Children, young people and borders

This edited volume increases knowledge about children and young people living in borderlands, passing through borders and (de)constructing borders, as well as highlights the potential of studying how children and young people imagine, act, cross, and inhabit symbolic and material borders.

The study of borders and borderlands is growing extensively, but the experiences of children and young people in the turmoil of border changes and border crossings remain under-researched. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this edited volume has a twofold objective: to increase knowledge about children and young people living in borderlands, passing through borders and (de)constructing borders; and to highlight the potential of studying how children and young people imagine, act, cross, and inhabit symbolic and material borders, with the aim of advancing the theoretical and empirical debate within border studies.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Borderlands Studies.

Machteld Venken is Professor of Contemporary Transnational History at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) of the University of Luxembourg. Her research interests are transnational, transregional and comparative histories of Europe, migration, borderlands, oral history, the history of families and children, and citizen science.

Virpi Kaisto is PhD Researcher at the Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland. She specialises in the study of borderlands, mental borders and processes of bordering, and border twin cities. Her doctoral dissertation studies the Finnish-Russian borderland with visual and ethnographic research methods.

Chiara Brambilla is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Bergamo (Italy). Her research focuses on anthropology, critical geopolitics and epistemology of borders; border studies and border theory; the Mediterranean border-migration nexus; border aesthetics; urban ethnography and borders in cities; and borders in Africa.