Youth access to Manresa’s public space: An intersectional feminist geographies approach

Abstract

Youth is an heterogeneous group, crossed by different identities such as gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation class and age. These identities condition the way they live the city, limiting or allowing their access to it. In this paper I analyze the uses and experiences of young people in Manresa from a feminist intersectional perspective, it is, taking into account their multiple identities as mutually constituted and simoultaneously experienced. Through diverse qualitative methodologies I examine the experiences of thirty one young people with the aim to explore how they are in the street, focusing on their abilities to negotiate spatial conditioning. Fear, social control by their own community and heteronormativity appeared as the most determinant factors for their access to public space, showing at the same time the necessity of analyzing the forms of subordination in private space to understand the spatial dynamics in the public sphere.