In Paris, huge youth protests over the state of high school education have drawn tens of thousands of people onto the streets. Placards carried by students captured the mood of the movement: "School is a right, not a privilege," read one. "A state that gasses high school students is a weak state," said another, reflecting growing public anger at alleged police brutality towards young protesters.
The unrest is not confined to France. Tens of thousands of young people have also taken to Spanish streets in recent weeks to protest against the country's deepening housing crisis. In the UK, a crowd of jobless young people protested outside the Labour party conference in Liverpool last week over what they described as bleak employment prospects.
The Guardian's Paris correspondent, Angelique Chrisafis, reported from the centre of the French protests. A common thread runs through the demonstrations from Paris to the north of England: a generation that feels betrayed by the absence of basic economic security and the erosion of public services that older generations took for granted.