Geographies of Young People: The Morally Contested Spaces of Identity

The public value of child-friendly space

“…People in this study did not perceive the playgrounds to be part of the public space, but rather places for children's use. Literature discusses processes of "othering" children in their use of public space (Aitken, 2001;Holloway and Valentine, 2000;Olwig and Gulløv, 2003;Valentine, 1996). This study supports this argument and suggests that child-centred spaces employ similar processes of "othering" adults (Weck, 2019;Wilson, 2013).…”

“…There is a vast literature exploring age as an organising principle for social control (Alanen, 2009;Alderson, 2000) and spatial segregation (Horschelmann and Blerk, 2012;Kraftl, 2006;Kylin and Bodelius, 2015;Olwig and Gulløv, 2003). Segregation and supervision emerged from fieldwork as the playground's main design requirement from the guardian perspective, representing the two main attributes of "proper" children's spaces (Aitken, 2001;Olwig and Gullov, 2003, p. 101); the fence being the physical structure that made both possible. Guardians often commented on how they felt more relaxed in the enclosed "safe" space:…”

“…recognition of children's agency is tempered by an awareness of its limits: social space is produced through relationships that, in the main, subordinate children to adults. (162) Child-friendly spaces are, therefore, not just places that children can use, but places that construct a definition of childhood and what is "proper" and "valuable" for this population group (See: Aitken, 2001;Gagen, 2000;G€ ulg€ onen and Corona, 2015;Holloway and Valentine, 2000;Loukaitou-Sideris, 2003;Rasmussen, 2004;Solomon, 2005;Valentine, 1996;Wilks, 2010). Led by a developmental perspective, child-friendly spaces often construct children as being in need of special treatment (Aerts, 2018;NIUA, 2016), informing spaces designed around "children's competencies", safety [1] (Lansdown, 2011;Woolcock and Steele, 2008) and security (Kyatta, 2004;McAllister, 2008), with an emphasis on scale, flexibility and segregation (Cilliers and Cornelius, 2019;Wessells and Kostelny, 2013;Wilks, 2010).…”

Re-imagining Pedagogies for Multimodal Selves

“…Digital geographies is a term I use to call attention to the terrain of practices, texts, and selves that are afforded through meaningful engagements with digital modalities (Vasudevan, 2010). This concept builds upon earlier work that explores the geographies of childhood and youth as sites of identity production and exploration (Aitken, 2001;Skelton & Valentine, 1998) and more recent conceptualizations of the ways in which communicative geographies are changing in a digital age (Crang, Crang, & May, 1999). In particular, studies of "cybergeographies" (Holloway & Valentine, 2003; for more on the digitally mediated geographies of children and youth, see also Hull & James, 2007) focus largely on the happenings that occur online, in virtual spaces.…”

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

“…We therefore centre Indigenous youth in our analysis not only for their involvement in activism and environmental movements but also given how state and community members mobilise the figure of “youth” as a proxy for hopes and fears over the future (Aitken 2001; Cole and Durham 2008; Jeffrey and Dyson 2008; Smith 2020). We also find that the category of youth in extractive contexts is a “social shifter” (Durham 2004:589)—a relational category in part built on age, but also tied to politics and ideology.…”