Critical Geographies of YouthCommunities, Mobilities and Citizenship

Explores the distinctive geographies of youth through everyday lives, agency, identity and belonging

• Provides new ways of understanding the everyday geographies of contemporary youth
• Based on empirical findings from original research conducted in rural, urban and coastal contexts
• Draws together intersecting theories of community, mobility and citizenship to help interpret youth belonging

Contemporary youth face important and unique societal and environmental challenges and opportunities that impact their everyday spaces, identities and routines. Yet, as a field of research, youth geographies are conceptually opaque, slippery to define and without a stable position against the competing fields of children’s geographies, and other more ‘adult’ geographical topics. This book examines how a range of geographical contexts can shape young people’s experiences of everyday life, and makes three unique contributions: first, recognising youthful communities and identities to be lived differently and distinctively from other aged categories; second, identifying agency as central to how youth mobilities are shaped and performed in enduring, practical or transactional ways away from those formulated by policymakers; and third, exposing diverse and targeted youth voices that have some (limited) capacities and desires to reshape citizenship that matters to them.