Figurations of youth in regional Australia: conceptualising the ‘young person’ as spatially figured

Figurations of youth in regional Australia: conceptualising the ‘young person’ as spatially figured

This paper extends Steven Threadgold’s theorisation of the ‘figures’ of youth. Threadgold highlights that predominant representations cast young people as the focus of moral panic, revolution, consumption, ‘cool’, the future, nostalgia, cognitive risk and social risk. We extend these figurational categories to also include a conceptualisation of the young person as spatially figured. The consideration of spatiality as a key identifier of young people and characteristic of young peoples’ experiences identifies the importance of the spatial terrain in framing young peoples’ positionality. Drawing on data collected with a group of young people resident in a regional town in Southern Queensland, we consider the interplay of distance, access and sociality as markers of a spatial figuration of the young person. The imbrication of geography and spatiality with identity asserted implications for how these young people engaged as members of their community, and further, how they were received and encountered by others. We contend that close attention should be given to the interconnected effects of geography and spatiality on identity, particularly in terms of how the geo-spatial figuration of young people influences their engagement in wider community and social networks.