Intersectionality and Difference in Childhood and Youth: Global Perspectives

Description

This book explores the alternative experiences of children and young people whose everyday lives contradict ideas and ideals of normalcy from the local to the global context. Presenting empirical research and conceptual interventions from a variety of international contexts, this book seeks to contribute to understandings of alterity, agency and everyday precarity. The young lives foregrounded in this volume include the experiences of transnational families, children in ethnic minority communities, street-living young people, disabled children, child soldiers, victims of abuse, politically active young people, working children and those engaging with alternative education. By exploring 'other' ways of being, doing, and thinking about childhood, this book addresses questions around what it is to be a child and what it is to be marginalised in society. The narratives explore the everydayness and the mundanity of difference as they are experienced through social structures and relationships, simultaneously recognizing and critiquing notions of agency and power. This book, including a discussion resource for teaching or peer reading groups, will appeal to academics, students and researchers across subject disciplines including Human Geography, Children's Geography, Social Care and Childhood Studies. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of figures List of contributors Foreword Acknowledgements 1. Introduction Structure of the book Note References PART I: Stigma 2. Childhood disability and clothing: (un)dressing debates Chapter summary Introduction Children and clothing Childhood disability Conclusion Notes References 3. ‘They should have stayed’: blaming street children and disruption of the intergenerational contract Chapter summary Introduction Research context and methodology Street-living children and intergenerational contracts of responsibility Dirty bad-boys: why street children struggle for employment Relationships of reciprocity on the street Who is responsible for street children? Conclusion A note of acknowledgement Notes References 4. Subverting neighbourhood normalcy and the impacts on child wellbeing in Malta Chapter summary Introduction Methodology Findings: how children’s wellbeing may differ according to the neighbourhood social processes and contextual norms in relation to their parents’ marital status. Conclusion References 5. ‘Bad children’: international stigmatisation of children trained to kill during war and armed conflict Chapter summary Introduction The images of wartime initiation Child soldiers The profile and motivations of child soldiers Conclusion Notes References PART II: Work, education and activism 6. Other(ed) childhoods: supplementary schools and the politics of learning Chapter summary Introduction: going for gold… What are supplementary schools? The supplementary ‘other’ The differences within… Conclusion: other(ed) childhoods References 7. Notan‘other’ childhood: child labour laws, working children and childhood in Bolivia Chapter summary Introduction Background Laws, standards and childhood Responsible childhood Political childhood Conclusion Notes References 8. Unschooling and the simultaneous development and mitigation of ‘otherness’ amongst home-schooling families Chapter summary Introduction Home educating, alterity and isolation Researching unschooling blogs Unschooling childhood as ‘other’ Mother-child relationship Children’s agency Unschooling as identity and mitigating otherness Conclusion Notes References 9. Being seen, being heard: engaging and valuing young people as political actors and activists Chapter summary Introduction Young people’s politics: engagement, participation and the politics of intersectionality Whose agenda? Exploring young people’s political engagements Conclusion Note References PART III: Out of place 10. Young survivors of sexual abuse as ‘children out of place’ Chapter summary Introduction Codes of childhood Codes of childhood sexuality Sexuality and agency Analysis of adult-child sexual relationship in film UNA UNA in terms of children’s rights Conclusion References 11. Realising childhood in an Urdu-speaking Bihari community in Bangladesh Chapter summary Introduction Methods Conceptualising childhood and violence The camp: historical context Experiencing ‘julum’: everyday violence within a socio-spatial context Becoming ‘rotten’ vs. being ‘good’ Unequal relationships of power Children’s responses to violence Conclusion Notes References 12. Discovering difference in outer suburbia: mapping, intra-activity and alternative directedness in Shaun Tan’s Eric Chapter summary Introduction What’s in a name? Eric-as-methodological approach, or doing children’s geographies creatively Mapping with Eric in Belfast: a flavour of my creative cuts Conclusion: making the case for picture book as method/ology References 13. Transnational practices and children’s local lives in times of economic crisis Chapter summary Introduction A critique of dominant notions Studying family life and migration Methodology and positionality Children and patterns of migration: two empirical cases Local activities and transnational practices in everyday life Concluding remarks Notes References 14. Conclusion Note References Appendix Index