Children’s Geographies

Children’s geographies, one area of childhood studies, is an interdisciplinary sub-field comprising research by human geographers, educationalists, psychology, sociology, and other cognate disciplines. The 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child defines childhood as a period until 18 years of age. However, work in this sub-field has more usually emphasised the social constructedness of childhood. Scholarship has drawn attention to the spatial, cultural, and historically situated ideas, laws, and policies that shape childhood and children’s experiences. It therefore can be seen to depart from biologically essentialist and chronological approaches to defining a child. Accordingly, there is no universal category of child or childhood given how children’s lives and experiences are shaped by social identity, such as gender, ethnicity, race, class, sexuality, disability, ...