Exploring the emergence of the subject in power: infant geographies

Following Butler’s argument that understanding the operations of power requires an examination of the contexts of ‘infants’ emergence’, this paper explores the potential for infant geographies. Butler points to the importance of infancy to subjection, the formation of psyches, and the ‘fiction’ of an interior or socially anterior self. Attention to infants’ everyday geographies therefore has the potential to unravel how individuals are subjected; how power becomes an embodied part of individuals’ subjective identities, operating creatively to produce subjects with agency, and, at the same time, limiting and circumscribing appropriate subjectivities. A critical reflection on Butler suggests a need to focus upon how subjection occurs in specific material spaces, and the role of a host of human and nonhuman others to the process of subjection. Also pertinent is a fuller exploration of how diversities of kinship and nonkinship social relations might lead to other constellations of power in the subjection of infants. How the geographies of infants can be operationalised methodologically and epistemologically is also explored. The paper has broader resonance to issues of subjection; to how embodied inequalities are reproduced, transformed, or both; to questions of agency; and to concerns to deconstruct an autonomous, thinking, rational, human subject within human geography—reconfiguring individuals as constituted within emotional and psychic interdependency

Food, feeding and the material everyday geographies of infants: possibilities and potentials

This paper forges an agenda for researching geographies of infants. Scholars have tended to overlook the everyday geographies of very young children. However, outside of geography, infancy is seen as a specifically dynamic period of life, and is subject to sustained research and policy intervention. In particular, early childhood is viewed as a key point in which to intervene to transform enduring, interconnected, societal, educational, and health based inequalities (Department of Health and Department for Education, 2013; US Early Head Start Act, 2007). Food and feeding are seen as critical both to the health of infants now and of the children and adults they become (NHS Start 4 Life, 2010). However, much policy and research under-theorises the importance of socio-spatial contexts and the subjectivity/agency of infants. There is, then, an urgent need for geographers to put infants onto the agenda, to inform and challenge these dominant accounts. Researching with infants necessitates not just critiquing modern, liberal notions of an autonomous subject/agent, but developing a new way of understanding subjectivity and agency. Drawing upon Lupton’s (2013) notion of infant-carer interembodiment, I suggest a way forward with reference to the material geographies of infant feeding

Questions of agency: capacity, subjectivity, spatiality and temporality

Geographies of Children, Youth and Families is flourishing, but its founding conceptions require critical reflection. This paper considers one key conceptual orthodoxy: the notion that children are competent social actors. In a field founded upon liberal notions of agency, we identify a conceptual elision between the benefits of studying agency and the beneficial nature of agency. Embracing post-structuralist feminist challenges, we propose a politically-progressive conceptual framework centred on embodied human agency which emerges within power. We contend this can be achieved though intensive/extensive analyses of space, and a focus on biosocial beings and becomings within dynamic notions of individual/intergenerational time

Disability, special educational needs, class, capitals and segregation in schooling: a population geography perspective

This paper investigates the spatially variable schooling of young people with Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND), and interconnections with class and capitals, using analysis of the School Census, and interviews with 64 educational professionals and parents in three areas in Southeast England. Three key original findings emerge. First, high proportions of young people with SEND come from poor backgrounds; however, most young people with SEND labels are not poor. Second, social class, capitals, and SEND intersect in ways which relatively advantage young people from more affluent and educated families, who gain access to specific labels and what is locally considered the ‘best’ education. Third, we conceptualise school spaces as differently ‘bounded’ or ‘connected’, providing different opportunities to develop meaningful relationships and qualifications, or social and cultural capital, rather than focus on the type of school (‘special’, separate schools for students with SEND; or ‘mainstream’ local schools). What are locally considered to be ‘the best’ school spaces are connected and porous, providing opportunities to develop social and cultural capital. Other school spaces are containers of both SEND and poverty, with limited opportunities to acquire social and cultural capitals. Overall, we suggest that the intersecting experience of SEND, class and capitals can (re)produce socio-economic inequalities through school spaces

"Everyone knows me .... I sort of like move about”: the friendships and encounters of young people with Special Educational Needs in different school settings

This paper examines the peer-related social experiences and friendships of young people (aged 11-17) diagnosed with Special Educational Needs in four different school settings: mainstream schools, segregated special schools and units within mainstream schools in Southeast England, UK. Findings from qualitative research involving young people with Special Educational Needs and adults, and participant observation, are presented. The young people had one or a combination of the following diagnoses of Special Educational Need: ‘Moderate Learning Difficulties’, on the ‘Autistic Spectrum’, and ‘Social, Emotional and Mental Health Difficulties’. We use the term ‘differences’ rather than ‘difficulties’ to express the interconnected socio-spatial construction of, and corporeality of, the experiences of these differences. There has been limited scholarship about the social experiences of young people with these diagnoses. In our study young people’s experiences of friendships, exclusion, inclusion and bullying were socio-spatially shifting. Young people had varying experiences in the different school settings. In all settings most had friends within the school, although those in special schools and units tended to have more friends within the school. However, bullying and ‘othering’ were also experienced in all three settings based on a variety of perceived ‘differences’. All young people needed opportunities for ‘encounter’ to forge friendships. Encounters are risky and can reproduce and reinforce difference as well as generating social connections and friendships. In many spaces young people’s opportunities for encounter were constrained by the socio-spatial organisation of schools

