Im/mobile Youth: leisure frontiers in the wireless city

Abstract

In recent years, the ‘global’ question has become central to debate in youth studies. For some, processes of globalisation have created increased homogeneity of culture in geographically diverse communities; for others, the effects of globalisation are both heterogeneous and unpredictable, as global and local cultures conflict and merge. At the same time, however, the globalisation of ‘mobile’ technology has opened up corridors of dialogue and interaction between disparate cultures and communities in ways that are both emergent and inchoate. Drawing on qualitative data from an ambitious comparative study of youth leisure in Glasgow and Hong Kong (funded by the ESRC-RGC Bilateral Fund) this paper seek to develop three key concepts which seek to capture this new patterning of youth leisure in a global context: im/mobility, which seeks to describe the stratified nature of contemporary youth mobilities; leisure frontiers, which emphasises the emergent nature of time-space configurations in online and offline leisure; and wireless city, which examines the spatial relationship between real and virtual leisure-space. Through this conceptual development, the paper will seek out the unique intersections of youth, class and space in the digital era.