GEOGRAPHIC CONTEXT AND FIELD OF POSSIBILITIES FOR THE GEOGRAPHICAL READING OF YOUTH
Abstract
This article aims to bring the concepts of geographic context and field of possibilities into the public debate, as contributions of geography to the reading of youth experiences. It is based on an extensive bibliographical survey in the field of geography and sociology written in English, where there is a long tradition of addressing youth. From these contributions and in tension with the ways in which the relationship between youth and place has been thought about in the Anglo-Saxon world, the text first differentiates itself from unpromising approaches and then seeks to delineate the two concepts in an inseparable way. Finally, it presents a reflection on method, to think about how the geographic context and the field of possibilities in which young people weave their lives can be studied and described.
Keywords: Geographical Context, Field of Possibilities, Youth Experiences.
References
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BARBOSA, M. C.; REGO, A. R. Historicidade e contexto em perspectiva histórica e comunicacional. Famecos, Porto Alegre, v. 24, n. 3, set/dez. de 2017.
BOURDIEU, P. A miséria do mundo. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2008.
BROWN, T; SCRASE, T. J.; GANGULY-SCRASE, R. Globalised dreams, local constraints: migration and youth aspirations in an Indian regional town. Children’s Geographies, 15:5, p. 531 – 544, 2017.
CLIFFORD, J. Culturas viajantes. In: ARANTES. A. A. (org.). O espaço da diferença. Campinas: Papirus, 2000. p. 50 – 79.
COFFEY, J.; FARRUGIA, D. Unpacking the black box: the problem of agency in the sociology of youth, Journal of Youth Studies, 17:4, 461-474, 2014.
COOPER, A.; SWARTZ, S.; MAHALI, A. Disentangled, decentred and democratized: youth studies for the global south. Journal of Youth Studies, v. 22, n. 1, p. 29 – 45, 2019.
COOPER, A. ‘Morphing between the margins’: how youth make a living across multiple spaces in South Africa and beyond. Journal of Youth Studies, 1–17, 2023.
DELANDA, M. Space: extensive and intensive, actual and virtual. In: BUCHANAN, I.; LAMBERT, G. (ed.). Deleuze and space. Edinburg: Edinburg University Press, 2005. p. 80-88.
DELANDA, M.; COX, C.. Possibility Spaces. In: COX, C., JASKEY, J., MALIK, S. (eds.). Realism Materialism Art. S.L: Sternberg Press, 2015. p. 87-94.
DELEUZE, G.; GUATTARI, F. Mil platôs: capitalismo e esquizofrenia, V. 1. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. 34, 1995.
FARRUGIA, D.; SMYTH, J.; HARRISON, T. Emplacing young people in an Australian rural community: an extraverted sense of place in times of change. Journal of Youth Studies, v. 17, n. 9, p. 1152 – 1167, 2014.
FARRUGIA, D. Towards a spatialised youth sociology: the rural and the urban in times of change, Journal of Youth Studies, 17:3, 293-307, 2014.
FARRUGIA, D. The mobility imperative for rural youth: the structural, symbolic and non-representational dimensions of rural youth mobilities, Journal of Youth Studies, 19:6, 836-851, 2016.
FORSBERG, S. ‘The right to immobility’ and the uneven distribution of spatial capital: negotiating youth transitions in northern Sweden. Social & Cultural Geography, 20:3, p. 323-343, 2019.
GRILLO, S. S. de C. a noção de ‘contexto’ na obra de Mikhail Bakhtin e do círculo. Alfa, São Paulo, v.67, e 17813, 2023.
GULCZYŃSKA, A. Stigma and the doomed-to-fail school careers of young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Children’s Geographies, 17:4, p. 413-426, 2019.
GUNTER, A.; WATT, P. Grafting, going to college and working on road: youth transitions and cultures in an East London neighbourhood, Journal of Youth Studies, 12:5, 515-529, 2009.
HARVEY, D. O espaço como palavra chave. Em Pauta, Rio de Janeiro, n. 35, v. 13, p. 126 – 152, 2015.
HOLLOWAY, S. R. Male youth activities and metropolitan context. Environment and Planning A, v. 30, p. 385 – 399, 1998.
HOPKINS, P. and PAIN, R.. Geographies of age: thinking relationally. Area, v. 39, n. 3, p. 287–294, 2007.
HÖRSCHELMANN, K.; SCHÄFER, N. Performing the global through the local—globalisation and individualisation in the spatial practices of young East Germans. Children's Geographies 3(2), p. 219-242, 2005.
