Critical Geographies of Youth

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.