Time and Space in Youth Studies

Abstract

Time and space are central to youth research. Transitions research investigates the movement from one status to another and often from one place to another. Cultural youth research investigates the symbolic practices of young people, practices that necessarily unfold over time and involve engagements in place and across space. This chapter introduces the most pressing temporal-spatial questions for youth research and the work in youth studies that addresses time and space. The chapter finishes by addressing the challenges for future research in this area. Conceptualizing time and space, and in particular the relationship between the two, will be important to youth researchers’ efforts to understand the increasingly global interaction of youth cultural practices, political movements, and forms of inequality.