Social hope arises from the shared knowledge and experience of people, rooted in cultural, historical, and political contexts. This study begins with the paradox of declining socio-political hope among social science students, despite their immersion in a meaning-making academic environment, and aims to understand this lived experience using an interpretive phenomenological approach. Data were collected through twelve semi-structured interviews with social science students at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and analyzed step-by-step. Findings reveal that hope in students' lifeworld is a fluid and multilayered phenomenon, shaped by the tension between critical awareness, structural constraints, and everyday meaning-making practices. The experience of hope emerges through three main pathways: confronting injustice and instability, where gender discrimination, relative deprivation, and socio-political uncertainty lead to a "closure of future horizons"; paradoxical hope, in which awareness of inequalities coexists with a sense of powerlessness to change; and multi-source meaning-making, through which students rebuild hope by drawing on family, selective religiosity, digital media, and informal online spaces. Additionally, three patterns of political attachment—traditional, conditional, and disengaged—reflect experiences of acceptance or rejection within the political structure. Finally, social participation in the form of micro-activism serves as a compensatory strategy to maintain a sense of agency.
Sadidi, S. , Asgharpourmasouleh, A. and Akbari, H. (2026). The Paradox of Hope: An Exploration of Students’ Lived Experiences of Social and Political Hope. Journal of Applied Sociology, (), -. doi: 10.22108/jas.2026.146659.2707
MLA
Sadidi, S. , , Asgharpourmasouleh, A. , and Akbari, H. . "The Paradox of Hope: An Exploration of Students’ Lived Experiences of Social and Political Hope", Journal of Applied Sociology, , , 2026, -. doi: 10.22108/jas.2026.146659.2707
HARVARD
Sadidi, S., Asgharpourmasouleh, A., Akbari, H. (2026). 'The Paradox of Hope: An Exploration of Students’ Lived Experiences of Social and Political Hope', Journal of Applied Sociology, (), pp. -. doi: 10.22108/jas.2026.146659.2707
CHICAGO
S. Sadidi , A. Asgharpourmasouleh and H. Akbari, "The Paradox of Hope: An Exploration of Students’ Lived Experiences of Social and Political Hope," Journal of Applied Sociology, (2026): -, doi: 10.22108/jas.2026.146659.2707
VANCOUVER
Sadidi, S., Asgharpourmasouleh, A., Akbari, H. The Paradox of Hope: An Exploration of Students’ Lived Experiences of Social and Political Hope. Journal of Applied Sociology, 2026; (): -. doi: 10.22108/jas.2026.146659.2707
)