Special units for young people on the autistic spectrum in mainstream schools: sites of normalisation, abnormalisation, inclusion, and exclusion

This paper explores the experiences of young people on the autistic spectrum (AS) who attend a special unit within a mainstream secondary school in England. The paper feeds into contemporary debates about the nature of inclusive schooling and, more broadly, special education. Young people on the AS have been largely neglected within these debates. The paper focuses upon processes of normalisation and abnormalisation to which the young people on the AS are subject, and how these are interconnected with inclusion and exclusion within school spaces. At times, the unit is a container for the abnormally behaving. However, processes of normalisation pervade the unit, attempting to rectify the deviant mind–body–emotions of the young people on the AS to enable their inclusion within the mainstream school. Normalisation is conceptualised as a set of sociospatially specific and contextual practices; norms emerge as they are enacted, and via a practical sense of the abnormal. Norms are sometimes reworked by the young people on the AS, whose association with the unit renders them a visible minority group. Thus, despite some problems, special units can promote genuine ‘inclusive’ education, in which norms circulating mainstream school spaces are transformed to accept mind–body–emotional differences

Failing children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities in England: new evidence of poor outcomes and a postcode lottery at the Local Authority level at Key Stage 1

This paper sets out original findings from analyses of the English National Pupil Database of Key Stage 1 (KS1) attainment, to examine educational outcomes of children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). The schooling of these children has been entirely within the context of the current SEND system, defined by the 2014–2015 policy of the Children and Families Act and Code of Practice. With a strong focus on children's needs and outcomes, the policy intends to achieve high educational outcomes for children with SEND. Our new results show, however, that children with SEND are one of the most disadvantaged groups in education, and they are far less likely to meet expected learning standards than their peers at KS1. For instance, about 44%, 31% and 23% of children with SEND met the standards in phonics, reading and writing, respectively, compared to 88%, 83% and 78% of children with no SEND. Further, our spatial analysis shows for the first time that this disadvantage displays large spatial variability across Local Authorities: there is a postcode lottery in the education of children with SEND. The new findings provide strong evidence that the new SEND policy is failing many children with SEND, and that this performance varies markedly across space. This adds further weight and evidence to a growing recognition, even from government, that the SEND system needs to change, and that the ambitious aims of the transformation of education and care for children with SEND in 2014 and 2015 are not being realised.</p

Children and Covid 19 in the UK

The UK has been one of the most badly affected nations of the Global North by the COVID-19 outbreak in terms of illness, death rates and a severe economic downturn. Children have been impacted severely (and unequally), with UK lockdown meaning that many children were away from school and usual leisure activities for six months during the first lockdown. We revised this Viewpoint during the third lockdown when schools were closed again for an indefinite time. Despite substantial media and policy debate about the impact of COVID-19 on young people, with a focus on education, young people’s own voices tend to be obscured in these mainstream accounts. By contrast, the Children’s Commissioner for England has focused on young people’s accounts, which are discussed in this viewpoint

Nationalism and diversity in schools

Nationalism and diversity in school

The ‘mirrored ceiling’: young undergraduate student women’s expectations of gendered career opportunities and constraints

This paper examines young women university students’ expectations of gender inequalities in the workplace, drawing upon semi-structured interviews with twenty-one young women at three mid-high ranking universities. Our original findings show that the young women were factoring-in expectations of the gendered workplace as a backdrop to their career choices and life-planning. Critically, these young women are relatively privileged and educationally successful, yet are framing their career choices in light of expectations of gendered constraints. We label this phenomenon the ‘mirrored ceiling’, as these expectations are reflected back onto young women’s current experiences and life-mapping. Crucially, these pervasive understandings of gendered workplaces and career trajectories were transpiring at a critical moment when young women are making crucial choices about their careers and lifecourses. The specific environment of the university is a pivotal space of formal and informal learning, and the circulation, sharing and (re)production of the mirrored ceiling. This is also a key moment in time and space when careers services, and specific industries could intervene in proactive ways to demonstrate how gender inequalities are being challenged. This paper therefore uncovers an important, and previously overlooked factor influencing gendered career pathways, which needs addressing by careers services and broader university practices