ABSTRACT
The idea of identity as fluid and contextual underpins the notion of intersectionality in which individual’s perception of their own identity, and their own experience of difference, reflects the social and environmental context in which they are situated in any given moment. The complexity of the definition of what might constitute alterity in childhoods mirrors a messiness around normalcy, in itself building to a broader concern of the utility of the notion of childhood and youth as a framework for understanding identity. Over-emphasis on the power of childhood agency is also problematic in that it threatens to diminish or overlook the lived experience of people for whom the biopolitics of youth do not transcend other identity markers. Where the markers of difference are thus chronological, the category of difference, at least on the micro-scale of the individual, is truncated and specifically located in the time and space of youth.