HÖRSCHELMANN, K; SCHÄFER, N. Berlin is not a foreign country, stupid! – Growing up ‘global’ in Eastern Germany. Environment and Planning A, v. 39, p. 1855 – 1872, 2007.
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LATOUR, B. Reagregando o social: uma introdução a teoria ator-rede. Salvador: Edufba; Bauru: Edusc, 2012.
LANGEVANG, T.; V. GOUGH, K. Surviving through movement: the mobility of urban youth in Ghana. Social & Cultural Geography, 10:7, p. 741 – 756, 2009.
LEFEBVRE, H. Elementos de ritmanálise: e outros ensaios sobre temporalidades. Rio de Janeiro: Consequência, 2021.
LUKÁCS, G. Introdução a uma estética Marxista: Sobre a Particularidade como Categoria da Estética. São Paulo: Instituto Lukács, 2018. 272 p.
MACDONALD, R.; SHILDRICK, T.; FURLONG, A. ‘Cycles of disadvantage’ revisited: young people, families and poverty across generations. Journal of Youth Studies, v. 23, n. 1, p. 12 – 27, 2020.
MARTUCCELLI, D. Lo intercultural ante la prueba de la dinámica entre exclusión y Integración social. Revista CIDOB D’Afairs Internationals, n. 66-67, p. 53 – 68, out. 2004.
MARTUCCELLI, D. Elasticidades sociales, acciones heterogéneas, reflexividades inciertas: lineamientos para un programa de investigación sobre la juventud. Educação e Pesquisa, São Paulo, v. 49, 2023.
MASSEY, D. Pelo espaço: uma nova política da espacialidade. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 2008.
MCDOWELL, L. Transitions to work: masculine identities, youth inequality and labor market change. Gender, Place and Culture, 9:1, p. 39-59, 2002.
NAYAK, A.; BONNER-THOMPSON, C. Sexualities and social justice: young people and the doing of gender and sexual equalities in a former ship-building community. Antipode, v. 54, n. 4, p. 1228-1250, 2022.
O’CONNOR, C. D.. Classed, raced, and gendered biographies: young people’s understandings of social structures in a boomtown. Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 18, No. 7, 867–883, 2015.
PLOWMAN, L. Rethinking context: digital technologies and children’s everyday lives. Children’s Geographies, 14:2, p. 190 – 202, 2016.
PUNCH, S. Why have generational orderings been marginalized in the social sciences including childhood studies? Children’s Geographies, v. 18, n. 2, p. 128 – 140, 2020.
RICHMOND, M. A. Rio de Janeiro’s favela assemblage: accounting for the durability of an unstable object. Environment and Planning, v. 36, n. 6, p. 1045-1062. 2018.
SANTOS, M. A Natureza do Espaço: Técnica e Tempo, Razão e Emoção. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2006.
SHILDRICK, T.; MacDONALD, R.. In defence of subculture: young people, leisure and social divisions. Journal of Youth Studies, v. 9, n. 2, p. 125 – 140, may 2006.
SMITH, D. P.; MILLS, S. The ‘youth-fullness’ of youth geographies: ‘coming of age’?, Children's Geographies, 17:1, 1-8, 2019.
TELLES, V. S. Mutações do trabalho e experiência Urbana. Tempo Social, São Paulo, v.18, n.1, p.173-195, 2006.
VALENTINE, G. Boundary crossings: transitions from childhood to adulthood. Children’s Geographies, 1:1, 37 – 52, 2003.
VALENTINE, G. Geographies of youth: a generational perspective. Children’s Geographies, 17(1), p. 28-31, 2018.
VELHO, G. Trajetória individual e campo de possibilidades. In: ____. Projeto metamorfose: antropologia de sociedades complexas. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2003. p. 31 – 48.
VISSER, K. ‘I didn’t listen. I continued hanging out with them; they are my friends’. The negotiation of independent socio-spatial behaviour between young people and parents living in a low-income neighbourhood. Chindren’s Geographies, 18:6, p. 684 – 698, 2020.
WINTON, A. Youth, Gangs and Violence: Analysing the Social and Spatial Mobility of Young People in Guatemala City. Children’s Geographies, Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 167–184, August 2005.
WOODMAN, D.; WYN, J. Class, gender and generation matter: using the concept of social generation to study inequality and social change. Journal of Youth Studies, v. 18, n. 10, p. 1402 – 1410, 2015.
WYN, J.; WOODMAN, D. Generation, youth and social change in Australia. Journal of Youth Studies, v. 9, n. 5, p. 245 – 524, nov. 2006.
ZUSMAN, P. La descripción en geografía: un método, una trama. Boletín de Estudios Geográficos, n. 102, 2014.
