Introduction: Geographies of children, youth and families: disentangling the socio-spatial contexts of young people across the globalizing world

This edited collection brings together contributions from key established and emerging international scholars within the interdisciplinary field of geographies of children, youth and families. The inspiration for the book came from the First International Conference on Geographies of Children, Youth and Families, held at the University of Reading, UK, in September 2007. Many of the chapters were papers presented at this conference. The book represents a timely account of the field, coming ten years on from the highly influential text edited by Sarah Holloway and Gill Valentine, Children’s Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning. Holloway and Valentine (2000) has proved to be a defining text, marking a shift towards the development of a definable sub-/interdisciplinary of geographies of children, youth and families.