More-than-safety: co-creating resourcefulness and conviviality in suburban LGBTQ2S youth out-of-school spaces

ABSTRACT

Between the sub-disciplines of children’s geographies and geographies of sexualities lie the spatialities of children’s and youth’s sexualities, an understudied subfield especially in non-metropolitan contexts. This paper examines the co-creation strategies of three LGBTQ2S out-of-school youth programmes in the Canadian peripheral municipality of Surrey, British Columbia. It argues that larger youth populations, a circumscribed hetero-temporality, and limited spatial resources necessitate attention to specific modes of co-creating out-of-school spaces for suburban LGBTQ2S youth (aged 15–24). The paper examines the practices of adaptive spatial co-creation with suburban LGBTQ2S youth within the fragmented local suburban governance landscape of community organizations. In contrast with the public visibility stressed within adult urban gay identity politics, a goal of ‘more-than-safety’ is primarily achieved for suburban LGBTQ2S youth through privacy, invisibility, and boundary work that results in weak integration, a lack of collaboration, and the re-bounding of identity parcels across suburbia’s extensive geography.

KEYWORDS:

• LGBTQ2S youth
• safe space
• resourcefulness
• conviviality
• suburbs

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Alex, Jennifer, and Alan for their interview insights and long-time LGBTQ2S activism as well as to all of the queer and trans youth who shared their lived experiences with us in focus group discussions. Without their involvement, and the funding of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, this paper would not be possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 435-2016-1142].