Geographies of Children and Young People – serie

This volume presents the innovative methodologies, tools and techniques, as well as the challenges and ethical complexities of doing geographies of young people. Geographers of young people have reflected upon participation, power and how to approach young people, generating a vibrant and exciting methodological terrain, which this volume showcases. Understanding young people’s lives has challenged researchers to be creative in their research approaches. Facilitating research with, and alongside, young people and acknowledging, and endeavouring to address, adult-child power imbalances has prompted innovation, experimentation and adaptation which has applicability to all social scientists and geographers. The volume provides critical insights into underlying epistemological and ethical debates, along with practical methods and techniques that investigate young people’s geographies globally, across both majority and minority worlds. Many of the chapters consider how to facilitate participation and empowerment through the research process, and geographies of young people have a long tradition of co-production and participation in research. The collection is structured into three sections with a focus on: methodological approaches and ethics; methods, tools and techniques; co-production, participation and power.  In the first section, key epistemological and methodological approaches are considered, such as critical realism, and critical pedagogy, with discussion of their implications for research design and analysis.  In the second section, chapters explore the potential and challenges of a variety of innovative participatory tools: mobile technologies, geospatial methods, creative visual methods, participatory video.  In the third section, chapters reflect on endeavours to promote more empowering, co-productive research including rights-based research, young people as researchers, and community engagement with young people. The collection highlights the specific methodological and ethical issues raised by relatively neglected techniques, such as archival research, autoethnography, qualitative longitudinal research and mobile interviewing.  It addresses how barriers to participation with groups who are often more silenced and marginalised can be addressed, such as when conducting research with migrant and asylum seeking children in the minority world and with street youth and disabled young people in the majority world.  The volume explores issues of data analysis, interpretation and dissemination, such as interpreting visual ethnography and the process of participatory dissemination.

Geographies of children and young people is a rapidly emerging sub-discipline within human geography. There is now a critical mass of established academic work, key names within academia, growing numbers of graduate students and expanding numbers of university level taught courses. There are also professional training programmes at national scales and in international contexts that work specifically with children and young people. In addition to a productive journal of Children’s Geographies, there’s a range of monographs, textbooks and edited collections focusing on children and young people published by all the major academic presses then there is a substantive body of work on younger people within human geography and active authors and researchers working within international contexts to warrant a specific Major Reference Work on children’s and young people’s geographies.The volumes and sections are structured by themes, which then reflect the broader geographical locations of the research.

This volume addresses children and young people’s relationships both within and beyond the context of the family.  It begins with familial relationships and the home by examining the social and cultural complexities of families, intimacies and interdependencies, including the dynamics of families as spatial units (nuclear, multi-generational, alternative) and the roles that children play (as carers etc.). In addition to considering child/parent relations, sibling relationships and birth order, the initial section includes particular dimensions of children's familial relationships in diverse contexts, such as family food practices, aspirations and work practices. The second section explores geographical dimensions of adult/child relationships beyond the dynamics of the family and across the lifecourse. It considers the roles that intergenerationality plays in children's and young people's lives as well as their links with wider communities. The section addresses broader conceptual issues and themes (child-adult relationships outside the home; intergenerational geographies and spaces; and the intergenerational city) while also providing more focused discussions of current issues related to the geographies of intergenerationality including adoption, looked after children and fertility.The final section addresses children and young people's relationships with one another: friendship, peer group relations, and sexualities.  It explores the geographies and spatialities of affective relations and emotional practices among children and young people. Geographies of bodies and embodiment and their connection to identities is an important part of this section. The chapters range from cross-cultural comparisons of age mixing among children to specific kinds of relationship formations between children and young people (e.g. friendship; sexual relations; gangs; bullying) and the spaces and places (including cyberspace) that facilitate, impede and organise these relationships. The diverse relationships that children and young people form with both one another and with adults have significant geographical dimensions.

