Youth, Place and Theories of Belonging

Sadia Habib is the author of Learning and Teaching British Values: Policies and Perspectives on British Identities (2017). She has nine years of teaching experience in UK schools and colleges. She holds a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, where she conducted arts-based educational research with young Londoners to learn about their conceptions of local, national and transnational identities and belongings, as well as to observe the critical pedagogies involved in identity work in the classroom. She is co-founder of The Riz Test and co-editor of The Bookslamist.Michael R. M. Ward is a Lecturer in Social Sciences at Swansea University. His work centres on the performance of working-class masculinities within and beyond educational institutions. He is the author of the award-winning book From Labouring to Learning: Working-Class Masculinities, Education and De-Industrialization (2015) and co-convener of the British Sociological Association Education Study Group. Dr Ward has held visiting scholarships in Canada, the USA, Iceland and Germany.

"What I like about this book is that it is innovative and challenging, bringing new thinking to Youth Studies. It is taking the work on 'belonging' and 'place' to another level and showing how these concepts can help us understand young people's lives... a must read for people working in the Youth Studies field." Alan France, Professor of Sociology, University of Auckland"This is a wonderful collection of chapters theorizing the relationships between young people, place and belonging. Not only does it include researchers from a range of places around the globe, but it also includes a significant range of theoretical perspectives on belonging. More than that as well as some world-renowned youth studies scholars, it highlights the critical contributions of emerging and new researchers. A rich, illuminating and compelling read!" Barbara Comber, Research Professor, University of South Australia"In this timely and exceptional edited collection, an international set of social theorists offer up new forms and diverse ways of theorizing and connecting young people’s sense of place, space, identity and belonging; taking readers into some of the most forward-thinking provocations in sociology today."Pamela Burnard, Professor of Creativities, University of Cambridge

• 1. Introduction: investigating youth and belonging 2. Expanding theoretical boundaries from youth transitions to belonging and new materiality 3. Surveillance, belonging and community spaces for young people from refugee backgrounds in Australia 4. Queering Timmies: theorising LGBTQ youth claiming and making space in Surrey, BC, Canada 5. ‘Adults decided our fate’: children and young people navigating space, territory and conflicting identities and the ‘new’ Northern Ireland 6. Travel imaginaries of youth in New York City: history, ethnicity and the politics of mobility 7. Women, spatial scales and belonging: signalling inequality in Latin America 8. Brotherhood and belonging: creating pedagogic spaces for positive discourses of Aboriginal youth 9. Belonging without believing? Making space for marginal masculinities at the Young Men’s Christian Association in the United Kingdom and The Gambia 10. Precarious class positions in Spam City: youth, place and class in the ‘missing middle’11. Arenas of empowerment? Case study of a ‘multicultural’ high school in Oslo, Norway 12. Local and refugee youth in rural Australia: negotiating intercultural relationships and belonging in rural places 13. Politics of class and belonging in Pakistan: student learning, communities of practice and social mobility 14. Conclusion: youth and belonging: agency, place and negotiation