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This paper – at the intersection of childhood studies, island studies, and geographies of place – explores place and sense of belonging in relation to the childhood memories of people from a Faroese village community in a time of societal shift. It examines and analyses the role of and dynamic connection between everyday life practices, local knowledge, and intra- and intergenerational relations in children's place-making practices and narratives. It aims to scrutinize in which sense the interplay between past and present, and between processes of continuity and discontinuity, in people's childhood narratives reflects their relations to place and ties to the past. It investigates the meaning of the coast and ocean in childhood memories, everyday life activities, and local maritime culture in a village community with strong connection to modern large-scale fisheries. It suggests that children's place-making processes and future orientations are influenced by family relations, social capital, local knowledge, and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent investigations into ‘student geographies’ have recognised the complex ways in which students from different backgrounds go about ‘fitting in’ among their peers within university-managed accommodation. Halls have been characterised in the literature as highly pressurised spaces in which multiple (and potentially conflicting) identities can perpetuate disadvantage through incongruous accessibility to student-centric social activities and behaviours. This paper joins these debates by critically examining universities' ‘Student Accommodation’ web pages alongside qualitative interviews in order to question notions of halls being inclusive and encouraging a cultural mix. Using Bourdieu's reading of social capital this paper suggests that, while these spaces may perpetuate disadvantaged access to social capital, some students may transcend this, drawing on other forms of non-student social capital which legitimises their position among their peers in halls. This adds to previous discussions of ‘difference’ by highlighting the power of social capital in transforming individuals' positions within social groupings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses interactions and inclusion at a newly built and recently opened secondary free school in England, presenting findings from a qualitative research project carried out in 2016–2018. Free schools were introduced in England in 2010 and enable parents, community organisations, charities and universities to set up their own schools, funded by the government, but entitled to decide on their own curriculum, staffing and admissions arrangements. In this paper, we draw on a combined theoretical framework of social capital and spatial analysis to analyse the way students and teachers at the participating school described interactions in different school spaces, focusing on two main analytical spaces: 'seeing space' and 'connecting space.' The findings illustrate the socially constructed nature of school spaces and emphasise the importance of different kinds of spaces to ensure the social inclusion of all students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper teases out how the identities of young people with mind-body-emotional differences are performed and reproduced via their social relationships primarily within school spaces. Drawing upon the concept of embodied social capital (Holt 2008), the paper explores empirically how young people's positionings within a variety of social networks (re)produces differentially valued identity positionings which can become embodied within young people's shifting senses of self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has documented the decline in children's independent mobility (CIM) globally. CIM is a measure of the level of a child's freedom to move about his or her local neighbourhood without direct adult supervision. This paper explores the effectiveness of three intervention programmes to change travel behaviours of children to and from school in 26 Catholic primary schools in a range of urban and regional settings in Victoria, Australia. Using pre and post intervention surveys with 1600 students and parents, and interviews with school principals, we measured the influence of a range of individual, social, and built environment factors on the effectiveness of these intervention programmes. The degree of social connectedness of the school and the individual was found to have the most impact on the effectiveness of the intervention programmes to change behaviours, while the interventions themselves were not greatly effective without being embedded in a supportive school culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a very welcome recent growth in research directly with and by children and young people, with a wide range of reporting children's own views and experiences. Research ethics has also recently been receiving a great deal of attention, and there are debates about the extent to which research with children differs from research with other groups. This paper draws on the author's experiences of empirical sociological research with 12-15-year-olds conducted in a deprived town in SE England in the late 1990s that explored children and young people's social networks and neighbourhoods, and the implications for their health and well-being (social capital). The paper focuses on some ethical dilemmas raised during the research, and concludes with a discussion of broader issues related to dissemination and the policy implications of research [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the usefulness of employing the concept of social capital within a research project investigating the best ways of meeting the health and well-being needs of young people living in rural Wales. The first part of the paper provides an overview of some of the current research exploring the relationship between social capital, health and young people. The second part provides an overview of findings from an action research project to illustrate how social capital is conceived and applied in this context. It concludes by stating that children and young people do actively generate, draw upon and negotiate their own social capital, and that this is an under-utilised resource in terms of promoting health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the social networks of young unaccompanied asylum seekers and refugees in London. It discusses the findings of a 12-month qualitative study using photo elicitation interviews with eight young refugees to explore their social networks. The analysis points to the potential of social networks to provide emotional and material support for young refugees and discusses the extent to which social capital flows through these networks. It explores the importance of place and gender in shaping their entry into and formation of these networks. It concludes that the formation of weak ties particularly to institutional actors is important in providing young refugees with access to material and cultural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neighbourhoods are changing as people lead more spatially dispersed lives diminishing their local social connections. This paper explores the way children interact with their neighbourhoods to see whether they are still socially connected to their neighbourhoods or leading more spatially dispersed social lives. It reports findings from a study of 92 children aged 9-11 in Dunedin, New Zealand. The study found that while many children did have minimal social contact with their neighbourhood, other children retained strong social connections. Key factors determining children's levels of social connectivity include attendance at the local school, levels of independence, neighbourhood urban form, road density and locally accessible classmates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how the everyday geographies of city life and families’ access to social networks in the neighbourhood influence families’ school choices. The data consist of thematic interviews with parents of 8–14-year-old children (n = 170) in three urban areas located in the cities of Paris (France), Milan (Italy) and Espoo (Finland) and are analysed via qualitative content analysis. The findings indicate that the families’ access to local social networks influences the reasoning behind school choice to the local school. The children’s relationships with other children and adults in the neighbourhood are considered important, but additionally, the parents’ networks with other parents in the area, mediated by the school, play their role. School choices as practices should therefore be analysed not merely as choices of an institution, as they comprise various aspects concerning the surrounding neighbourhood as a physical and social space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the imperative that youth voices should contribute to shaping their future world, there is limited evidence of youth agency and participation which articulates their unique experience of community in urban planning decision-making. This study uses the lens of social capital to compare perspectives of community between young people aged 15–17 years and adults in a suburban community on the Sunshine Coast, South East Queensland, Australia. The results, derived from both quantitative and qualitative methods, illustrate the different experiences of community between youth and adults and suggest how urban planners and decision-makers can incorporate youth-friendly responses to address issues of power inequality between youth and adult residents and mechanisms to engage adult residents through collaborative governance approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]