Rural Youth: Mobilities, Marginalities, and Negotiations

Abstract

This chapter surveys three interconnected conceptual themes in the scholarly literature from the latter part of the twentieth century to the present concerned with the geographies of rural youth, namely, mobilities, marginalities, and negotiations (e.g., around gendered and sexual identities). Importantly, this literature demonstrates and engages with the diversity and heterogeneity of rural youth. As such it offers much needed attention to meaningful dialogue with young people, foregrounding their perspectives and views as opposed to the imposition of categories such as “socially excluded” rural youth. The picture that emerges on youth and marginalization in rural areas is far more complex than is suggested by binaries which position the city and the country in opposition and as spaces of advantage and disadvantage, respectively. Central to this understanding is an explication of the ways in which constructions of “youth” and “rural spaces and places” are entwined, contingent, and fundamentally political.