This volume brings together a range of contributions exploring the diverse ways in which children and young people experience movements, im/mobilities and journeys at different geographical scales and in different socio-spatial contexts. It provides a snapshot of recent work within the geographies of children and young people which has engaged with emerging conceptualisations of mobility and immobility, and builds on existing scholarship on migration, movement and settlement.Topics covered include children’s and young people’s experiences of phenomena such as transnational migration, everyday mobility, social im/mobilities, homelessness, settlement, navigations of belonging, educational mobility, medical travel, citizenship, trafficking, labour migration, borders and boundaries. The collection is notable for the wide range of geographical contexts represented, including global South and North, and in the variety of types of movements examined – from local to global mobilities, everyday to life-changing journeys, and incorporating movements bound up in different ways with processes of socio-spatial inclusion and exclusion.A number of core themes are highlighted in the volume. All of the contributions are attentive to children’s and young people’s subjectivities, agency and perspectives in the context of an adult-dominated world. Together, they highlight: firstly, the complexities of children’s mobilities and the need to move beyond over-simplified and often dichotomized understandings of children’s mobilities and migrations; secondly, the importance of recognising the diversity of geographical scales in children and young people’s movements, and in particular, of the ways in which small-scale movements intersect with global mobilities and migrations in children’s and young people’s lives; thirdly, the interdependent and relational nature of children’s and young people’s mobilities and migrations; and finally, the importance of social, material, political and family contexts in understanding how children and young people experience mobility, immobility and migration.The volume highlights the centrality of mobility and movement to understanding contemporary society and in particular to understandings of the geographical worlds of children and young people. It highlights the richness of current research in the area, pointing to fruitful directions for future theoretical, conceptual and methodological agendas and provides a valuable platform from which to further enhance geographical understandings of the children’s and young people’s movements, im/mobilities and journeys.

This volume incorporates ground-breaking new academic perspectives on the contributions that children and young people make to societies around the world, with a particular focus on learning and work. The chapters in the volume offer conceptual and empirical insights into how young people learn to labour, and the complex social, spatial, temporal, institutional and relational processes that informs their engagements in daily, generational and social reproduction. The editors have intentionally avoided using the terms ‘education’ and ‘employment’ in the title, as this volume is an attempt to capture the multitude of ways, spaces and contexts  (not just ‘formal’) in which learning takes place and work is carried out. Here, learning indicates education in the broadest possible sense, to incorporate not just formal schooling and the acquisition of institutionally recognised academic knowledge and credentials, but also informal learning (including socialization and the on-the-job acquisition of skills that takes place almost imperceptibly, over time). In addition to the theoretical perspectives this volume brings on young people’s education and work, other prominent conceptual themes present throughout the work are mobilities, transitions and gender. Following four initial chapters that engage with conceptual issues, the remainder of the volume is divided into two sections, entitled ‘spaces of labouring and learning’ and ‘livelihoods, transitions and social reproduction’. Within these sections, a broad spectrum of empirical chapters demonstrates how young people live, learn and labour in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. These include, among others, geographies of education; interface between migration, learning and livelihoods; cultural politics of human capital formation; schooling and work; citizenship education; families and parenting; socialization and informal education; education-induced migration; processes and practices of inclusion and exclusion in educational institutions; part-time work; domestic work; care work; informal livelihoods; entrepreneurship; social transitions; and a wide range of social, economic, cultural, political (structural) forces that intersect and dissect these topics. As the reader will become aware, there is no such thing as a standard educational or work trajectory, a ‘normal’ transition or a straight forward relationship between work, education and social reproduction. Indeed, one of the aims of the volume is deliberately to showcase the diversity that young people’s lives hold in this regard.

The volume provides an overview of recent research (within geography and allied disciplines) around the overarching concept of ‘safe and accessible places of encounter’. It develops according to three interrelated themes.  The first part of the volume examines several of the many spaces children use and that are relevant to the geographies of children and young people including: the city centre and inner city high rise housing, urban versus suburban and rural spaces, local neighbourhoods, the ‘home’ (for particular groups of children and young people such as child domestic workers in Bangladesh), school playgrounds, services (such as domestic violence shelters), outdoor natural spaces, and “life space” (where music and arts are presented in a non-political space in Bosnia-Herzegovina). The second part examines how notions of safety, protection and risk relate to providing children and young people with good life chances, and accessible spaces that enhance or reduce well-being.This middle section emphasises the debate about risk and the need to balance risk and safety/protection. The final part focuses on policy that builds on the provision/identification of spaces, safety/protection and risk. The emphasis is on how policy at different levels (international-national-local-family) helps provide better spaces of encounter and enhances life chances for children and young people. This section also recognises the different levels of policy making associated with different parts of the world and different regional settings. The gap between policy intentions and outcomes is recognised (e.g Cambodia’s policies on orphanage tourism). The policy section includes contributions that relate to planning, education, migration, architecture, health, connection and citizenship, and sustainability. It provides insights into how professionals working in these fields can, through policy, enhance children’s and young people’s lived experiences and living environments.p>

This book broadens debates on violence, conflict and peace by examining the crucial role played by children and youth. Recent social, political and geographical research has demonstrated that children and youth are deeply impacted by war and violence and that, despite strong cultural assumptions about children’s needs for protection, their wellbeing continues to be an afterthought rather than a central concern of global politics. Children and youth have also been shown to be more than just passive victims of violence. They are multiply enrolled in conflict as well as in the politics of reconciliation and peace.The handbook illustrates these complexities through a wide range of chapters that review key literatures on the topic from geographical perspectives and in diverse global contexts. Demonstrating the centrality of space for children and youth’s positioning within, and responses to, violence and conflict, the chapters engage with novel conceptual approaches and up-to-date empirical research to develop nuanced understandings of different forms of violence in relation to global and local topographies of power and young people’s subjectivities and agencies. While offering rich insights into context-specific dynamics, similarities and connections are also outlined between children and youth in the majority and minority world.

