(Im)mobilising Youth Citizenship / Youth Citizenship (im)mobilities

Abstract

Mobility is a vital component to many conceptual, empirical and philosophical debates surrounding age, ageing and the life-course. In this paper we focus on how the relationship between mobility and citizenship shapes young people’s life-courses and life-chances, and, in turn, how this influences how young people engage with, produce, manage and promote everyday spaces. More than ever before, contemporary youth experience a myriad of expectations (both chances and needs) for mobility, all of which have allied opportunities and challenges that feed into their everyday and future lives. Specifically, mobility has clear implications for notions of citizenship and ‘being mobile’ is closely aligned to contrasting perceptions of ‘being footloose’ and ‘living precariously’ in terms of young people’s education, employment, housing and leisure biographies. We therefore seek to critically engage with the nexus of mobility, citizenship and youth/life-course studies so as to develop a conceptual framework that better understands how young people might imagine and realise the benefits of mobility whilst avoiding the pitfalls of precarity. This includes thinking critically about how youth citizens are im/mobilised in terms of shaping citizenship practice; if, and how, citizenship practices produce or obstruct young people’s spatial and social mobilities; the multi-locational citizenship/s that exist across the life-course, such as learning citizenship through mobility (university, gap years, internships, graduate schemes etc.); and the geopolitical implications for im/mobility upon youth citizenship and wider life-course discourses (Brexit, Trump, nationalism etc.).