Children practising politics through spatial narratives

ABSTRACT

The aim is to study children’s politics by exploring how children relate to and rework positions and identities offered to them and others in a residential narrative of ‘Swedes’ and ‘immigrants’. Children’s politics is defined as children practising politics when negotiating and challenging positions and defending identities. The results are based on a reanalysis of two studies. The results show that participating children use the narrative, and to it connected stories about neighbourhoods, to position themselves and to negotiate exclusion, inclusion, identity and belonging. In relation to this they deal with political issues connected to national and global discourses that blame the category of ‘immigrants’ for being the cause of local and national problems. They also reflect on the positions and identities offered in the narrative and use tactics to manage the positions and their consequences. From this point of view, the children practise politics in their everyday lives.

KEYWORDS:

• Children’s everyday lives
• spatial narratives
• social categorisation
• children’s politics
• childhoods

Acknowledgements

I would also like to thank Lia Karsten for valuable comments on the first draft, and the anonymous reviewers on the submitted manuscripts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

I am grateful to the Skåne Regional Council, the self-governing authority of Skåne, Sweden, for the financial support of the project on which this article is based.