Tracey Skelton

Research with children and young people: exploring the tensions between ethics, competence and participation

This article offers a discussion of the ways in which institutional ethical frameworks can obstruct and obfuscate research with children and young people at the very same time as they attempt to protect these subjects of research. The article shows that key aspects of institutional ethical guidelines and regulations fly in the face of contemporary social studies of childhood, of which geography constitutes a significant part. The increasing recognition of the competence of children and young people combined with their right to participate, as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, has not yet been adequately integrated within institutional ethics frameworks. This places those conducting research with children and young people in an invidious position of trying to follow their political respect for the rights of their research participants at the same time as meeting the strictures of research practice defined by their institutional ethics committees. Examples of the authors own experience, plans for future research and actual research practice with young people will be used throughout to explore the tensions between ethics, competence and participation.

Children, Young People, UNICEF and Participation

Abstract The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is part of a significant shift in thinking about children, young people and childhood. It has introduced participation as the third P, alongside provision and protection. Development actors and policies have identified participation as a facet of meaningful social development. Academics have constructed new ways of conceptualising children, recognising them as competent social actors and social participants. However, while discourses of participation have reached global scales it is important that we maintain a ‘critical eye’ on what participation is and whom it is for. Such a critical eye can be cast very effectively over UNICEFs very own discourses and practices.

Coming Out and Outcomes: Negotiating Lesbian and Gay Identities With, and in, the Family

In late modernity there has been a shift in the ways that individuals relate to society, in which traditional ideas, expectations, and hierarchies are being reworked. Released from the constraints and social norms of tradition, individuals, it is argued, are now freer to choose between a range of options in the pursuit of their own happiness. Notably, these social changes have been understood to provide more opportunities for lesbians and gay men to ‘come out’—disclose their sexuality and live the lifestyle of their choice. Coming out is often implicitly discussed in academic literatures as an individual decision, and the consequences of coming out are also usually explored in relation to the personal narratives of the individual who has disclosed a lesbian and gay sexuality. To date, little attention has been paid to the actual processes through which sexual dissidents negotiate their identities with others, and to the consequences of such disclosures for those who are close to them or share their lives in various ways. In this paper we address this omission by focusing on young peoples experiences of coming out with, and in, families of origin. We begin by examining what is at stake in the decision whether to come out or not by examining the role that families of origin play in young peoples lives. We then explore how the process of coming out is actually negotiated within different families. Finally, we consider the ‘outcomes’ of these choices. In doing so we contribute to research on geographies of sexualities, geographies of the ‘family’, youth transitions, and the emerging field of social studies of emotions.

Geographies of friendships

Friendships are an important part of what makes us, and our geographies of various kinds, human. We consider how geographers can contribute to efforts to afford friendship greater prominence in the social sciences. The main part of the article considers three strands of work on friendship that push the boundaries of research in human geography: (1) geographies of affect/emotion and the ontological construction of the human; (2) children’s and young people’s geographies and the (re)production of social ordering; and (3) geographies of mobility and transnationalism in a world of increased human spatial movement and social relations at a distance.

Political participation, political action and political identities: young d/deaf people's perspectives

This paper critically examines the dominant, and predominantly negative, discourses around young peoples political participation, or supposed lack of it. Drawing upon contemporary debates about young people within geography, political science and sociology, it considers the ways in which a redefinition of what constitutes ‘the political’ is required if young peoples engagement in political participation is to be understood fully. The paper reports on research conducted with young D/deaf people that did not intentionally set out to research their political participation, action or identi ties, but which uncovered a range of political aspects in their lives and experiences. It explores the ways in which volunteering can be defined as political action and, after de Certeau and Scott, how the use of British Sign Language can be a resistive act, a tactic or weapon of the weak. Threaded throughout the paper is a consideration of the ways in which there are complex geographies of activism at play.

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 childrens and young peoples 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.

Changing spaces: the role of the internet in shaping Deaf geographies

While there is a burgeoning literature on the role of ICT in the creation of new forms of social networks, dubbed on-line communities, much less attention has been paid to the complex set of relationships which are emerging between some off-line communities and the internet, and in particular to some of the new spatialities that are emerging as a result of community-based ICT practices. This paper develops this work by focusing on the example of ‘the Deaf community’. In reflecting on the implications of the communication possibilities offered by the internet for the production of Deaf space we begin by outlining the history of development of the off-line Deaf community in the UK and by reflecting on the concept of ‘community’. The paper then goes on to explore how Deaf people are using the internet to communicate with each other and, in doing so, to reflect upon how the internet is contributing to the re-spatialisation and scaling-up of this community while also having other unanticipated effects on Deaf peoples mobilities and the space of the Deaf club.

Living on the edge: the marginalisation and 'resistance' of D/deaf youth

In this paper we examine D/deaf young peoples sociospatial transitions from childhood to adulthood. We begin by identifying the common processes through which D/deaf young people may become marginalised in four spaces: at home, in educational institutions, in the workplace, and within Deaf communities. We then go on to consider how these shared predicaments may however result in different outcomes for individuals by focusing on four personal stories. These case studies enable us to consider what resources and forms of social support or assurance can help young people to be resilient in the face of the difficulties that they encounter, and what sort of experiences advance or aggravate processes of marginalisation. We conclude by reflecting on notions of individualisation, structure, and agency; and by outlining the practical and policy implications of the research.

Political Uncertainties And Natural Disasters: Montserratian Identity and Colonial Status

When a violent and unpredictable volcano erupted on the small Caribbean island of Montserrat the implications for the people who lived there were to be profound. Not only was this a natural disaster which forced people out of their homes and, for many, away from their island, it was also a point of conflict of political and cultural identity. Montserrat is a British Dependent Territory (BDTO) and Montserratians currently have no formal citizenship rights. However, the constitutional status of the BDTOs is the subject of a British Government White Paper published in March 1999. The potential changes to be introduced are that all residents of BDTOs (not just those in Gibraltar and The Falklands) will have British Citizenship and that the territories are renamed simply as British Territories. It is a reinscription of colonialism which at the same time is constructed around a political rhetoric of partnership and mutual concerns with positive futures. Indeed, the rewriting of the constitutional arrangements between Britain and the BDTOs is very much a reflection of the desires and political articulations of the majority of people who reside in these remnants of colonialism. The majority of Montserratians have lost everything they have ever owned, they have lost their homes, their villages, and communities have been totally destroyed. Two-thirds of the island lies under molten rock and ash, and the devastation is intense. Yet, literally, out of the ashes, Montserratians, those who remain on the island and those who have relocated to other places, are maintaining their cultural identities and forging new ones as a resistance to the profound damage wrought by the natural disaster. This essay explores the cultural, political and constitutional fall-out which has revolved around this colony, the local Montserratian Government, the British Government, neighbouring Caribbean island states and the Montserratians themselves.

Girls in the Club: Researching Working Class Girls' Lives

This paper discusses the ways in which a methodological approach evolved through research work with young women (aged 14-17) living in the Rhondda Valley of South Wales. The project was an investigation of their cultural geographies and micro-geographies and was informed by feminist geographys conceptualisation of gender. The qualitative methods were developed in conjunction with the young women. The methodology developed in a format which was in keeping with the politics of Penygraig Community Project and also with what the young women themselves wanted to do - talk as friendship groups. In such a way, the politics and ethics of working with the young people were central because of the ways in which the young women themselves constructed the research that was conducted and ensured that their voices were heard as they discussed what they felt was important to them at that particular time.