Youth Chronotopes: The Living Spaces and Times of Young People

Youth lives are inscribed in specific times and spaces. Both in social history and in life stories, times and spaces are not separated but connected: this connectivity is called “chronotope.” The academic use of this concept derives from the work of the Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin. The notion was borrowed from physics and mathematics (Einstein’s Theory of Relativity) and referred to the inseparability of time and space (time as a fourth dimension of space). The chronotope is a double-sided concept: on one side, it can be seen as the time of space (the historical dimension of geography); on the other side, it can be seen as the space of time (the geographical dimension of history). There are three ways in which the chronotope can be used for the study of youth cultures: (a) as a methodological approach consisting in “reading the society through life stories,” in (local) youth contexts; (b) as a theoretical approach to analyze (national) youth cultures, in supra-local contexts; and (c) as a strategic way to understand the contemporary processes of de-territorialization and the emergence of post-national (global) youth networks. The emergence of youth as a social subject is expressed in a process of redefining the city in space and time and is based on the appearance of several specific time-space “planets” for young people in the “urban galaxy.” The life stories of several generations of young people can be “read” precisely as a process of “conquest” of urban spaces, which is expressed in a struggle for autonomy in everyday life. The chapter ends with reflections on how the chronotope can be helpful in understanding the impact on young people of an unexpected profound change like the COVID-19 pandemic.