ABSTRACT
In this chapter I respond to critiques of children and young people’s participation that show that a focus on ‘voice’ and ‘listening to children’ risks being limited and tokenistic in its reach and purpose. Using theoretical understandings from geography and other post-structural perspectives, I attempt to show how children and young people’s participation can be reordered and sustained as a dialogical and spatial practice designed to improve intergenerational spaces and relations. I will argue that research and practice relating to the perceived need to ‘listen to children’ fails to address a more important purpose – that of improved relations between children and young people and adults through changes to the spaces they separately and together inhabit and the associated identifications.
