Sketching culture,sketching nature: uncovering anchors of everyday nature for urban youth

There has, historically, been considerable uncertainty over the meaning of ‘urban nature’ and, therefore, the extent to which culture and nature are bound in the urban setting. We explore, in this paper, the spatiality of everyday nature as experienced by youth in an urban setting. To do so, we draw on the results of a participatory mapping activity that was designed to elicit information about where youth felt most connected to nature while in the city. Using sketch-map survey instruments, we collected hand-drawn responses from forty-three high school students in the downtown core of Tacoma, Washington. Data were digitized and analyzed in a GIS, and results were revealing of the contingency of the ‘nature’ concept in urban space as well as the centrality of ‘loose’ space to urban experiences that are evocative of being in nature.     

Ethiopian students' relationship with their environment: implications for environmental and climate adaptation programmes

Historically the voices of young people have been excluded from research and debates about how to respond to environmental degradation and climate change. To include the perspectives of young people in the climate change and adaptation debate, we conducted a Photovoice and draw-and-write project with 29 school students in Ethiopia, through which students were given a platform to explore their social representations of the environment. Thematic analysis of our findings suggested that young people have a deep appreciation of the moral, health-related and economic importance of the environment, a commitment to preserving it and a sense of responsibility and agency in relation to contributing to this preservation. Students saw environmental degradation as reversible, through a combination of commitment by themselves, local government and the global community. We conclude by discussing ways our findings might best be taken up in school-level programmes to strengthen youths’ existing social networks for the consolidation of ‘green’ identities, action and activism.     

The Effects of a Campaign on Awareness and Participation Among Local Youth at the Lenggong Valley World Heritage Site,Malaysia

The capacity of a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site (WHS) to sustain its designated criteria into the future is a function of how valuable local residents perceive the WHS to be, and how motivated they are to contribute toward efforts to maintain its status. In June 2012, Malaysia’s Lenggong Valley became a WHS. We investigate the effectiveness of a campaign targeting young local residents to increase their awareness of the importance of preserving the heritage of Lenggong. We undertook a questionnaire — designed to assess participants’ awareness of the value of the WHS and their willingness to participate in efforts to maintain the WHS — aimed at students from all three secondary schools in Lenggong before and after the campaign. In all, 175 completed questionnaires were analysed: the data revealed that the campaign had a significant effect on improving participants’ awareness of the value of the WHS and on improving their willingness to participate in WHS conservation activities.     

Opportunities,challenges, and transitions: educational aspirations of Pakistani migrant youth in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

Through the experiences of Pakistani-migrant families in Hong Kong, this paper explores ethnic minority students’ aspirations for education, work and the future in a context where education is highly valued but also extremely competitive. The first part depicts how Pakistani youth and their parents articulate their aspirations and opportunities and investigates the sociopolitical changes in education that are creating new opportunities for young Pakistani students. The second part considers the challenges from the larger Hong Kong society and within the Pakistani community that may hamper aspirations. The last part examines transitions and promises and the ways Pakistani youth negotiate for better futures. This article delineates the intertwining dynamics of cultural consensus, cultural dissonance and children's agency as the youth navigate the terrain of education and career.     

‘Knowledge that moves’: emotions and affect in policy and research with young migrants

ABSTRACT

Migration is an emotional experience, and so is the policy and research work associated with it. Yet, discussions on emotions and affect remain largely absent from the literature on children and youth migration. Writing auto-ethnographically, I revisit my research with/about young Lao migrants with the aim of teasing out how emotions, of young migrants, of my own and in policy making emerged in relation to various dimensions of young people’s migration. On this basis I make the case for appreciating emotions as knowledge. While emotions are ‘moving’ in an affective sense, I proceed by arguing the productive dimension of emotions through the idea of the emotive as ‘knowledge that moves’. I substantiate this point by discussing instances in which emotions as a particular form of knowledge ‘move’ research decisions, policy making processes, theorizing the youthful dimension of migration as well as the interpersonal relations through which ethnographic research is realized.     

Indigenous Youth and Decolonial Futures: Energy and Environmentalism among the Diné in the Navajo Nation and the Lepchas of Sikkim,India

In India and the United States, Lepcha and Diné youth are articulating decolonial futures that diverge from past aspirations. Rather than demanding big infrastructure such as dams or power plants, Indigenous youth forward decolonial visions that reimagine the landscape and energy technologies. In this article, we suggest that Lepcha and Diné activists are articulating a youthful decolonial futurity—a vision for the future where their generation and the ones to follow can flourish in their own territories and on their own terms. We propose youthful decolonial futurity as a prefigurative politics specific to Indigenous youth, who view their activism as integral to creating a future where their communities have more control over decision-making processes and their ancestral territories. What emerges is a consideration of the role of Indigenous youth in building a language and politics of decolonisation against the roles of power brokers, elites, and naysayers.     

‘It’s good but it’s not enough’: the relational geographies of social policy and youth mentoring interventions

Developing a critical analysis of the relational and situated practices of social policy, this paper draws on an evaluation of an early intervention project in Scotland (UK) where volunteer adult mentors supported young people ‘at risk’ of offending or antisocial behaviour. Contributing to ‘enlivened’ accounts of social practice, we explore how practices of mentoring developed through the co-presence of mentor and young person in the often transitory spaces of care which characterized the ‘diversionary activities’ approach in the project. We expand the notion of the relational in social practice beyond the care-recipient dyad to include wider networks of care (families, programme workers, social institutions). The paper explores how such social interventions might both be ‘good’ for the young people involved, and yet recognize critiques that more individualized models of intervention inevitably have limitations which make them ‘not enough’ to deal with structural inequalities and disadvantages. Acknowledging the impacts of neoliberalism, we argue critical attention to diverse situated relational practices points to the excessive nature of engagement in social policy and provides scope for transformative practice where young people’s geographies can be ‘upscaled’ to connect to the realms of social policy and practice.     

Spatial variations and clustering in the rates of youth unemployment and NEET: A comparative analysis of Italy,Spain, and the UK

We investigate the “determinants” of spatial variations in youth unemployment and NEET rates, and the presence of spatial clusters, for Italy, Spain and the UK. We aggregate Labour Force Survey data for the period 1993–2018 to a “regional” level. We find that youths are sensitive to aggregate labor market conditions and a discouraged worker effect. In the UK and Spain, temporary jobs are more likely to be preferred to part-time jobs, whereas in Italy the opposite occurs. There is evidence of spatial clustering of youth unemployment and NEET rates. We discuss the implications for place-based regional and labor market policies.     

Producing Vancouver's (hetero)normative nightscape

The article argues, through an examination of Vancouver's entertainment district as an actively produced ‘civilizing’ space dominated by private enterprise, that it is important to understand the ‘mainstream’ as a grounded site which produces, maintains and reiterates the moral contours of heterosexuality (among other things) within the city. Nightclubs in particular, experienced as spaces of hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity, offer a prime example of how the union of governmentality, surveillance and private enterprise work together in the maintenance and regulation of social conformity. Drawing upon an ethnographic study from 2005 to 2006, I explore the entertainment district and highlight young adults' perceptions of its nightlife economy and how space, hegemonic sexuality and nightlife collide.