Children’s embodied politics of exclusion and belonging in public space

Abstract

This chapter aims to show how politics are part of children’s everyday lifeworlds and their social spaces and everyday spatiality are interwoven by what is recognized as political discourses and behaviors. Based on a synthesis of research, this chapter illustrates three different examples of children’s politics in public space in which the material and discursive body plays a central role. In the first section, it is shown how children interpret and express feelings of exclusion and learn that there is a politics of injustice in public space and different bodies are treated and perceived differently, to which they also act upon. Children’s own experiences of exclusion shape their politicalsubjectivities. The second section focuses on spatial identity, how children understand and act on identities and discourses attached to different places, and how the children themselves ascribe narratives and identities to people living in specific places. The third section concentrates on how the body is central to the ways in which children negotiate and express their identity formation. It discusses how the physical body is used by children as a means of communicating political belonging, identity, and spatial belonging. These examples show how politics are entangled in how children use and perceive public spaces and that the practice of everyday life is important for how children form political subjectivities.