A Global Youth Studies? Centering the Global In Youth Studies Scholarship

Scholarship within youth studies, similar to other sub-disciplines, has been a site that has centred global north scholarship. Whilst it has been a space of critical inquiry, it has also often made invisible the diverse contexts outside of the global north(s) in which young people live. In this session, we are oriented by our 2027 publication of ‘The SAGE Handbook of Global Youth Studies’, which includes youth scholars oriented towards questions about what it means to centre ‘the global’ in youth studies. The session presents and highlights some of this critical scholarship, engaging with the tensions that emerge between local and (trans)national knowledge(s) and experiences. Specifically, this session asks about how our global theories can account for the spatial, temporal and contextual, and the interrelated flows that (dis)connect global north(s) and south(s) contexts. The session will consider what we learn collectively by thinking with global north(s) and south(s), and how emergent theories and ideas might (re)frame how we make sense of and understand young people, their experiences, and the contexts in which they live. In so doing, we ask about what it means to engage and centre a global youth studies.