*Apologies for cross posting*

Final call for papers: RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London, 28-30th August 2013

Session Title
Economic Change and Children, Youth and Families: Current Experiences and Future Frontiers

Session Organisers
Helena Pimlott-Wilson (Loughborough University) and Sarah Marie Hall (University of Manchester)

Sponsored by the Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group (confirmed) and the Economic Geography Research Group (confirmed)

Confirmed discussant: Prof. Linda McDowell (University of Oxford)

Session Theme
The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 has had catastrophic impacts on global, national, regional and local economic geographies. These impacts continue to play out in the form of job losses, pay cuts and short-hours working, depressed housing markets, public spending cuts and the rising cost of everyday goods, meaning that, for many people, the future remains somewhat bleak (JRF 2012). In particular, the impact on children, youth and families is noteworthy (see Edwards and Weller 2010), and yet commentary on the recent economic crisis and period of austerity has tended to focus more on impacts to government, financial markets and business.

In November 2012, the UK Government launched a consultation on the measurement of child poverty, moving away from principally economic assessments to include social factors. Despite political attention focusing on this contested area of measurement, there remains a paucity of research exploring the lived experiences of children, youth and families in austere times.  In this session we aim to explore the breadth and depth of such economic change as experienced by children, youth and families, as an often neglected area of study (MacLean et al. 2010) in relation to the frontiers of the past, present and future. We are interested in how children, youth and families cope during such turbulent times, and how they draw on the past, present and future to do so. We are also interested in how experiences, perceptions and understandings of the future and futurity according to children, youth and families has been shaped by recent economic changes, and likewise how they feel about the future in relation to past and on-going events.  We conceive of ‘frontiers’ in a variety of ways; including those that are abstract, experiential, imagined and tangible. While the frontier might a point in time, it might also be events of economic change, or be existing or new kinds of frontiers that emerge or loom as a result of such change, such as frontiers of poverty, partnership dissolution and unemployment.

We therefore welcome 15 minute papers relating to (but not limited to) the session themes, including:
• Impacts and experiences of economic recession (past and recent)
• Future and futurity
• Employment, unemployment and job insecurity
• Coping strategies during, and experiences of, economic change
• Understandings of these above issues according to children, young people and families.

Being Involved
Please send your title and abstract of a maximum of 250 words by Monday 4th February 2013 to Helena ([log in to unmask]) AND Sarah ([log in to unmask]).  Thank you

########################################################################

To unsubscribe from the BSA-WORK-EMPLOYMENT-ECONOMICLIFE list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=BSA-WORK-EMPLOYMENT-ECONOMICLIFE&A=1