Narratives of the in-between : teenagers' identities and spatialities in a North Wales town

• Main Author: Jones, Katie
• Published: Cardiff University 2007
• Subjects: 306
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.584216

This thesis considers the experiences of a group of (young) teenagers in a large town in North Wales, UK. Attention focuses upon their identities and spatialities in relation to their 'in-between' or ambiguous positioning between childhood, youth and adulthood. The research demonstrates how teenagers go about actively creating and negotiating their identities in relation to their 'age', traversing and transgressing boundaries and engaging in quasi or temporary rites of passage. Furthermore, the research explores the alternative social and cultural identities teenagers construct for themselves. Such identities become created and enacted through identification with others and particular spaces which take on a symbolic significance in the activities of the groups. By means of deconstructing the popular metaphor of 'the street' as a place for young people to hang around, the research explores the mosaic of micro sites that become (re)produced as part of the teenage landscape. Rather than focusing upon binary conceptualisations of adult domination and teenager resistance, the research demonstrates that relations between adults and teenagers, and similarly between colliding groups of teenagers are better represented as 'entanglements'. The thesis comprises a multi-voiced, multi-sited text, the main emphasis of the work being to explore the narratives and subjective experiences of teenagers. This was achieved through adopting a range of teenager-negotiated qualitative methods with a specific emphasis upon visual and mobile methods. Through placing teenagers at the centre of the research they were active in defining their own multiple identities and spatialities.