Situating (Young) teenagers in geographies of children and youth

Abstract

The past decade has been an exciting and productive period in the study of children's and young people's geographies. The principal aim of this paper is to contribute to this field of research by presenting the arguments for a more substantive focus on teenagers' geographies. Firstly, the terms ‘children’ and ‘young people’ are constructed as synonymous and used interchangeably and the complex transitional positioning of young teenagers—situated between childhood, youth and adulthood—has been relatively neglected. Secondly, many researchers have been engaged in developing methods, which aim to challenge unequal power relations between adult researchers and young participants but little focus has been placed on utilizing participants' own constructions of themselves. The final argument for a more coherent focus on teenagers' geographies rests on the contribution that geographers can make to challenging negative stereotypes of teenagers within policy and the media. The paper concludes by outlining what form an emphasis on teenagers' geographies may take.

Keywords:

• Age
• betweenness
• children
• identity
• teenagers
• youth

Acknowledgements

With thanks to the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences at Brunel University for funding the doctoral research from which this paper stemmed. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who gave me invaluable, constructive comments.

Notes

1. Participants chose their own pseudonyms which are used throughout this paper.

2. Wearing hooded sweatshirts is banned in some shopping centres in the United Kingdom.

3. Anti Social Behaviour Orders are civil orders placed on a person for disruptive behaviour and/or petty crimes (Chakrabarti and Crossman, 2004).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susie Weller

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