The emotional geographies of belonging: children’s intersectional identities in primary school

Abstract

This article examines the role of emotions for young children’s social identities of ethnicity, race, nationality, class, gender and culture in the context of a Scottish primary school. It argues that emotions contribute to how intersectional identities are performed in children’s peer relationships within the discourses available to them, and that analysing emotions is crucial for understanding how children’s intersectional belongings come to be constructed and politicised. This makes emotions a highly political matter, important for understanding the complexity of intersectionality and for informing childhood policy and practice.

Keywords:

• Children’s emotional geographies
• intersectionality
• identities and belonging
• ethnicity/race
• gender
• social class

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful for the constructive feedback provided by Dr Jessica MacLaren, Professor Liz Bondi and Professor Kay Tisdall. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their time and feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It is worth noting that the ‘etc.’, often added at the end of identity category lists, has been the subject of much debate in intersectionality theory. Butler (1990, 143) suggests that the ‘embarrassed “etc.”’ constitutes a ‘sign of exhaustion’ and signifies the inevitable failure to fully encompass a situated subject. On the other hand, Yuval-Davis (2006a, 2011) argues that the exact dimensions of the ‘etc.’ will be filled in according to the situated research context.

2. While the distinction between ‘rational’ and ‘emotional’ often underpins such debates in popular and academic discourses, from a poststructuralist perspective it does not stand up to scrutiny, since the very ‘absence’ of discernible emotions – in science often promoted through calls for ‘detachment’ or ‘objectivity’ – can be seen as an emotional state in itself (Bondi 2005).

3. Of course, such questions are not limited to the study of emotions, but are equally important in wider ontological and epistemological debates about representation.

4. All participant names in this article are pseudonyms.

5. At the time of fieldwork, children from families with a low income were entitled to ‘free school meals’. Whilst this can therefore be used as an indicator for low income, the children in the class did not seem to be aware of it.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Principal’s Career Development Scholarship from the University of Edinburgh.