Description
Young people, and in particular children, have typically been marginalised in geopolitical research, positioned as too young to understand or relate to the adult-dominated world of international relations. Integrating current debates in critical geopolitics and political geography with research in children’s geographies, childhood studies and youth research, this book sets out an agenda for the field of children’s and young people’s critical geopolitics. It considers diverse practices such as play, activism, media consumption and diplomacy to show how children’s and young people’s lives relate to wider regional and global geopolitical processes. Engaging with contemporary concepts in human geography including ludic geopolitics, affect, emotional geographies, intergenerationality, creative diplomacy, popular geopolitics and citizenship, the authors draw on geopolitical research with children and young people from Europe, Asia, Australasia, Africa and the Americas. The chapters highlight the ways in which young people can be enrolled, ignored, dismissed, empowered and represented by the state for geopolitical ends. Notwithstanding this state power, the research presented also shows how young people have agency and make decisions about their lives which are influenced by wider geopolitical processes. The focus on the lives of children and young people problematises and extends what it is we think of when considering ’the geopolitical’ which enriches as well as advances critical geopolitical enquiry and deserves to be taken seriously by political geographies more broadly.
Table of Contents
Contents: Foreword, Klaus Dodds; Introducing children's and young people's critical geopolitics, Matthew C. Benwell and Peter Hopkins; Crossing points: contesting militarism in the spaces of children's everyday lives in Britain and Germany, Kathrin Horschelmann; Children, young people and the everyday geopolitics of British military recruitment, Matthew F. Rech; Ludic - or playful - geopolitics, Sean Carter, Philip Kirby and Tara Woodyer; Children's emotional geographies and the geopolitics of division in Cyprus, Miranda Christou and Spyros Spyrou; Life, love, and activism on the forgotten margins of the nation state, Sara H. Smith and Mabel Gergan; Young Falkland Islanders and diplomacy in the South Atlantic, Matthew C. Benwell; 'Dear Prime Minister...' Mapping island children's political views on climate change, Elaine Stratford; Critical geopolitics of child and youth migration in (post)socialist Laos, Roy Huijsmans; Young people's engagement with the geopolitics of anti-apartheid solidarity in 1980s' London, Gavin Brown and Helen Yaffe; Becoming geopolitical in the everyday world, Kirsi Pauliina Kallio; Conclusion, Matthew C. Benwell and Peter Hopkins; Index.
