Child and Youth Studies

Children's and young people's agency and living conditions are the focus of child and youth studies, where we offer in-depth knowledge and critical review of diverse theoretical perspectives. We live in a changing time where children and youth grow up in a digital world and segregated society.

Within child and youth studies, we investigate these and other changes - on local and global levels - and their consequences for diverse childhoods, children's unequal geographies and how children/youth navigate and negotiate their everyday life in contemporary society. In order to understand the contemporary we also need to understand the past and how both living conditions and views on children and youth have changed.

Central themes are identity- and socialisation processes, in every day peer-interaction as well as how categories such as gender, ethnicity and social class are related to different lives and educational careers.

Since our focus is on children's and young people's everyday life, studies of families, leisure, social media, neighbourhoods and labour markets are included as well as studies of formal educational settings such as early childhood education, schools and leisure time centres.