries by providing essential, often live-in, caregiving and household management services. The flip side of the coin is that millions of Southeast Asian women leave their own children behind, often for over a decade. This creates a challenging situation, where children are left in the care of the father or grandparents if both parents are working abroad.
It is these children — raised on remittances and video calls rather than daily presence — who are now old enough to fill the squares of Manila, Jakarta and Kathmandu.
Related to this, the Philippines’ education system is renowned for its export-oriented model, training students for overseas jobs. There is a strong emphasis on English proficiency to prepare graduates for employment in English-speaking countries (mainly US, UK, Australia). In addition, the range of foreign languages offered has recently been extended to include Chinese in secondary schools. However, labour migration is also fuelling a crisis at home. It is recorded that the emigration of many nursing professionals is affecting the entire healthcare system, with several hospitals being extremely understaffed.
To better tackle labour migration, the Philippines created the Department of Migrant Workers under Duterte’s office in 2021, and Indonesia established the Ministry of Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers in 2024. The unique legal status of migrant workers means that they have fewer legal protections and safety nets, therefore exposing them to greater risks.
The UN reports that 2024 was the deadliest year on record for migrants coming from Asia and the Pacific. It is a silent human crisis occurring mostly along the sea routes, with deaths and disappearances. To which must also be added a growing case of human trafficking and forced criminality in South-East Asia.
When the Land Itself Leaves
But whether in the Asia-Pacific or elsewhere, political and economic factors often overlap and occur concurrently and are significant drivers of human mobility. But there is another increasingly important factor in this mobility: environmental degradation.
Climate-induced displacement is a major issue in the region. ReliefWeb, the UN-managed humanitarian information service, defines displacement as a form of climate mobility, alongside migration and planned relocation. These differ in terms of the degree of willingness involved in the decision to move. However, when evaluating the impacts of climate change, it is important to acknowledge communities’ inability or refusal to move, even when they are at risk. This is because land is integral to people’s lives, livelihoods and identities.
For households already separated by a parent’s absence abroad, losing the land itself closes off the one thing migration was meant to protect: a home to return to.
Last November, heavy rainfall led to deadly floods and landslides in Southeast Asia. Against the backdrop of rising political tensions, Indonesia and the Philippines — both prone to flooding — have faced multiple challenges ranging from climate change and humanitarian crises to social unrest. In recent years, Indonesia has experienced the greatest impact, followed by Thailand, with millions of households affected by these emergencies.
Extreme weather events and increasing typhoons are threatening coastal communities and their livelihood. In the Philippines, fishing employs over 1.6. million people, however few can make a living out of this alone. Fisherfolk in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) are worried about their future earnings, which are already meagre; there are days when their earnings are just enough to cover the cost of fuel.
Water levels in fishing habitats, such as marshes, are becoming increasingly unpredictable, with ever-longer dry spells and sudden, frequent downpours. In addition to this, intense heat has forced many to start their day’s fishing at night rather than early before sunrise sets.
BARMM has the highest number of internally displaced persons by conflict and disasters in the Philippines. In 2024, the region passed the Rights of Internally Displaced Persons Act to safeguard legal protections for relocated communities and ensure people’s access to basic necessities during and after displacement, and eventually resettlement.
In case of displacement, children are among the most vulnerable, their education gets disrupted and are more likely to drop out of school to support their families. Beside China and India, the Philippines bear the highest number of child climate refugees.
If the sea becomes a source of uncertainty and the land itself is disrupted, it is hard not to wonder whether people will be able to continue their traditional way of life. This is not only a means of livelihood but has also defined entire indigenous communities for generations.
Refusing the Bargain
Given the current state of the world, one could apply similar lines of reasoning to almost every nation. Economic stagnation in distinctive political systems worldwide has created fertile ground for mass mobilisations.
However, it is not wrong to discuss these protests in generational terms, even when the public seems to be fixated entirely on the divide between Gen Z and previous generations. One could argue that in the case of the Asia-Pacific many of the Gen Z protesters are likely left-behind children who refuse to accept that leaving is the only way to a better future, especially now that, for some, their parents have managed to return and wish to grow old together on a shared land.
As already mentioned before, the land is vital to people’s lives, livelihoods and identities. These youth no longer want to witness the devastation of their homes and being gradually pushed out to make way for wealthy foreigners, in line with the neoliberal capitalist exploitation model currently taking place.
These youths are taking matters into their own hands, quite literally. From the comfort of their homes and the warmth of their loved ones, teenagers wielding their smartphones can support their families – or, in some cases, provide for them entirely – through content creation and sponsorship deals. They are known as ‘kidfluencers’. Whether they are solo child influencers or part of a family-run content creation team, they typically upload vlogs showing their everyday lives.
Following Australia’s ban in late 2025, Indonesia has become the first non-Western country to impose restrictions on access to ‘high-risk’ platforms including Youtube, Instagram and TikTok for under-16s. The restrictions came into force on 28 March 2026 to curb addiction and exposure to risks ranging from pornography, online scams and cyberbullying. The country ranks among the top five in the world for Instagram and YouTube users. According to the Ministry of Communications, 48% of internet users across the country are under 18, making it second only to the United States for TikTok.
Currently, the enforcement of the ban appears to be limited to individual platforms implementing stricter age verification measures, and in some cases encouraging the use of companion accounts and parental guidance tools. (Although, in April, TikTok reported deactivating 1.7 million underage accounts).
The Philippines is no stranger to this phenomenon either, though Facebook still dominates as the most widely used platform throughout the country. Children, together with their parents, are setting up proper digital family businesses that enable them to earn above the minimum wage each month, a feat that would have been difficult to imagine given the immobility of the labour market, and one that is also made possible by strong family ties.
In recent years, we have seen headlines referring to the ‘awakening of the Gen Z’, implying that until now they had been politically disengaged, failing to realise that this is only because they have now made enough noise to attract media attention. Resistance and dissent are also quiet, everyday acts, and the ways in which they manifest may vary depending on the latitude.
We are witnessing an ideological rift: Gen Zers want to be drivers of change and refuse to see their parents’ struggles as a harbinger for their own lives. Young people in the Global South are rising up “only now” because they are breaking the chains of an oppression that have lasted for generations. They no longer dream of a better future abroad; instead, they want to build one for themselves, right where they live.