BARBOSA, M. C.; REGO, A. R. Historicidade e contexto em perspectiva histórica e comunicacional. Famecos, Porto Alegre, v. 24, n. 3, set/dez. de 2017.
BOURDIEU, P. A miséria do mundo. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2008.
BROWN, T; SCRASE, T. J.; GANGULY-SCRASE, R. Globalised dreams, local constraints: migration and youth aspirations in an Indian regional town. Children’s Geographies, 15:5, p. 531 – 544, 2017.
CLIFFORD, J. Culturas viajantes. In: ARANTES. A. A. (org.). O espaço da diferença. Campinas: Papirus, 2000. p. 50 – 79.
COFFEY, J.; FARRUGIA, D. Unpacking the black box: the problem of agency in the sociology of youth, Journal of Youth Studies, 17:4, 461-474, 2014.
COOPER, A.; SWARTZ, S.; MAHALI, A. Disentangled, decentred and democratized: youth studies for the global south. Journal of Youth Studies, v. 22, n. 1, p. 29 – 45, 2019.
COOPER, A. ‘Morphing between the margins’: how youth make a living across multiple spaces in South Africa and beyond. Journal of Youth Studies, 1–17, 2023.
DELANDA, M. Space: extensive and intensive, actual and virtual. In: BUCHANAN, I.; LAMBERT, G. (ed.). Deleuze and space. Edinburg: Edinburg University Press, 2005. p. 80-88.
DELANDA, M.; COX, C.. Possibility Spaces. In: COX, C., JASKEY, J., MALIK, S. (eds.). Realism Materialism Art. S.L: Sternberg Press, 2015. p. 87-94.
DELEUZE, G.; GUATTARI, F. Mil platôs: capitalismo e esquizofrenia, V. 1. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. 34, 1995.
FARRUGIA, D.; SMYTH, J.; HARRISON, T. Emplacing young people in an Australian rural community: an extraverted sense of place in times of change. Journal of Youth Studies, v. 17, n. 9, p. 1152 – 1167, 2014.
FARRUGIA, D. Towards a spatialised youth sociology: the rural and the urban in times of change, Journal of Youth Studies, 17:3, 293-307, 2014.
FARRUGIA, D. The mobility imperative for rural youth: the structural, symbolic and non-representational dimensions of rural youth mobilities, Journal of Youth Studies, 19:6, 836-851, 2016.
FORSBERG, S. ‘The right to immobility’ and the uneven distribution of spatial capital: negotiating youth transitions in northern Sweden. Social & Cultural Geography, 20:3, p. 323-343, 2019.
GRILLO, S. S. de C. a noção de ‘contexto’ na obra de Mikhail Bakhtin e do círculo. Alfa, São Paulo, v.67, e 17813, 2023.
GULCZYŃSKA, A. Stigma and the doomed-to-fail school careers of young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Children’s Geographies, 17:4, p. 413-426, 2019.
GUNTER, A.; WATT, P. Grafting, going to college and working on road: youth transitions and cultures in an East London neighbourhood, Journal of Youth Studies, 12:5, 515-529, 2009.
HARVEY, D. O espaço como palavra chave. Em Pauta, Rio de Janeiro, n. 35, v. 13, p. 126 – 152, 2015.
HOLLOWAY, S. R. Male youth activities and metropolitan context. Environment and Planning A, v. 30, p. 385 – 399, 1998.
HOPKINS, P. and PAIN, R.. Geographies of age: thinking relationally. Area, v. 39, n. 3, p. 287–294, 2007.
HÖRSCHELMANN, K.; SCHÄFER, N. Performing the global through the local—globalisation and individualisation in the spatial practices of young East Germans. Children's Geographies 3(2), p. 219-242, 2005.
HÖRSCHELMANN, K; SCHÄFER, N. Berlin is not a foreign country, stupid! – Growing up ‘global’ in Eastern Germany. Environment and Planning A, v. 39, p. 1855 – 1872, 2007.
HUTCHISON, E. D. A life course perspective. In: HUTCHISON, E. D. (Org.). Dimensions of human behaviour: The changing life course. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2011.
INGOLD, T. Trazendo as coisas de volta à vida: emaranhados criativos num mundo de materiais. Horizontes Antropológicos, Porto Alegre, ano 18, n. 37, p. 25-44, jan./jun. 2012.
LATOUR, B. Reagregando o social: uma introdução a teoria ator-rede. Salvador: Edufba; Bauru: Edusc, 2012.
LANGEVANG, T.; V. GOUGH, K. Surviving through movement: the mobility of urban youth in Ghana. Social & Cultural Geography, 10:7, p. 741 – 756, 2009.
