How Youths Experience and Make Meaning of Place, Race, and Citizenship

• In Event: 75.058 - Student and Teacher Experiences in Diverse, Urban Settings

Abstract

The increased urbanization of spaces in our global age requires new ways of thinking about citizenship. Within the nascent, but growingly important field of study on space and citizenship, this project examines how the perspectives and experiences of youths inform a more place-conscious and critical approach to citizenship education. Framed by work in social justice and critical geography, this project examined the critical perspectives that youths possess based on their experiences away from school. How power, race, mobility, and borders affect the ways in which places are constructed and differently experienced by today’s youth informs research on the intersection of youth studies and urban geography so that issues of social (in)justice are no longer marginalized within citizenship education.

Author

• Jason R. Harshman, The University of Iowa