Collapsing contexts: social networking technologies in young people’s nightlife

In the latest discussions of children and young people’s new geographies of leisure and pleasure, one controversial issue has been how digital technologies co-produce and reconfigure young people’s everyday worlds. This article draws on semi-structured interviews with 40 young people who regularly use social networking technologies in their nightlife experiences in Zurich and Lausanne, two nightlife hubs in Switzerland. Informed by Danah Boyd’s concepts of ‘collapsing contexts’ and ‘imagined audiences’, this article enables a critical engagement with young people’s emerging understanding of their nightlife contexts, which are increasingly permeated by networking technologies. I show how social networking spaces facilitate the coming together, or collapse, of various social contexts which induce young people to imagine multiple audiences, including authority figures, in their nightlife practices. These collapsing contexts and imagined audiences, I argue, present new perspectives on debates about control and surveillance in young people’s contemporary urban nightlife.     

Grieving home

Drawing on the growing areas of research on emotional embodiment, this paper develops an understanding of the spatiality of grief as central to the discussion of young people's experiences of homelessness. In the context of my engagement with young homeless people in inner-city Sydney, I explore grief as central in shaping young people's everyday body–place relations. I argue that grief over often brutal past homes continues to haunt young people and impact on the ways in which they relate to place, including the place of their own body. I explore young people's displacement and grief-stricken forms of inhabitation as well and their discovery of ‘therapeutic’ places which allow the re-formation of more positive relations to place and self. I argue that while it is understood that grief and trauma are key causes of homelessness amongst young people, grief is rarely explored as an embodied practice, or as a key factor which continues to underpin trajectories of homelessness after initial exits from home.     

Freedom of the city: Contemporary issues and policy influences on children and young people's use of public open space in England

Following a reflection of childhood experiences of public open spaces in daily life the paper moves on to a discussion about definitions of public open space. Contemporary policy related to children, young people and public open space in England are then identified. This context is addressed as policy which directly affects public open space and policy areas, drawn from other political drivers, which have an indirect influence on children and young people's use of public open space. There is some reference to evidence which has fed into some of these policy areas. Teenagers who are skateboarders are used as an example of one group of young people who experience other—legal, social and physical—controls on their use of public open space.     

Everyday Politics of Fat

Abstract: This paper explores the everyday politics and lived experiences of young people who identify as fat, obese or overweight. Situated within the emerging interdisciplinary fields of fat studies, critical weight studies and critical geographies of body size, this paper gives voice to young people who are often marginalised and frequently stigmatised. I draw attention to the embodied relationalities and intersectionalities evident with the young people's narratives of body size as well as the structures of constraint that operate to reinforce the marginalisation they feel. I conclude by outlining the challenges that exist in transforming the everyday politics of fat.     

Loosening/tightening spaces in the geographies of hanging out

The article is based on research conducted with young people who spend their free time hanging out in a shopping mall and its surroundings in the city centre of Helsinki, Finland. ‘Geographies of hanging out’ is understood here as an interaction between the location and young people: the space offers affordances to the young people and thus affects their ways of being. At the same time, they give new meanings to the space by hanging out and thus take part in the production of that space. Empirical material gathered in the project includes the researcher's observations, in-depth interviews conducted with young people, youth workers, the police and the management of the mall and the photographs taken by the young participants. In this article, hanging out is interpreted as a process where ‘looseness’ and ‘tightness’ of space are negotiated and re-defined. Shopping malls are seen as spaces where boundaries between public and private are often blurred. The presence of young people can make these commercial spaces tighter or looser and thus change the nature of urban space not only for the young people, but for other urban dwellers, too.     

