Play, work or activism? Broadening the connections between political and children's geographies

Abstract

Scholarship on children often fails to consider the impact of children's agency from a political perspective. Recent literature in political and children's geography has begun affording children the possibility of being political actors. Attention to the differences that children bring and make through their everyday becomings – what children often do – permits recognizing a range of children's activities as political work. Examples from children's everyday activities in Latino immigrant families along the US/Mexico border demonstrate how children often connect their families to politics at a variety of scales. They also help recognize the political possibilities that emerge out of consideration of the many spaces that children occupy and produce in contemporary societies.

Keywords:

• politics
• activism
• agency
• children

Acknowledgements

I thank Thomas Herman and Stuart Aitken for their assistance and support in contacting, arranging and conducting research with the mothers and children of the Neighborhood Action Group in Chula Vista, CA. I am also grateful for the comments and suggestions of Kate Swanson, Giorgio Curti, and anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of this paper.