LEFEBVRE, H. Elementos de ritmanálise: e outros ensaios sobre temporalidades. Rio de Janeiro: Consequência, 2021.
LUKÁCS, G. Introdução a uma estética Marxista: Sobre a Particularidade como Categoria da Estética. São Paulo: Instituto Lukács, 2018. 272 p.
MACDONALD, R.; SHILDRICK, T.; FURLONG, A. ‘Cycles of disadvantage’ revisited: young people, families and poverty across generations. Journal of Youth Studies, v. 23, n. 1, p. 12 – 27, 2020.
MARTUCCELLI, D. Lo intercultural ante la prueba de la dinámica entre exclusión y Integración social. Revista CIDOB D’Afairs Internationals, n. 66-67, p. 53 – 68, out. 2004.
MARTUCCELLI, D. Elasticidades sociales, acciones heterogéneas, reflexividades inciertas: lineamientos para un programa de investigación sobre la juventud. Educação e Pesquisa, São Paulo, v. 49, 2023.
MASSEY, D. Pelo espaço: uma nova política da espacialidade. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 2008.
MCDOWELL, L. Transitions to work: masculine identities, youth inequality and labor market change. Gender, Place and Culture, 9:1, p. 39-59, 2002.
NAYAK, A.; BONNER-THOMPSON, C. Sexualities and social justice: young people and the doing of gender and sexual equalities in a former ship-building community. Antipode, v. 54, n. 4, p. 1228-1250, 2022.
O’CONNOR, C. D.. Classed, raced, and gendered biographies: young people’s understandings of social structures in a boomtown. Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 18, No. 7, 867–883, 2015.
PLOWMAN, L. Rethinking context: digital technologies and children’s everyday lives. Children’s Geographies, 14:2, p. 190 – 202, 2016.
PUNCH, S. Why have generational orderings been marginalized in the social sciences including childhood studies? Children’s Geographies, v. 18, n. 2, p. 128 – 140, 2020.
RICHMOND, M. A. Rio de Janeiro’s favela assemblage: accounting for the durability of an unstable object. Environment and Planning, v. 36, n. 6, p. 1045-1062. 2018.
SANTOS, M. A Natureza do Espaço: Técnica e Tempo, Razão e Emoção. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2006.
SHILDRICK, T.; MacDONALD, R.. In defence of subculture: young people, leisure and social divisions. Journal of Youth Studies, v. 9, n. 2, p. 125 – 140, may 2006.
SMITH, D. P.; MILLS, S. The ‘youth-fullness’ of youth geographies: ‘coming of age’?, Children's Geographies, 17:1, 1-8, 2019.
TELLES, V. S. Mutações do trabalho e experiência Urbana. Tempo Social, São Paulo, v.18, n.1, p.173-195, 2006.
VALENTINE, G. Boundary crossings: transitions from childhood to adulthood. Children’s Geographies, 1:1, 37 – 52, 2003.
VALENTINE, G. Geographies of youth: a generational perspective. Children’s Geographies, 17(1), p. 28-31, 2018.
VELHO, G. Trajetória individual e campo de possibilidades. In: ____. Projeto metamorfose: antropologia de sociedades complexas. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2003. p. 31 – 48.
VISSER, K. ‘I didn’t listen. I continued hanging out with them; they are my friends’. The negotiation of independent socio-spatial behaviour between young people and parents living in a low-income neighbourhood. Chindren’s Geographies, 18:6, p. 684 – 698, 2020.
WINTON, A. Youth, Gangs and Violence: Analysing the Social and Spatial Mobility of Young People in Guatemala City. Children’s Geographies, Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 167–184, August 2005.
WOODMAN, D.; WYN, J. Class, gender and generation matter: using the concept of social generation to study inequality and social change. Journal of Youth Studies, v. 18, n. 10, p. 1402 – 1410, 2015.
WYN, J.; WOODMAN, D. Generation, youth and social change in Australia. Journal of Youth Studies, v. 9, n. 5, p. 245 – 524, nov. 2006.
ZUSMAN, P. La descripción en geografía: un método, una trama. Boletín de Estudios Geográficos, n. 102, 2014.
Published
28/07/2025
How to Cite
TURRA NETO, Nécio.
GEOGRAPHIC CONTEXT AND FIELD OF POSSIBILITIES FOR THE GEOGRAPHICAL READING OF YOUTH.
Mercator, Fortaleza, v. 24, july 2025.
ISSN 1984-2201.
Available at: <http://www.mercator.ufc.br/mercator/article/view/e2407>. Date accessed: 13 sep. 2025.
doi: https://doi.org/10.4215/rm2025.e24017.
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