Is there a place for children's geographers in the policy arena?

Despite a limited number of notable exceptions, children's geographers are not generally engaged with the policy process. Drawing on research carried out for the UK's Department for Education and Skills, this paper will argue that children's geographers are ideally placed to explore a number of important research questions appertaining to the impact of policy reform on children's lives. It suggests that by actively engaging with the policy process, we, as children's geographers, can bring a fresh and important perspective to the policy arena.     

Twenty-five years of children's geographies: a planner's perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the key trends and changes that have taken place in my 25 years of children's geographies research. I reflect on the growing awareness of children in research but also the continued marginalisation of children and children's concerns in my own planning profession, and the continuing need for a greater presence for Majority world children in research. I ask if we as children's geographers can rise to the growing global challenges children face. To do so will require greater interdisciplinary work and recognition of the ever more complex and dynamic nature of societies if we are to create a robust forward-looking research agenda with and for children.     

Walking with preschool‐aged children to explore their local wellbeing affordances

An increasingly well‐developed body of research uses neighbourhood walks to better understand primary school children's experiences of local environments, yet virtually nothing is known about preschool‐aged children's connections to their neighbourhoods. A reason for this omission is the commonly held view that preschool children lack competency to reflect on lived environments beyond playgrounds, kindergartens, and other confined settings that dominate early childhood. However, preliterate children walk around, use, and create intimate relationships with local environments as shown by 10 children aged 3–5 years from Dunedin in New Zealand during go‐along interviews. We asked each to walk us around their locale, explaining and pointing out favourite and less beloved places and activities. In this article, we advance two arguments: first that preschoolers are knowledgeable meaning makers of place; second that walking with them is a key step to understanding their life worlds and provides a way for preliterate and preverbal children to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of their spatial worlds, including as research participants. We challenge the idea that children of this age lack large‐scale spatial competency and understanding. Walking with them generated an in‐depth appreciation of their experiences of environments and revealed deep connections they had with their locales at varied scales. The work enables us to offer novel insights into spatial competency, sociospatial complexities, and the multiple dimensions of young children's wellbeing affordances in urban environments. Such insights are highly relevant for geographers, planners, and others who shape children's urban environments.     

Rethinking ‘trafficking’ in children's migratory processes: the role of social networks in child labour migration in Bangladesh

Although the academic and policy literature on children's migration is growing, an in-depth look of the operationalisation of networks in child labour migration is missing. The focus of policy-makers on human trafficking draws attention to children's vulnerability and their exploitation at the hands of traffickers. In the absence of research focusing on children's migration more broadly, this emphasis on trafficking risks misreading children's migratory processes. Ethnographic research undertaken in Bangladesh shows that while some exploitation may occur, it co-exists alongside gendered relations of protection. This draws attention to the need for more in-depth examination of children's networks in migration.     

Why does child trafficking policy need to be reformed? The moral economy of children's movement in Benin and Ethiopia

This paper challenges policy discourses that frame children's independent movement as intrinsically exploitative and threatening to their development. Drawing on research with children and adults in Benin and Ethiopia, two countries caught up in current efforts to eradicate child migration and the trafficking with which it has become associated, the paper critiques assumptions about children's vulnerability and physical dependence and contests the idea that appropriate childhood is necessarily fixed spatially within stable family structures. It, thus, situates children's migration within socio-cultural and economic contexts and suggests that it should be understood as part of a moral economy that confounds simplistic paradigms that conflate migration with trafficking. Policy suggestions are offered for how best to secure children's well-being through acknowledgement of the important relationship between mobility and child maturation.     

'To Go Back up the Side Hill': Memories,Imaginations and Reveries of Childhood

This paper offers theoretical reflections on how adult researchers access, process and represent the 'worlds' of children and childhood. Recognising previous claims and warnings issued by geographers, it is argued that researchers can and should take advantage of the fact that all adult researchers have once been children, meaning that there are always fragments of connection allowing 'us' at least some intimation of children's geographies as experiencede and imagined from within . Gaston Bachelard's (1969a) 'poetics of reverie' is partially built upon just such a sense of connection, laying out the basis for a phenomenology of childhood wherein adults seek an imaginative revisiting of the reveries--the absent-minded daydreaming--of 'bored' and 'idle' children. This paper provides a critical exegesis of Bachelard's work in this respect, emphasising the importance to his thinking of geography, landscape and environment as both elements within and embodied spurs to childhood reverie. Questions about the admixture of adult imagination and memory in the recovery of childhood reverie are considered, and conclusions are reached about what can usefully be taken from Bachelard's 'poetics of childhood', notably in terms of a methodology of 'not doing too much' as an adult researcher in this field. Claims are also made about needing to take more seriously than hitherto the mundane reveries of childhood, those contained in children's own undirected jottings, drawings and play, as a possible source for future inquiries into children's geographies.     

