Students in cities, students as citizens: towards a legal geography

Keywords: Legal Geography, Citizenship, Spatial Justice, Studentification, Student Accommodation
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Students in higher education can be considered a distinct class of legal subjects, foremost adopting roles of contractual counterparties as consumers of education, debt and accommodation. To assert their participatory interest(s) in the city, and achieve just outcomes within processes of urban change, they must also navigate the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Tensions arise where ‘town’ and ‘gown’ constructions of citizenship rights do not align; therefore, the perspectives of each city stakeholder, and the nature of the legal and commercial connectivities between them, must be understood to balance and advance their respective interests. By deploying a legal geographical methodology to analyse the (legal and financial) infrastructure regulating those interactions and tensions, and engaging the viewpoint(s) of an increasingly diverse studenthood, praxes of governmentality and other controls exercised by non-student city stakeholders can be found to exploit and perpetuate power imbalances disadvantageous to students: thereby limiting students’ participatory agency to shape and control the city. It is argued that examining the city’s lawscape in this manner, and configuring student citizenship as a stakeholder interest, might purposefully serve to contextualise and address spatial unfreedoms and systemic inequities experienced by students in university cities.