Spaces of the street: Socio-spatial mobility and exclusion of youth in Recife

The ‘street’ and ‘youth’ have long been issues of social concern and the subject of research both in Brazil and elsewhere. The perception and experiences of youth in relation to the street, however, and the corresponding gender and class relations which permeate these, remain an under-researched topic. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in low- and middle-income neighbourhoods in Recife, this paper shows how the street consists of different spaces and how the youth experience corresponding layers of socio-spatial exclusions and inclusions which vary over time.     

Surviving through movement: the mobility of urban youth in Ghana

In Africa, young people are engaging with a globalised world of flows and movements but are coming of age in environments characterised by uncertainty, economic hardship and unemployment. Drawing upon research conducted in Madina, a suburb of Accra, a social navigation perspective is adopted to explore young people's everyday mobility and their aspirations for future mobility. By drawing attention to the meanings young people ascribe to movement, and by analysing their movements as tactics of social navigation, the importance of spatial mobility to young people's everyday well-being and their processes of social becoming are illustrated. Young people find that their mobility is bounded by a range of factors including labour market characteristics, gender and generational relations, and their spatial location on the outskirts of the city and the margins of the world. However, neither their daily mobility nor their spatial imagination is restricted to Madina; real or imagined travel takes them to other parts of the city, into rural areas and across the nation's borders. Through illustrating how significant mobility can be for everyday survival, this paper contributes to ‘the mobility turn’ in the social sciences which has overlooked the importance of mobility for livelihoods in the global South.     

Jules Sion,Alan Grant Ogilvie and the college des Ecossais in Montpellier: A network of geographers

The ‘new geography’ propounded by Vidal de La Blache in the early years of the 20th century was diffused by his protégés in France and abroad. Field classes played a significant role in the process, with the Collège des Ecossais, established by Patrick Geddes at Montpellier, providing an ideal base for British students to study the natural and cultural landscapes of the component pays of southern France. The careers of Jules Sion and Alan Grant Ogilvie are explored in this article, and practical links between French and British geographers are exemplified through experiences of fieldwork in the Languedoc before and after World War II. Networks of professional contact and friendship are vital in understanding how the practice of modern geography has been shaped.