Movement, Mobilities, and Journeys, 1st ed. 2017 Geographies of Children and Young People Series, Vol. 6

This volume brings together a range of contributions exploring the diverse ways in which children and young people experience movements, im/mobilities and journeys at different geographical scales and in different socio-spatial contexts. It provides a snapshot of recent work within the geographies of children and young people which has engaged with emerging conceptualisations of mobility and immobility, and builds on existing scholarship on migration, movement and settlement.

Topics covered include children?s and young people?s experiences of phenomena such as transnational migration, everyday mobility, social im/mobilities, homelessness, settlement, navigations of belonging, educational mobility, medical travel, citizenship, trafficking, labour migration, borders and boundaries. The collection is notable for the wide range of geographical contexts represented, including global South and North, and in the variety of types of movements examined ? from local to global mobilities, everyday to life-changing journeys, and incorporating movements bound up in different ways with processes of socio-spatial inclusion and exclusion.

A number of core themes are highlighted in the volume. All of the contributions are attentive to children?s and young people?s subjectivities, agency and perspectives in the context of an adult-dominated world. Together, they highlight: firstly, the complexities of children?s mobilities and the need to move beyond over-simplified and often dichotomized understandings of children?s mobilities and migrations; secondly, the importance of recognising the diversity of geographical scales in children and young people?s movements, and in particular, of the ways in which small-scale movements intersect with global mobilities and migrations in children?s and young people?s lives; thirdly, the interdependent and relational nature of children?s and young people?s mobilities and migrations; and finally, the importance of social, material, political and family contexts in understanding how children and young people experience mobility, immobility and migration.

The volume highlights the centrality of mobility and movement to understanding contemporary society and in particular to understandings of the geographical worlds of children and young people. It highlights the richness of current research in the area, pointing to fruitful directions for future theoretical, conceptual and methodological agendas and provides a valuable platform from which to further enhance geographical understandings of the children?s and young people?s movements, im/mobilities and journeys.

·         Introduction to Movement, Mobilities and Journeys in Geographies of Children and Young People

·         Children’s Mobilities: Methodologies, Theories, and Scales

·         Children and Young People in Migration: A Relational Approach

·         Vietnamese Children Trafficked for Forced Labour to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: Exit, Return and Reintegration

·         Dominant Positionings and Paradoxical Mobilities: Child Migrants in Java, Indonesia

·         Aspirations and Social Mobility: The Role of Social and Spatial (Im)mobilities in the Development and Achievement of Young People’s Aspirations

·         Violence, Borders, and Boundaries: Reframing Young People’s Mobility

·         Young Migrants’ Educational Achievement: Moving to Inequality in Galway City,Ireland

·         Geographic Origin and Social Class as “Geoclass” and the Education of Migrant Children in China 1980–2013

·         Experiencing the Different Everyday on an International School-Led Trip: A New Zealand Example

·         Theorizing Mobilities in Children’s Educational Experiences: Promises and Pitfalls

·         Children and Youth’s Mobile Journeys: Making Sense and Connections Within Global Contexts

·         Migrant Children in Cities: The Spatial Constructions of Their Everyday Lives

·         Children Seeking Health Care: International Perspectives on Children’s Use of Mobility to Obtain Health Services

·         Children’s Independent Mobility: Antecedents and Consequences at Macro-and Microlevels

·         Children in Transnational Family Migration

·         Belonging and Identification: Challenges and Negotiations in Refugee Children’s Everyday Life in Norway

·         Migrant Children, Global Consumer Culture, and Multiple Belongings: Children’s Experiences of Migrating to Ireland

·         Child Circulation and West African Migrations

·         Autonomous Child Migration at the Southern European Border

Dr. Caitríona Ní Laoire is Lecturer in Applied Social Studies, and Research Associate of the Institute for Social Sciences in the 21^st Century, at University College Cork. Her research interests coalesce around the themes of migration/diaspora, childhood/youth, gender, equality, rurality and identities and the use of qualitative research methods such as life-narrative and children-centred methods. Her research has focused in particular on understanding young people’s lives and identities within their socio-spatial contexts, contributing to in-depth understandings of the power relations inherent in and the multiple lived realities of being young in and of contemporary Ireland. 

Between 2005 and 2009, she led a Marie Curie Excellence Team project on migrant children's experiences of moving to and living in 'Celtic Tiger' Ireland. As part of that project, she explored the experiences and identity processes of children who moved to Ireland with their return migrant parent(s), focusing in particular on family and peer dynamics, negotiations of inclusion/exclusion and identities, and on relationships with place. This was set within the context of intergenerational relations within families, in particular child-parent relations, and involved the use of children-centred research methods. Previously her research explored rural youth identities in the context of changing rural realities, with particular emphasis on gendered identities, rural masculinities, farming identities and rural outmigration.

She has published widely on these themes, including the monograph Childhood and Migration in Europe (co-authored with A. White, N. Tyrrell and F. Carpena-Méndez) and articles in journals including Childhood, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Social and Cultural Geography, Children’s Geographies, Identities, Irish Geography and Sociologia Ruralis.

Dr. Allen White is Research Officer for the College of Arts, Celtic S

Comprehensive text, the first ever on the subject of Children’s and Young People’s Geographies

Authoritative figures from the field have working together as volume editors

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Presents easily digested information supported adequately by illustrative material

Speaks to a wide range of audience from geographers to sociologists, demographers to social workers, and policy makers to development agencies