Children’s and young people’s geographies is one of the most recent sub-disciplines within human geography. It has rapidly developed to a level of critical mass which includes established academic work, key names within academia, growing numbers of graduate students, expanding numbers of university level taught courses, as well as national and international training programmes focusing on younger people. In addition to the journal Children’s Geographies, all the major academic presses have published monographs, textbooks and edited collections focusing on children and young people. However, the largest international collection of scholarly work on geographies of children and young people is now available through the Springer Major Reference Work, Geographies of Children and Young People. This edited collection comprises twelve volumes containing almost 300 chapters. The volumes and sections are structured by themes, which reflect the broader geographical debates, geographical diversity, and scholarly expertise of 24 editors and chapter contributors.

This volume demonstrates the multiple ways that space, place and environment interact with children and young people’s lives. The contributors offer a suite of cutting-edge tools and lively examples for theorising how space, place and environment are (con)figured in children and young people’s lives. They demonstrate how the social borders between childhood and adulthood, and spatial borders between rural and urban, countries, neighbourhoods, and institutions, are relationally produced. The volume is organised into five sections: Indigenous Youth: Space and Place; Children, Nature and Environmental Education; Urban Spaces; Home/less Spaces; and Border Spaces. These themes signal the major issues in cutting-edge children’s geographies scholarship. Diverse geographical contexts are covered in this volume – including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Peru, Slovenia, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.All of the contributors advocate greater recognition of children and young people’s spatial rights, whether in the home, outdoors, at school, crossing borders, in public and digital spaces, or simply looking for a safe place to sleep. Children and young people’s perspectives on space, place and the environment, and their desire for places to call their own, tie the volume together. The volume is a testament to the politics of the spaces and places of childhood, highlighting how many children and young people face obstacles to living well and to living where they desire.

Geographies of children and young people is a rapidly emerging sub-discipline within human geography. There is now a critical mass of established academic work, key names within academia, growing numbers of graduate students and expanding numbers of university level taught courses. There are also professional training programmes at national scales and in international contexts that work specifically with children and young people. In addition to a productive journal of Children’s Geographies, there’s a range of monographs, textbooks and edited collections focusing on children and young people published by all the major academic presses then there is a substantive body of work on younger people within human geography and active authors and researchers working within international contexts to warrant a specific Major Reference Work on children’s and young people’s geographies.The volumes and sections are structured by themes, which then reflect the broader geographical locations of the research.

Volume 8 explores children and young people’s lives at a time of rapid and profound change, through the lens of diverse global processes: economic globalisation, environmental degradation, international development, cultural change, climate change and environmental hazards. Today’s children and young people are growing up in a world that is rapidly changing and very different to that experienced by previous generations. Contemporary social, economic and environmental challenges make children and young people vulnerable and expose them to harm. Equally, they compel them to become instigators of change across geographical scales, from the household to the globe. Children and young people need to be adaptive and resourceful: economically, socially and emotionally. This volume is divided into two substantive sections. Chapters in the first section explore global economic changes and instabilities that are altering patterns of work, compelling children to take on new economic responsibilities and reshaping childcare arrangements. Several chapters address the ways in which global processes shape young people’s subjectivities, with media, internet and education encouraging children and youth to view themselves as both entrepreneurs and global citizens. Other chapters consider the policies and development interventions implemented by global organisations and national governments. These can have unintended consequences because they are rooted in a normative discourse of a ‘global child’ that bears little relation to lived realities. Chapters in the second section foreground children and young people’s contributions to environmental issues and debates. Children and young people are affected by environmental change: by pollution, environmental hazards and climate change. They suffer displacement, ill-health and anxiety about the future. They are also intimately attached to – and knowledgeable about – their local environments. Children and young people actively shape their environments, yet their lives remain powerfully influenced by today’s decision-makers. The window of opportunity to avoid catastrophic climate change is small. Evidence of children and young people’s environmental knowledge and activism does not obviate the need for adults to take decisive action, now, to ensure a viable environment for future generations.