Abstract This paper explores the advent of ‘military gap years’ amidst rising moves in Europe to combat recruitment challenges for armed forces personnel. It situates this debate within the longstanding connections between youth, security and the future as well as charting new political geographies related to young people and militarism. The paper outlines why this agenda is important for a number of reasons and situates this emerging topic within the wider discipline.
This paper explores through a case study of T & oacute;rshavn, Faroe Islands, how the expansion of an urban environment that seemingly should accommodate women's everyday lives continues to be shaped by gendered challenges. Based on 13 life history interviews with elderly female residents, the analysis shows that (i) urban change is constituted by gendered, embodied, relational, and infrastructural practices of social reproduction, and that (ii) life in this island city is made in place and in movement through relational practices that cross borders. Furthermore, (iii) the life history approach shows the importance of temporal depth for grasping infrastructural urban change across time and generations. Finally, (iv) by bringing island studies into dialogue with social infrastructure scholarship, this paper yields a dual contribution: (1) recognition for invisible labour in islanded urban life, and (2) expanding the relational understanding of social infrastructures.
Our societies are ageing, and an urban-regional perspective on these developments is urgently needed. This figure shows an uneven geography of population ageing in Sweden-in the level and pace of ageing-and calls for variegated societal adaptations across municipalities.
Cities worldwide increasingly leverage their urban past to advance place-making, economic revitalisation, regional competitiveness and cultural identity. However, how the urban past can be meaningfully integrated into everyday urban geographies remains a critical and underexplored challenge. This study situates the contested politics of metro station naming within this broader context, demonstrating that the appropriation of urban pasts is a dynamic process of negotiation, relationality and place-making. It focuses on the disputes over the extent to which historically evocative place names can be used in Suzhou Metro stations during closed-door naming conferences. Drawing on relational thinking, this paper argues that the sociocultural legitimacy of historically evocative toponyms arises from their relationality with other elements within specific urban contexts. While place names that echo the urban past are often seen as beneficial for identity construction and place branding, their legitimacy becomes contested when they are divorced from their situated contexts.
While gentrification research increasingly acknowledges displacement beyond physical dislocation, less is known about how such processes mediate - and are mediated by - the emotional lives of residents who remain in place. Drawing on 25 interviews with longtime residents of Eilandje, a former working-class harbour district in Antwerp (Belgium) that has undergone extensive new-build gentrification, this article examines how displacement shapes and is shaped by emotions. The analysis identifies distinct emotional geographies marked by grief and shame. Grief stems from the erosion of familiar social relations and place-based attachments, while shame arises from feeling both out-of-place and 'not up-to-place' in a transformed urban landscape. Crucially, these emotions did not merely register displacement after the fact; they actively shaped how residents navigated, endured, and at times resisted the gentrifying landscape. Taken together, these findings show that gentrification can exert a profound emotional toll even without physical displacement, challenging the assumption that staying put shields residents from harm. They further suggest that emotions should be understood not only as outcomes of displacement, but also as forces that mediate it. The article concludes by calling for attention not only to the right to space, but also to the right to place.
Academic scholarship has extensively studied the relationship between land, education and conflict. However, while analysing the problems of land scarcity, different symbolic meanings and competing interests over land as root causes of violent disputes within and between countries, scholars tend to overlook the potential role of land education in preventing conflict, building peace and promoting sustainable economic growth. This research examines the challenges of formal land education in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable (FCV) settings in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, considering the critical cases of Ethiopia, Palestine and Sudan. The research specifically focuses on higher education institutions, excluding informal land education practices. The research employs a mixed-methods approach, including in-depth expert interviews conducted in Ethiopia and Palestine, complemented by survey data collected in Sudan. This research contributes to the academic literature by providing insight into common challenges around formal land education in conflict-affected countries.
Postcolonial textbook research leads us to reflect on the representation of (post)colonial communities in educational media for adolescents in geography education. This paper contributes to this scholarship through Critical Discourse Analysis tracing how nine Dutch geography textbooks (1946-2018) have represented such communities from Indonesia, Suriname and 'the Dutch Antilles' in texts and images over time. Results suggest that ethno- and androcentrism prevailed across the time span, despite different framing of more recent textbook content (2003; 2018), and few strategies were employed to include multiperspectivity and subaltern voices. We discuss how geography textbooks could evolve in the light of inclusive geography education in the 21st century.
This contribution showcases visual storytelling as a tool for communicating analytical approaches. It outlines a methodology for identifying potential Cross-Border Metropolitan Regions (CBMRs). Potential CBMRs are defined as regions where significant urban populations reside across a border. Our approach is based on the assumption that particular spatial and demographic conditions create the potential for cross-border metropolitan dynamics to unfold. The regions identified represent a useful benchmark for comparative research and a starting point for exploring the extent to which urban and demographic potential aligns with actual cross-border activity.
Neighbourhood preferences play a central role in the dynamics of spatial segregation. This paper investigates how stated neighbourhood preferences relate to individual background and the characteristics of current neighbourhoods. We use the Swedish Neighbourhood Survey 2020 that includes preferences and attitudes, linked to individual-level register data and a multi-dimensional, multi-scale typology of neighbourhoods. Respondents indicated their preferred neighbourhood in terms of ethnic diversity and income mix. Our findings show that first, if free to choose, the majority prefer a mixed neighbourhood. Second, neighbourhood preferences reflect preferences for homophily and mirror individual background. Third, current neighbourhood characteristics significantly shape residential preferences, with those in the most diverse and urban academic areas exhibiting stronger preferences for ethnic diversity. Residents of less affluent areas tend to favour neighbours with lower incomes. Our findings suggest an amplification of latent segregation tendencies, given respondents' current neighbourhood ethnic diversity and income mix.
This paper develops the concept of ontological resilience through an ethnographic study of a Sufi-inspired rural community in southwestern T & uuml;rkiye. Based on eight months of fieldwork, it examines how resilience is enacted not as a technical adaptation but as an ethical and spiritual practice of living with vulnerability. Participants framed resilience through four interwoven dimensions: collective care in sharing labour and resources; ecological atonement in humility towards land, water and non-human beings; affective labour in cultivating patience, love and hope; and more-than-human solidarity in recognising other species as companions in endurance. The findings show that resilience is ambivalent rather than harmonious: communal life entails disagreements, uneven responsibilities and economic hardship, yet these frictions become opportunities for ethical cultivation. By situating resilience within a Sufi cosmology of interconnectedness, the paper extends critical resilience studies, highlights the role of spiritual ontologies and offers resources for reimagining socio-ecological futures in times of uncertainty.
