ABSTRACT
This work takes up the figure of the “young immigrant” as a concept produced and put to work in particular times and places. The construction of the young immigrant emphasizes forms of temporalities such as developmental or generational trajectories and concerns with spatiality such as the relations between young people's identities and “the street,” “the school,” “the mall,” and so on (Skelton & Valentine, 1998; Vanderbeck, 2000). Therefore, the dominant way to understand the figure of the young immigrant uses metaphors such as the one who crosses borders, the one who does not belong, and the one who is included and excluded in different ways. These prevailing understandings legitimate institutions producing statuses for the immigrant, stimulate claims of nation, and affirm identities as real and natural (Luibhéid, 2007). As a consequence, the young immigrant, as a body that is never independent of the representations of space and the effects of time, is constructed as the object of regulation, reparation, and risk discourses.
