Intergenerational Solidarity and Economic Resilience in Times of Crisis: Evidence from Moroccan Families

Abstract This study examines how Moroccan households mobilize intergenerational solidarity during recurring economic shocks (COVID-19 and inflation) and argues that family life constitutes a key site of informal Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE), where everyday routines cultivate learning about resource management, care and collective problem-solving. Addressing a gap in ESE/ESD research on crisis-time family learning, we analyse how informal support both enables and constrains sustainability-oriented action competence beyond schooling. The study adopts a qualitative design combining 65 semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observations and household document analysis across 28 urban and rural families (Fès–Meknès region). Data were analysed through a grounded theory approach and interpreted using an integrated lens of family resilience, capability theory, gender analysis and action competence (critical understanding, participatory/practical skills and individual/collective efficacy). Findings reveal three dominant solidarity configurations: (1) extended parental support to adult children, (2) reciprocal cohabitation shaped by gendered expectations and (3) remittance transfers from young migrants to older relatives. These mechanisms function as informal pedagogies of sustainability (repair–reuse routines, budgeting trade-offs, neighbourhood mutual-aid governance) that strengthen household resilience, yet also generate emotional fatigue, uneven caregiving burdens and gendered inequalities. We show how solidarity operates as both social protection and a pathway for uneven capability conversion, along gender lines. The paper concludes with implications for ESE/ESD actors and policy makers to support family-based learning ecologies while advancing care justice and equitable role redistribution. We propose “intergenerational solidarity resilience” as a concept for analysing how informal solidarities generate – and unevenly distribute – capabilities for sustainability-oriented action.