Metropolitics

Geolocation Among Teenage Peers: Between Play, Control, and Gendered Vulnerability

Yann Bruna & translated by Oliver Waine — 2025-03-28T06:00:00Z

Geolocation practices among teenagers are ambivalent, combining aspects of both play and surveillance. Yann Bruna examines Snap Map use, which exposes girls in particular to new forms of vulnerability online and in urban spaces.
Whether used in the workplace, within families or in romantic relationships, geolocation tracking has become an increasingly popular way of monitoring the activities of others over the last 10 years, propelled in particular by the widespread use of smartphones—the

- From the Field / teenagers, geolocation, youth, communication technology, surveillance, technology

Girls-Only Sport

Antoine Bréau & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-05-26T05:00:00Z

Against a backdrop of gender inequalities at school, an experiment in the field of physical education shows that sports classes in single-sex groups allows students room to maneuver in relation to gender norms, albeit without completely eliminating them.
Internationally, in the face of continuing gender inequalities in schools, co-education in schools is once again being debated. In various countries (Canada, South Korea, Australia, United States), the return of single-sex schools is

- From the Field / Switzerland, sport, inequalities, gender segregation, gender, youth, non-mixity, school

Lockdown Experiences of the Youth of the Paris Banlieues

Jeanne Demoulin & Collectif Pop-Part & translated by Oliver Waine — 2022-09-16T05:00:00Z

How did young people from working-class neighborhoods in France experience lockdown during the Covid-19 crisis? A collective survey conducted in different towns in the Paris suburbs highlights the resources they mobilized to cope with coronavirus.
The youth of working-class neighborhoods in France covers a diverse reality, particularly in terms of age, gender, origin, and religion (Kakpo 2006; Marlière 2011; Truong 2015). Nevertheless, they share a common experience of inequality, which the

- From the Field / lockdown, France, Covid-19, Île-de-France, coronavirus, youth, working-class neighborhoods, Paris region

The Belhoumi Family and the Sociologist

Adèle Momméja & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-10-15T05:00:00Z

What are the objective and intimate conditions for the social ascension of the children of immigrants? And what roles do family relationships—between parents and children, but also between brothers and sisters—and residential rootedness play in this process? Stéphane Beaud's 2018 book La France des Belhoumi takes the form of a long-term biographical study that explores the differences in social trajectories between genders and generations within a family of Algerian origin.
The French

- Reviews / immigration, Algerians, social trajectories, France, North Africans, Algeria, working classes, education, upbringing, family, youth

Fighting for Housing Justice: An Interview with Two Youth Organizers in Curtis Bay, Baltimore

Nicole Fabricant & Carlos Sanchez & Terriq Thompson — 2021-03-16T06:00:00Z

Two Baltimore youth organizers discuss the importance of community land trusts, for housing and beyond.
---- Series: Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research Free Your Voice began as an informal after-school program inside Baltimore's Benjamin Franklin High School. It has evolved into a powerful youth-led movement to end incineration, build community land trusts, and push for zero waste and just transition in Baltimore.
The group organized between 2012 and

- Interviews / community land trusts, community organizing, activism, mobilization, youth, youth organizing, housing, affordable housing, housing justice, Baltimore, United States, Maryland, land use, land rights

How the Youth of the Banlieues See the Gilets Jaunes

2020-04-24T05:00:00Z

Do the “Yellow Vests” and the youth of France's banlieues share a common vision of the inequalities and discrimination that divide contemporary societies? A roundtable discussion organized as part of research on participation in working-class neighborhoods sheds light on the ambivalent views that certain young people in these areas have regarding the Gilets Jaunes movement.
Since the beginning of the Gilets Jaunes (“Yellow Vests”) movement, in October 2018, a number of commentators have noted

- From the Field / banlieue, suburbs, gilets jaunes, youth, collective action, mobilization, working-class neighborhoods, working classes, demonstrations, protest, discrimination, Paris region, Île-de-France, France, Paris

Moving Inside City Limits: The Urban Mobility of Undocumented Youth

Stephen P. Ruszczyk — 2019-06-04T05:00:00Z

The urban context and public transportation shape how undocumented youths move within cities. In a comparison of New York City and Paris, Stephen Ruszczyk shows how cities can strengthen mobility for undocumented youths, and for all residents, regardless of legal status.
Five years after Liang's parents left him and their hometown of Wenzhou in southeastern China, Liang, who was then 13 years old, reunited with them in central Paris. He lacked a visa to enter France, and had taken a plane,

- From the Field / RESF, immigration, immigration control, immigration policy, youth, undocumented youth, illegality, public transportation, transport, mass transit, Paris, New York, Featured

Masculine Sports and “Respectable” Men in Working-Class Neighborhoods

Carine Guérandel & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-03-12T06:00:00Z

In a work rich in ethnographic material, Akim Oualhaci questions how socialization through sports contributes to the reconfiguration of masculinities in working-class neighborhoods in France and the United States.
Studies on the social construction of masculinities—a quite recent but very productive field of research—often focuses on the world of sports, considered an effective space for gender-based socialization. Akim Oualhaci's book is a continuation of this work and specifically analyzes

- Debates / sport, working classes, working-class identity, working-class neighborhoods, social class, ethnography, youth, masculinity, gender, socialization, suburbs, banlieue, ghetto, Paris region, New York, France, United States

No Lawful Status: Immigrant Youth in a State of Exclusion

Alexis Silver — 2017-10-24T05:00:00Z

When the Trump administration rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, nearly 800,000 young immigrants were poised to lose work permits and protection from deportation. The termination of the policy was the most recent change in a constantly shifting landscape. Relying on seven years of ethnographic and interview research in North Carolina, Alexis Silver follows immigrant youth as they age into the early stages of adulthood while navigating turbulent and often

- From the Field / immigration, migration, citizenship, youth, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals

The Boys of Sarajevo's War Tunnel

Luka Lucić — 2016-01-12T06:00:00Z

What are the impacts of war upon young people's psychological development? Research with young men who survived Sarajevo's siege sheds new light on how young people draw upon their social and spatial environment to make sense of violent experiences.
“… The next moment I was walking in a narrow passage reeking of urine and sweat. The tunnel was about five feet high, so I had to hunch down or I would hit my head. Dirt and water dripped on us, and we slogged through ankle-deep mud. I was

- From the Field / conflict, adolescents, development, teenagers, youth, affordances, war, siege, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina