In a video posted on October 12 on the social network TikTok, an Italian user shares the image of teenagers blocking a school in their country, accompanied by a message: "Point of view: you have decided to imitate the French in Padua [city in the north-east of Italy]". On this same content, we then observe several images of French high school student mobilizations calling, in the description of the TikTok, not to forget "October 17, in Italy" too.
Like France and its social unrest that has been going on for several weeks, the Italians are preparing for their October 17th. Protest movements linked to the rise in fuel prices, the cost of living and housing are multiplying, as those linked to education continue to multiply in the country. As of Friday, some Italian teachers even launched a national strike for an increase in their salaries and recruitment. High school students and students also marched in the streets of Rome, Milan, Florence and even Genoa, against the government of Giorgia Meloni and their schooling conditions.
“A national movement throughout Italy where we will do like France”
Some demonstrators even held up signs claiming to want to do "like in France", echoing the national mobilizations planned in the two countries on October 17. On TikTok, calls for this mobilization in Italy are also peppered with references to France, like this video shared on October 6 which calls, in Italian, “for a national movement throughout Italy where we will do like France”.
If the origin of social anger has many common roots, this inspiration for the current French protest movement is not insignificant according to Valérie Becquet, university professor at CY Cergy Paris University and specialist in youth mobilization: "There are characteristic features specific to French political culture where this protest dimension is actually less present in other European countries such as in Germany for example, we demonstrate less, she explains to franceinfo. It is a trait salient in French political culture where there is protest in the street but also with petitions, strikes as well."
“Recognition codes on a global scale”
Whether it is the choice of the date of October 17 or the demands initially made by the high school students, they all started from social networks where numerous videos of the mobilizations were shared by French high school students, particularly on TikTok which now has thousands of them. A factor not to be overlooked both in the virality of the information disseminated, and in the way in which it is shared, from the very form of the video montage to the music used, as with this video montage broadcast on TikTok using the Pink Floyd song We Don't Need No Education, taken up by young people in France, Spain or even Italy and sometimes counting several tens of thousands of views each time.
“The One Piece flag, the Spiderman costume or even images of the Avengers are also used both in the mobilization of young people in France but also in calls for protest [in Italy], they are gathering points, standards, codes of recognition on a global scale which circulate between countries, these are references which are specific to this generation and which are understood without a word”, explains sociologist Valérie Becquet, also co-author of Geopolitics of Youth Engagement and (de)mobilizations, with sociologist Paolo Stuppia. In this video, a young Italian calls this time for “Gen Z to make themselves heard”, affirming that the Italians “are going to do like France”.
“A more rapid circulation of the motivations of these youth movements”
From the anti-globalization movement in 2008 to the Arab Spring in 2010-2011, this is not the first time that the youth of several countries have mobilized with similar demands, sometimes already using social networks, like the Arab Spring and Facebook. The specialist in youth mobilizations Valérie Becquet rather affirms that unlike these demonstrations, a social network like TikTok allows "a much faster circulation of the causes and motivations of these movements as was already the case in September 2025 with Gen Z in Nepal who shared a lot of content on social networks, to reach other countries such as Gen Z in Madagascar".