‘The best thing ever’: how children's popular culture matters

This paper reflects upon a popular cultural event which was, briefly, for a particular grouping of children in the UK, ‘the best thing ever’: namely the release of the CD-single Reach, by the British pop group S Club 7. I suggest that this event was illustrative of manifold cultural forms and practices which—being ostensibly banal, fun, faddish, lowbrow and ‘childish’—continue to go largely unheralded by many social/cultural geographers. Against this grain, this paper presents three apprehensions of S Club 7’s significance. First, I restate a particular case made via Anglo-American cultural studies that ‘children's popular culture’, ought to be taken more seriously in contexts salient to social/cultural geographers. Second, I detail how the S Club 7 phenomenon existed, practically and materially, and mattered, in some children's everyday lives. Third, refracting cultural geographers' recent apprehensions of affective, evental aspects of cultural practices, I suggest that the pop cultural phenomenon described herein mattered (to those children, there and then) in ways which elude and exceed canonical scholarly habits of writing/knowing popular cultural phenomena.     

‘I might know when I'm an adult’: making sense of children's relationships with nature

This paper reports subjective experiences in nature of 5 children aged 6–10 years collected during a 5-day camp in a botanical garden. Creative expressive visual methods and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. Inductive analysis produced the follow themes: children being positioned to take care of nature and to be taken care of by nature, as well as nature needing protection from children and children needing protection from nature. The roles of gatekeepers in mediating attraction to and repulsion from nature were also highlighted. We examine these in the context of socio-cultural constraints and invitations that children experience in developing these relationships. These themes are discussed using a theoretical framework that blends Vygotsky's socio-cultural development theory with Gibson's theory of affordances. Findings contribute to a more integrated understanding of how ecological psychology and social psychology can inform our understanding of children's relationships with nature; in particular, how children's experiences with nature are mediated by socio-cultural factors. By adding to our understanding of how children develop relationships with nature, practitioners can more effectively facilitate experiences that encourage pro-environmental and stewardship attitudes and behaviors as well as result in positive health and development outcomes for children. This paper contributes to the children's geographies literature by strengthening the theoretical foundation from which geographers approach child–nature relationships.     

‘In the best interests of the child’: juggling the geography of children's gardens (between adult agendas and children's needs)

This review paper presents literature, particularly in children's geographies, in support of the proposition that the rationales for the current children's garden movement flourishing particularly in the United States, albeit well-intentioned, continue to be dominated by adult discourses acting ‘in the best interests of the child’. The paper concludes that broadening the debate on ‘children and gardens’ through inclusion of research that focuses on children's competence and empowerment offers a different perspective of what children might want from these spaces. This highlights new directions for research on children's gardens which would focus this garden typology more on children's needs than adult agendas, and therefore contribute positively to development of these gardens as sustainable environments for children's learning and enjoyment of nature.     

Situating (Young) teenagers in geographies of children and youth

The past decade has been an exciting and productive period in the study of children's and young people's geographies. The principal aim of this paper is to contribute to this field of research by presenting the arguments for a more substantive focus on teenagers' geographies. Firstly, the terms ‘children’ and ‘young people’ are constructed as synonymous and used interchangeably and the complex transitional positioning of young teenagers—situated between childhood, youth and adulthood—has been relatively neglected. Secondly, many researchers have been engaged in developing methods, which aim to challenge unequal power relations between adult researchers and young participants but little focus has been placed on utilizing participants' own constructions of themselves. The final argument for a more coherent focus on teenagers' geographies rests on the contribution that geographers can make to challenging negative stereotypes of teenagers within policy and the media. The paper concludes by outlining what form an emphasis on teenagers' geographies may take.     

It all used to be better? Different generations on continuity and change in urban children's daily use of space

There is much speculation about children's changing space–time behaviour, yet little is actually known about it. The study reported on here, which was based on oral histories, statistical and archive research, and observations in Amsterdam, compared children's use of space during the 1950s and early 1960s with that of today. The public space of the street used to be a child space, but in two of the three streets studied it has been transformed into an adult space. Conversely, private home space—traditionally the domain of adults—has become a child space. Over time, children's geographies have become more diverse. In addition to the traditional childhood of outdoor children, we distinguish indoor children and children of the backseat generation. These two new types are characterized by a decrease in playing outdoors and an increase in adult supervision. Although this may be regarded as a loss, new children's activities have emerged, outdoors as well as indoors. Contemporary cities can be exciting places for children, but it is clear that inequality by class has become more manifest. Both new geographical childhoods have resulted in a decrease in children's agency, which may have a negative impact on segregation patterns.     

Going to a home you have never been to: the return migration of Mexican and American-Mexican children

Focusing on children's experience-driven cosmologies revealed through interviews and survey responses, this article seeks to analyse and interpret the way children explain their migration from the USA to Mexico within the context of increases in both voluntary and forced return migration of Mexicans since 2005. It draws from representative samples of students (aged 9–16) enrolled in both public and private schools in several Mexican states, which are complemented by data drawn from in-depth interviews that complicate the sociological typologies about migration, motives for migration, and returnees. The goals of this article are as follows: (a) to illuminate and value children's own narratives about their migration experiences and (b) to discuss the contribution of diverse and apparently contradictory micro-, meso-, and macro-level approaches in studying migrant children.     

