Global South Research in Children’s Geographies: from Useful Illustration to Conceptual Challenge

Abstract

A substantial body of research concerning the geographies of children in the global south has emerged over the past two decades. This chapter traces the ways in which geographers have engaged with the new social studies of childhood to advance understanding of southern children’s lives. It firstly outlines how the two key tenets of the new social studies of childhood – that childhood is a social construct and that children are social actors – proved valuable in illuminating aspects of children’s lives. Research with southern children provided particularly convincing examples of how childhood is differently constructed in different societies, the problems that arise when interventions rooted in normative social constructs are imposed in societies where childhood is understood differently, and of the apparent exercise of autonomous agency by young people heading households, living on the streets or engaging in economic activity. In a second section, the chapter considers some of the ways in which research with children in the global south has also posed conceptual challenges to childhood studies. It outlines how research concerning southern children demonstrates that greater nuance is required in understanding social constructions of childhood and why the insights offered by studying children’s lives through a lens of social agency are often both limited and problematic. In a third and final section, the chapter examines three alternative framings of research on childhood that are rooted in research among children in the global south but are potentially applicable more widely.