Mobility inequality – a spatial perspective on children and adolescents’ borders and future life aspirations

Despite prominent sociologist’s formulations of hybridity, mobility and the declining relevance of local places, my qualitative research on Danish adolescents’ life stories and educational choices indicates that children and adolescents are habitually linked to their geographical context. This territorial anchoring is of great importance for their future aspirations. Although my data from biographic interviews with 24 adolescents from three different schooldistricts in the city of Aarhus in Denmark, generally indicates that adolescents’ everyday lives are rooted locally, privileged groups are seemingly more on the go. Both in their everyday life, where school and particularly recreational activities bring them around, and in holidays, where airplanes carry them to distant countries, well-off children and adolescents’ biographies seem more un-bordered and characterized by mobility. Underprivileged groups appear more nested within local borders. In my presentation I examine how borders seem to shape these groups’ everyday lives differently – both literally (activities, trips, vacations), and mentally/symbolically (access to education, knowledge, influence, recognition).