Young People, Children, Politics and Space: A Decade of Youthful Political Geography Scholarship 2003–13

This review essay covers a decade of scholarship developed by geographers who engage with children, young people and politics. It first outlines the boundaries within which the review was conducted. It then sets the scene of the starting points in 2003 of the when and where of the scholarship of children’s and young people’s political geographies. Section 3 provides focus on a wide range of contributions made in order to stake a claim within the wider discipline of Geography and explores the connections made with, and conceptions drawn from, feminist geography. Section 4 examines the ways in which the field has been expanded through conceptualisation and deconstruction of taken-for-granted approaches. Here, the intellectual value of reconsiderations or innovations of the concepts of scale, child and childhood, politics, agency, articulation, geopolitics and critical geopolitics are excavated and explicated. The paper ends with concluding thoughts and pointers towards the next decade of youthful political geographies and provides an extensive reference list covering a wide range of work on the subject.