Nexus thinking and the geographies of children, youth and families: towards an integrated research agenda

ABSTRACT

This paper argues for and demonstrates the value of integrating nexus thinking - a conceptual and policy framework for the multiple interdependencies between resources, most commonly food, water and energy – into the Geographies of Children, Youth and Families (GCYF). Through discussion of the two areas’ current limitations, a review of existing GCYF work on food, water, energy and materiality, and secondary auto-analysis of data generated on families’ situated environmental concerns in India and the UK, the paper identifies three key contributions of an integrated nexus thinking-GCYF research agenda. Firstly, nexus thinking can advance understandings of how children and young people negotiate multi-scalar social, political, economic and ecological processes; secondly, an integrated agenda can ‘embody’ nexus thinking by situating children and families in the nexus of interconnections; thirdly, nexus thinking offers a policy-relevant frame through which GCYF can engage questions of intergenerational justice with questions of resource sustainability.

KEYWORDS:

• Nexus thinking
• resource security
• interdependence
• sustainability
• materiality
• global childhoods

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on my PhD research, funded as part of the Family Lives and the Environment project of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) research node NOVELLA (Narratives of Varied Everyday Life and Linked Approaches). I am grateful to my supervisors, Ann Phoenix and Janet Boddy for their expert orientation of my PhD and for helpful comments on this paper. Data presented in this paper were co-generated with Madhavi Latha, Natasha Shukla and Janet Boddy. I am hugely grateful to the children and families who gave their time, energy and imagination to this research.

The ideas presented in this paper have further developed through my work on the ESRC/FAPESP/Newton Fund project, (Re)connect the Nexus: Young Brazilians’ Experiences of and Learning about Food-Water-Energy. I have greatly valued discussions with Peter Kraftl, Ben Coles, Sophie Hadfield-Hill, John Horton, Joe Hall, Cristiana Zara, Jose Perrella Balastieri and others on the project, which have shaped my (ongoing) thinking about nexus thinking and the geographies of children, youth and families. Many thanks also to Gavin Brown for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Catherine Walker http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3390-9272

Notes

1 All names in the vignettes are pseudonyms.

2 Newspapers often publish load-shedding schedules, for example http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-andhrapradesh/Revised-load-shedding-schedule-announced/article16591580.ece [last accessed 02/09/18].

3 See special report on the 2017 drought in Southern India, published at http://www.firstpost.com/india/south-indias-drought-part-1-five-states-face-a-severe-water-crisis-made-worse-by-the-onset-of-summer-3394636.html [last accessed 02/09/18].

4 For further details about the national targeted Public Distribution System in India, see http://dfpd.nic.in/public-distribution.htm [last accessed 02/09/18].

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) National Centre for Research Methods Phase III research node funding under grant RES-576-25-0053 and by the ESRC under grant ES/N013190/1.