Who else are they? Conceptualizing intersectionality for childhood and youth research

Abstract

Intersectionality has been seen as a useful and relevant concept for the study of childhood and youth geographies, as it allows research that takes into account who else children and young people are. However, there is a lack of proposals on how to deal with intersectionality theoretically, methodologically and practically. The ways gender, sexuality, race, class, ability, religion or nationality condition children’s and young people’s spatial experiences might be as relevant as their age, but there are no systematic proposals on how to investigate their interrelation. Based on my research with young people in Catalonia, I show how intersectional frameworks can be used to collect data on children and youth; what an intersectional framework could look like; and some of the conceptual implications of conducting an intersectional analysis. Trying to establish links between feminist debates on intersectionality and research on youth and children, I present some conceptual tools to approach both the nature of the relation between intersecting categories and the role of space in intersectional dynamics.