Citizen-subject formation as geosocialization: a methodological approach on ‘learning to be citizens’

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe paper sets out to develop further geographies of citizenship as based on the topological constitution of lived realities. Instead of identifying new territorial frameworks or scalar dimensions of/for citizenship, topologies of citizenship are attained by tracing the social ties that people adopt, create, maintain, transform, challenge and refuse in their everyday activities. The politics emerging in topological worlds concern the matters that people, as contextual (inter)subject, care for and find important; what makes them attentive towards what happens in their worlds, based on which attitudes concerning certain matters may develop, which may invite people to act for or against them. Drawing from this theoretical framework, the paper outlines a methodological, geosocial approach to studying the relational formation of citizen-subjects, with geosocialization as a key concept describing these processes. The concept refers to the social dynamisms by which political subjectivities are contextually established, maintained, struggled and reformulated in the mundane realities where people lead their lives and learn to be citizens. The paper draws from a research project with 262 youth in Southern Finland and Northern England. By presenting a piece of analysis based mainly on the English sub-study, and with focus on experienced inequalities, it demonstrates how the processes of citizen-subject formation can be traced from narrative research materials by geosocial means.