Urban Childhoods and Subjectification: Perspectives and Practices of Children on their Way to School

Abstract

The aim of the article is to reflect theoretically and empirically on the question of how growing up in a city and having an urban childhood is relevant for children's agency and identity. It argues that agency and identity are a product of social and discursive practices that children take part in (e.g. on their way to school and after school). Based on an ethnographic project on urban childhoods in a big city in Germany, the article outlines the framework of this study and describes some findings on the basis of interviews, city walks and observation protocols. The function of the empirical data and analysis is to give an impression of what comes into focus if we reconstruct the entangled (re)production of urban spaces, agency and identity.