The 2024 meeting on “Identity fragility: Psychological antecedents and consequences of living in permanent crisis and political instability”, sponsored by the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP) brought together 29 scholars (24 participants and 5 organizers) working on Social and Political Psychology in Milazzo, Sicily, from 18th to 20th April 2024 to discuss the psychological determinants and consequences of fragile identities, that is, collective group memberships that can emerge as a response to experiencing adverse events.

Plenary sessions were held at the historic building of Palazzo dei Marchesi D’Amico on Friday 19th and Saturday 20th April 2024, as per courtesy of the municipality of Milazzo, which supported the meeting for free.

The talks focused on Ukraine war and the conditions of refugees from Ukraine, historical narratives and fragile identities in post-conflict societies, intergroup attitudes, minorities and majorities’ identities, collective action, political processes and ideology, such as populism, social exclusion, immigration and migratory experiences, allyship and minority perceptions of solidarity.

At the end of the meeting, participants were offered a tour of Milazzo castle and they had the chance to visit this area, which is one of the main European crossroads for forced migrants and refugees.

The 2024 EASP meeting in Milazzo brought together a diverse group of scholars, which was well balanced in terms of geographical distribution (from all parts of Europe and from Asia and Australia), gender (15 women and 9 men among the participants, 4 women and 1 man among the organizers) and seniority (13 Senior scholars among the 24 participants). The diversity in the attendees helped create a vibrant climate and it made this meeting a timely opportunity to discuss key challenges that disadvantaged and advantaged group members face in the current societies, paving the way for the further development of the identity fragility research field.