Independent Child Migration and Education in Ghana

Drawing on interviews with young migrants who have moved from rural, farming households in northeastern Ghana to rural and urban households in central and southern Ghana, this article explores the inter‐connections between children's migration and children's access to formal and non‐formal education. In contrast to the positive light in which education is usually presented, the findings of the research suggest a more ambiguous and complex picture, and illuminate both positive and negative aspects of the linkages between education and children's independent migration.     

Home divided,home reconstructed: children in rural–urban migration in contemporary China

This article is centred on the geographies of Chinese children in contemporary China – an area which has been problematically overlooked in geographical literature on childhood. In employing unique mobile research methods by tracking migrant children through the migration cycle, the author conducted an extensive ethnographic study of rural migrant children aged 8–17 in China. The article explores rural children's everyday lived experience of migration and how migrant children negotiate and articulate home and belonging while on the move. The study demonstrates the dynamic environment that migrant children inhabit, the fluid, contextual and mobile nature of their life in rural migrant households, their migrancy and their active involvement in homemaking.     

Family migration decision-making,step-migration and separation: children's experiences in European migrant worker families

Intra-European family migration has extended the realm in which families live and work in Europe. This paper joins a limited number of recent attempts to analyse family migration using a children-in-families approach [Bushin, N. 2009. Researching Family Migration Decision-Making: A Children-in-Families Approach.” Population, Space and Place, 15: 429–443]. In contrast to existing studies on this theme, our focus is on children's migration decision-making, experiences of step-migration and experiences of separation from parents during processes of intra-European family migration. Little is known about children's views and experiences of step-migration and separation from their parent(s) during family migration. Such experiences have implications for the spatial and temporal construction of family and childhood in Europe, where transnational mobility is increasing. This paper discusses children's experiences of separation in two research contexts, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland, to illustrate common features of the phenomena. The paper analyses family relationships relevant to migration decisions and explains their effects on children's agency, as well as on family integrity itself.     

'It's only as stupid as you are': Children's and adults' negotiation of ICT competence at home and at school

Contemporary discourses about children's use of information and communication technologies (ICT)—which both celebrate children's command of a technology which is seen to be our future, and raise fears that this technology is putting children's emotional well-being at risk—are problematic, resting as they do on essentialist ideas about children, and overt technological determinism. Drawing instead on work within the new social studies of childhood, and the sociology of science and technology, we identify a need for research which examines how children and technology come together in diverse communities of practice. The communities of practice we study are the home- and school-based ICT usage of British school children in the late 1990s. Our research identifies the different ways in which children and adults negotiate children's technical and emotional competence in relation to ICT, and uncovers the varied meanings of childhood and technology which emerge for adults and children in these two socio-spatial environments. These findings not only highlight the spatiality of children's and adults' performances and understandings of ICT competence, but also how these are constituted through the socio-spatial relations which shape the off-line spaces of home and school.     

Good sitting,looking and listening: the regulation of young children's emotions in the classroom

Increasing attention has been given in schools in recent years to emotions as part of children's development and as core to their learning. Yet limited attention has been paid to emotions in childhood research. Based on findings from an ethnographic study within a Scottish school with children aged 6–7 years, this article explores the construction and negotiation of emotions as a part of children's classroom experience. Children's bodies and emotions are highly controlled in the classroom but despite this control, children actively construct emotions in their everyday lives.     

Children's Understanding of Aerial Photographs

As aerial photographs are widely used in geography education, it is important to know how children's understanding of these representations develops through the school years. We review research that has addressed children's understanding of the content of aerial photographs, and we describe a series of studies in which children used information from aerial photographs to carry out spatial tasks in a large space. We demonstrate that using an aerial photograph can be an aid to subsequently using a map, and we discuss the educational applications of the research with aerial photographs.     

Making meaningful space for oneself: photo-based dialogue with siblings of refugee children with severe withdrawal symptoms

The current study explores the use of children's photographs to establish a dialogue about everyday life with healthy siblings of refugee children with severe withdrawal symptoms (SWS). Asylum-seeking refugee children in Sweden with SWS have been officially observed since 2000, yet research has overlooked their healthy siblings. We studied three healthy siblings and found photography to be an applicable communicative tool. When parents focus their attention on the ill child, the healthy children create space for themselves and indicate both resilience and vulnerability. We suggest that, together with a dialogue, children's own photographs are useful for research with refugee children in vulnerable situations.     

‘A dog who I know quite well’: everyday relationships between children and animals

Adult discourses often represent relationships between children and animals as beneficial for children's psycho-social development or as reflecting a ‘natural’ connection between children and animals. In contrast, this paper draws on recent work in sociology and geography where human–animal relationships are seen as socially situated and where conventional constructions of the human–animal boundary are questioned. Focussing on children's own perspectives on their connections with animals, it is argued that these relationships can also be understood within the social and relational context of children's lives. It is argued that this ‘relational’ orientation to children's relationships with animals might significantly enhance our understanding of children's lives and also open up ways of thinking about the place of animals in children's (and adults') social lives.