‘They never pass me the ball’: exposing ableism through the leisure experiences of disabled children,young people and their families

In this paper, we explore the participation of disabled children, young people and their families in leisure activities. Drawing on the accounts of disabled children, young people, and their parents and careers, we reflect on the leisure spaces that they access and record some of their experiences within them. Using the concept of ‘ableism’ [Campbell, F. K. 2009. Contours of Ableism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan] we interrogate the data gathered as part of a two-year project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council Does Every Child Matter, post-Blair? The interconnections of disabled childhoods' (RES-062-23-1138). By doing so we identify some of the inherent and embedded discriminations in favour of those children and young people who are perceived to be ‘able’ that simultaneously work to exclude the young ‘kinds of people’ [Hacking, I. 2007. “Kinds of People: Moving Targets.” Proceedings of the British Academy 151: 285–318] categorised as ‘disabled’ and their families from leisure facilities and opportunities. We suggest that currently, disabled families and children occupy a mix of ‘mainstream’, ‘segregated’ and ‘separate’ leisure spaces. We discuss the impact of occupying these spaces and ask what the experiences of accessing leisure by disabled children, young people and their families reveal about the processes and practices of ableism.     

Girlhood,participation and empowerment in Tanzania: climbing material and discursive walls

In this paper I reflect upon encounters with ‘young people’s participation’ during ethnographic research on girlhood and sexual agency with teenage girls in Tanzania. I argue that methodology which centralises participants’ experiences is particularly important in research on issues related to sex and sexuality, where young people’s voices are often disregarded or downplayed. However, such an approach might run up against a number of practical challenges. This paper draws on fieldwork conducted in two sites during 2014 and 2015 to show that attention to the networks of relationships within which young people are embedded and the structural conditions which might generate or obstruct sexual agency is essential for research which seeks to promote their meaningful participation.     

Young people's lived experience of the ‘street’ in North Lakes master planned estate

This article explores young people's lived experience of the ‘street’, defined as outdoor public/private spaces, such as streets, shopping centres, corner stores within a Master Planned Estate in Australia. A strong market-based planning rationale has significantly constrained young people's access to, and use of, public space and the public realm. Young people are often left with little option but to occupy spaces through paths of least resistance or subversive use of space. Private developers require stronger regulatory oversight and a shared vision with planning authorities for the creation of appropriate spaces for young people.     

Growing up in a tourist destination: negotiating space,identity and belonging

There is little research on children’s experiences of growing up in a popular tourist destination, where place and space are contested with visitors, migrants and temporary residents. Existing literature on young people’s experiences of their socio-spatial surroundings has focused predominantly on the rural/urban dichotomy, often neglecting to explore how identity and belonging are negotiated in complex community contexts such as tourist destinations. This paper reports on recent research that suggests that young people’s experiences of growing up in such an environment are nuanced and diverse, with their rich narratives disrupting socially constructed distinctions between the rural and the urban, merging experiences from both worlds.     

Hidden Child Workers: Young Carers in Zimbabwe

Drawing on an interview‐based case study of young people caring for dependent adult members of their households in Harare, this paper connects the experiences of young carers in Zimbabwe to global forces—namely the HIV/AIDS pandemic and economic liberalisation. It is argued, firstly, that care‐giving by young people is a largely hidden and unappreciated aspect of national economies which is growing as an outcome of conservative macroeconomic policies and the HIV/AIDS explosion. Secondly, that young people have a right to recognition of their work as work. Thirdly, while acknowledging that conceptualising childhood is problematic, there needs to be less emphasis on northern myths of childhood as a time of play and innocence and more attention on defending children's rights to work as well as to be supported in their work under appropriate circumstances. The articulation between global processes and the localised experiences of individual children as providers of care within the home contributes to efforts to re‐introduce social reproduction as an important (but often missing) aspect of debates around globalisation. In addition, this article adds to the growing literature on the geographies of childhood while tackling the imbalance within that literature, whereby working young people and those of the global South are relatively neglected. Suggestions are offered in the conclusions for policy recommendations to recognise and support young carers in Africa, while calling for further research.     

‘It's well good sitting in the storecupboard just talking about what we do’: considering the spaces/places of research within children's geographies

The power imbalance between adults and young people in research relations has been well documented, including the necessity of adopting appropriate methods when working with young participants. However, the actual spaces and places in which research occurs remains relatively neglected within children's geographies, despite its methodological significance and the important ethical and spatial issues it raises. The purpose of this short article is to offer an intervention into the ways in which the spaces/places of research, even the very small, almost insignificant sites, have to be considered as integral to research planning and implementation. Drawing on recent school-based research with young teenagers, the paper will demonstrate how a storecupboard became constructed as an important research space/place within the school. As an alternative, liminal or ‘thirdspace’ the storecupboard allowed for a more nuanced understanding of teenage practices and performances than previous classroom-based research encounters.     

