Crossing Borders and Borderlands: Childhood’s Secret Undergrounds

Abstract

Childhoods are curious and inaccessible to adults. This chapter problematises children’s relationships with borders by exploring childhood under-grounds as subversive spaces that respond to borderlands and border crossings in children’s lives. It is centred on a tale of two childhoods, through which we examine the significance of children’s private border crossing practices embedded within the social and political contexts of their everyday realities. These childhoods are different from each other; however, they connect through the children’s experiences of the anxieties and excitements evoked in response to the borders in their lives. They tell a story of the complexity of navigating border..