Abstract
To explore the politics of place, and to challenge the politics of place, is becoming paramount for young people more than ever before. In this chapter I argue for young people to be offered opportunities within schools to explore what it means to belong to a place, in order to understand the ways in which their politics of (un)belonging is tied up with social categories of class, race and ethnicity. I present young people, residing in Bermondsey, South London, engaging with place-based discourses critically and collaboratively. Through emotive portraits created by young people in Art lessons, interviews with teachers and also with paired students, and extensive questionnaires, critical insights into the significances of everyday place-based racialised and classed belongings were investigated. The young people’s reflections and discussions about the nature of identity and belonging revealed what young people perceive as the pathologisation of their locales and (imagined) communities by wider public, media and political discourses.
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- 1.
Critical pedagogy is also practised as “liberatory pedagogy’, empowering pedagogy, radical pedagogy, engaged pedagogy, or pedagogy of possibility” (George, 2001).
- 2.
- 3.
The British National Party (BNP)is a far-right fascist political party.
- 4.
The National Front is a far-right fascist political party.
- 5.
My researchembraced features of educational, urban, and critical ethnography, arts-based educational research, as well as critical race methodology and critical pedagogy, for these value participant voice and empowerment, inspire social justice and social change.
- 6.
There were 34 students in total (aged 14–15), 16 students in one class and 18 students in the other class. Pseudonyms for teachers and students are used throughout my chapter.
- 7.
The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is a qualification normally taken by 16 year old students in the UK at the end of compulsory education.
- 8.
Ethnographers might incorporate questionnaires as an additional research tool (Wolcott, 1997).
- 9.
Spatialised critical theory and racialised critical geography complement critical pedagogy; helpful in interrogating connections between power, race and place, they can work alongside a critical pedagogy of place (Gruenewald, 2003).
- 10.
Fulham, an area in the London borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, lies approximately 8 miles west of Bermondsey.
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Habib, S. (2019). Portraits of Place: Critical Pedagogy in the Classroom. In: Habib, S., Ward, M.R.M. (eds) Identities, Youth and Belonging. Studies in Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96113-2_11
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