The Precarity of Young People’s Housing Experiences in a Rural Context

Young people’s housing, economic and labour market circumstances have become increasingly insecure due to the combined effects of the 2007/2008 economic crisis, neoliberal welfare reforms, rising costs of higher education and the shortage of affordable housing. Discussions of young peoples’ experiences in these domains have largely neglected their spatial variability but evidence suggests that young people living in rural parts of the UK have distinctive experiences of housing, which are closely connected to labour markets and educational opportunities. By drawing on qualitative data from young people and housing professionals, this article explores some of these rural distinctions and frames them within theoretical debates about the ‘precariat’. It argues for a more theoretically informed and geographically nuanced understanding of contemporary housing issues as rural youth potentially face greater precarity than their urban peers.     

Defining dreams: young mothers’ agency in constructions of space

Understanding young mothers’ emic, or insiders’, spatial experiences is critical to realizing how their agency manifests in constructing and producing spaces, as opposed to common images of them as passive, vulnerable women living in deprived neighbourhoods. Set in the shrinking region of Parkstad Limburg in the Netherlands, this article draws on in-depth interviews and long-term participant observation in order to explore which modalities of agency emerge from young mothers’ spatial engagements with their neighbourhoods and homes. This article contributes to greater diversity and more agentic representations of young mothers than commonly perceived, and to a nuanced understanding of agency. The findings reveal that these women are continually navigating the social, physical and economic–political dimensions of space, from which four modalities of agency emerge: (1) ‘adhering to norms’, (2) ‘defining dreams’, (3) ‘challenging rules’ and (4) ‘considering options’. Contrary to understandings within a dominant independence-oriented discourse of agency as taking subversive action, this article shows that agency occurs in tacit, routine spatial practices, whilst navigating through individual circumstances and sociospatial structures and norms.     

Councils,consultations and community: rethinking the spaces for children and young people's participation1

The participation of children and young people in decisions that affect them is now mainstream in social and public policy in the UK. Yet for many young people formal participation opportunities are abstracted from everyday lives and concerns. Children may not feel empowered despite the existence of formal structures for participation. This raises questions about how ‘spaces’ for participation are constructed. This paper critiques prevailing models of participation in formal structures and instead, argues for the need to rethink children's participation as a more diverse set of social processes rooted in everyday environments and interactions.     

‘Living Liminality’: everyday experiences of asylum seekers in the ‘Direct Provision’ system in Ireland

Mechanisms to exclude people seen as ‘other’ which were once considered exceptional have now become normal. Global patterns of increased state security lead to people on the move or seeking protection being detained, dispersed and deported, their lives treated as ‘waste’ or ‘reject’. The Irish ‘Direct Provision’ system is part of an increasing network of liminal, or threshold, spaces, situated between and within borders, in which such people are detained or forced to wait in often inhumane conditions and often for years at a time. Based on ethnographic participatory photographic research, this article explores the ways in which imposed liminality plays out in people’s everyday lives in ‘Direct Provision’. The article looks at how liminality is lived in spatial and temporal terms and develops the idea of ‘ontological liminality’, a means of expressing the ways in which a chronic sense of fear, insecurity, invisibility and a highly controlled existence are lived and internalized; it also shows the ways in which people negotiate this imposed liminality through everyday practices, creating various forms of attachment, engagement and belonging. Exploring the concept of liminality in this context holds broader implications not only for understanding experiences of people waiting or held in the increasing number of refugee camps, border zones and detention centres in and beyond Europe, but also provides insight into the architectures of exclusion created by states to contain or exclude the ‘other’.     

