Youth, Relationality, and Space: Conceptual Resources for Youth Studies from Critical Human Geography

Abstract

This chapter takes up a relational understanding of space (Massey 2005) to make sense of conceptual resources for research with young people from critical human geography. After a brief discussion of relationality, the second section begins with the understanding that relationality needs to be grounded, examining the concept of lived space. The chapter considers how space is integral to young people’s experiences, from the macro, how global changes interact with young people’s lived experiences (Horschelmann and Sch€afer 2005; Jeffrey and Dyson 2008), down to the micro, as Valentine (2003, p. 48) states, there is a need to explore the “importance of different life spaces and the interconnections between them (e.g., school and work, work and home)” while also exploring how young people are both actors in space and constrained by it. The third section picks up geographic work with timespace, considering the relationship of time to space in the lives of young people, highlighting critical work on temporalities and intergenerationality in geography (Thrift and May 2001; Dodgshon 2008; Vanderbeck 2007). Introduction: Relationality and Youth Research in Critical Human Geography Much work on youth identity is rooted in literature from psychology, building on the development perspectives of Piaget and Erikson. In other disciplines, research on identity is more postmodern – embracing context and subjectivity and an inherent relationality (Rattansi and Phoenix 1997). This chapter picks up on the “relational turn” within geography and in geographic work on youth and young adulthood in particular. The chapter considers what geographers’ everpresent preoccupation – the spatial offers to a relational approach to research with young people. For geographers, social experience is contingent on understanding space – from physical location but also social and embodied forms of space. Therefore, this chapter uses a relational understanding of space (Massey 2005) to make sense of conceptual resources for research with young people. In this first section the concept of relationality is briefly traced through sociology as well as its use by youth geographers. The second section begins with the understanding that relationality needs to be grounded, examining the concept of lived space. The section considers how space is integral to young people’s experiences, from the macro, how global changes interact with young people’s lived experiences (Horschelmann and Sch€afer 2005; Jeffrey and Dyson 2008), down to the micro, as Valentine (2003, p. 48) states, there is a need to explore the “importance of different life spaces and *Email: nworth@mcmaster.ca Handbook of Children and Youth Studies DOI 10.1007/978-981-4451-96-3_8-1 # Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2014