Geographies of children and young people is a rapidly emerging sub-discipline within human geography. There is now a critical mass of established academic work, key names within academia, growing numbers of graduate students and expanding numbers of university level taught courses. There are also professional training programmes at national scales and in international contexts that work specifically with children and young people. In addition to a productive journal of Children’s Geographies, there’s a range of monographs, textbooks and edited collections focusing on children and young people published by all the major academic presses then there is a substantive body of work on younger people within human geography and active authors and researchers working within international contexts to warrant a specific Major Reference Work on children’s and young people’s geographies. The volumes and sections are structured by themes, which then reflect the broader geographical locations of the research.

Interest in citizenship has never been higher. But what does it mean to be a citizen in a modern, complex community? Richard Bellamy approaches the subject of citizenship from a political perspective and, in clear and accessible language, addresses the complexities behind this highly topical issue.

This volume explores the political geographies of children and young people and aims to cement this research area within human geography and beyond. Indeed, the policies that specifically target young individuals and groups, and the politics in the everyday lives of children and youth across all scalar dimensions deserve broad attention. The book is structured in four sections with specific focus on the spatialities of the rights of the child, children and young people’s agency in politics, youthful practice as political resistance, and active youth citizenship. In the 28 chapters, a total of 43 authors based in 14 different countries explicate how issues of youthful citizenship, children’s rights, and children and young people's political agencies cross disciplinary, methodological and theoretical boundaries, with notable geographical variation. Particular attention falls on children and young people’s active roles in different kinds of political situations, environments, processes, and practices. The volume also emphasises that there is scope for future research, not least because of the shifting (geo)political landscapes across the globe.

Mobilizing for Democracy is an in-depth study into how ordinary citizens and their organizations mobilize to deepen democracy. Featuring a collection of new empirical case studies from Angola, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, this important new book illustrates how forms of political mobilization, such as protests, social participation, activism, litigation and lobbying, engage with the formal institutions of representative democracy in ways that are core to the development of democratic politics. No other volume has brought together examples from such a broad Southern spectrum and covering such a diversity of actors: rural and urban dwellers, transnational activists, religious groups, politicians and social leaders. The cases illuminate the crucial contribution that citizen mobilization makes to democratization and the building of state institutions, and reflect the uneasy relationship between citizens and the institutions that are designed to foster their political participation.

In today’s world all claims tend to be founded on or justified by ’rights’, be they political, social, economic or private. The ubiquity of this discourse has led to a blurring of the definition of what exactly constitutes rights, not to mention a blurring of the boundaries between different bundles of rights, their sources and the various institutional practices through which they are ’enjoyed’ or asserted. Particular attention needs to be paid to the category of ’citizenship rights’. Exactly how are they distinguished from human rights? This volume presents some of the most important reflections and studies on citizenship rights, both past and present. The contributions provide both thorough description and incisive analysis and place the question of citizenship rights into a wider historical, social and political perspective. As such, it offers a timely introduction to the current debates surrounding the rights and duties of both citizens and non-citizens alike, with a focus on the many ways in which citizenship is contested in the contemporary world. The volume is invaluable to scholars and students of citizenship studies, political and critical theory, human rights, sociology, urban development and law.

'The contributions of Woodiwiss, Lister and Sassen are outstanding but not unrepresentative of the many merits of this excellent collection'- The British Journal of Sociology From women's rights, civil rights, and sexual rights for gays and lesbians to disability rights and language rights, we have experienced in the past few decades a major trend in Western nation-states towards new claims for inclusion. This trend has echoed around the world: from the Zapatistas to Chechen and Kurdish nationalists, social and political movements are framing their struggles in the languages of rights and recognition, and hence, of citizenship. Citizenship has thus become an increasingly important axis in the social sciences. Social scientists have been rethinking the role of political agent or subject. Not only are the rights and obligations of citizens being redefined, but also what it means to be a citizen has become an issue of central concern. As the process of globalization produces multiple diasporas, we can expect increasingly complex relationships between homeland and host societies that will make the traditional idea of national citizenship problematic. As societies are forced to manage cultural difference and associated tensions and conflict, there will be changes in the processes by which states allocate citizenship and a differentiation of the category of citizen. This book constitutes the most authoritative and comprehensive guide to the terrain. Drawing on a wealth of interdisciplinary knowledge, and including some of the leading commentators of the day, it is an essential guide to understanding modern citizenship. About the editors: Engin F Isin is Associate Professor of Social Science at York University. His recent works include Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship (Minnesota, 2002) and, with P K Wood, Citizenship and Identity (Sage, 1999). He is the Managing Editor of Citizenship Studies. Bryan S Turner is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. He has written widely on the sociology of citizenship in Citizenship and Capitalism (Unwin Hyman, 1986) and Citizenship and Social Theory (Sage, 1993). He is also the author of The Body and Society (Sage, 1996) and Classical Sociology (Sage, 1999), and has been editor of Citizenship Studies since 1997.