Narrating intersections of gender and dwarfism in everyday spaces

Dwarfs, midgets, even freaks, are among the terms that have been used to label little people. Feminist theorists have argued that discursive identities of women prevent any meaningful essentialised analysis of their experiences. Similarly, disability researchers have argued against generalising the experiences of disabled individuals. This paper explores the intersection of gender and dwarfism through the narratives of four women who are little people. Findings suggest that the ways women, who are little people, negotiate public spaces are affected by discourses of gender, disability and common conceptions of what is physically normal. Furthermore, these discourses have material implications in the everyday lives of these women. A brief historical overview of dwarfism is followed by narratives that describe experiences in public spaces, perceptions of height related to age and capability, gendered spaces and sexual stereotypes, uncomfortable spaces, violations of personal space and transportation. This paper provides a partial perspective on how discourses of dwarfism are manifest in social spaces and the built environment. Despite these significant commonalities that little people shared with other disabled people, there are socio‐spatial experiences that appear to be unique to people with dwarfism .     

Rights,participatory spaces and the daily fabric of children and young people’s voices in Switzerland

ABSTRACT

The past two decades have witnessed an unprecedented rise in public policies aimed at hearing children and young people’s voices, which typically entail creating supportive participatory spaces. While this political project is usually presented as a radical move towards a more inclusive society, it raises critical questions about whose voices are being represented, how, why, by whom and for whom. Drawing upon recent ethnographic research on childhood and youth policies in Switzerland, this article explores how children and young people’s voices are produced in concrete situations. It studies how the institutional and material characteristics of participatory spaces and situated interactions shape which voices will actually be heard. The research highlights that, despite their inclusive ambitions, participatory spaces paradoxically exclude young persons who fail to articulate, orally or in written, linguistically, morally or politically legitimate voices.     

Drinking in the dark: shedding light on young people’s alcohol consumption experiences

Abstract

This paper draws on 12 months of ethnographic research to explore the drinking experiences of young people, aged 15–24, living in the suburban case study locations of Chorlton and Wythenshawe, Manchester, UK. This paper moves beyond the contemporary geographical imaginary of alcohol consumption as a city centre issue, to explore suburban indoor and outdoor drinking cultures. Through paying attention to atmospheres of darkness and lightness, I show how drinkscapes are active constituents of young people’s drinking occasions, rather than passive backdrops. More than this, I illustrate how young people transform dark and light drinkscapes, thereby shaping the drinking practices of themselves and others. Through looking at the interplay between the curating of an atmosphere, and the experience of that atmosphere when bodies, and practices are inserted into it, this paper offers a different take on the ‘drinking at home is bad, drinking in public spaces is good’ argument, with original policy suggestions.     

Bosnia‐Herzegovina

Abstract

As a newly emerging sub-field within human geography, carceral geography offers a unique perspective and understanding of closed spaces. Reflecting this development, three types of closed institutions provide the background for this empirical paper. The nature and experience of these spaces of confinement are explored by using in-depth qualitative interviews with young women in Scotland. The focus on gender-/age-specific characteristics and physical and spatial features reveals the processes of being ‘locked up’, of the perception of confinement and emotional responses to prison, secure care and closed psychiatry. The young women's accounts of these closed institutions are seldom heard in discourses on crime and punishment, providing an in-depth insight into these otherwise enclosed spaces. Considering the geography of three carceral systems, this study extends beyond physical detainment and works towards an understanding of the carceral experience as an emplaced, gendered, embodied, emotional and often repetitive practice. This paper is based on a larger empirical study and uses selected results of this more extensive data to exemplify ‘the carceral’ in this particular context.     

‘Hanging out in Runescape’: Identity,Work and Leisure in the Virtual Playground

This article explores young people's practices in the virtual spaces of online gaming communities. Based on a three-year field-study of virtual worlds, it considers how young people construct and maintain identities within virtual social systems. The article discusses the relationship between the material and virtual aspects of young people's leisure. It suggests that the boundaries between these domains are porous. Virtual worlds offer spaces for the imagination and can enhance agency and, potentially, resistance. However, virtuality is no ‘liberated space’ and it incorporates norms and practices that often mirror those of the material world.