Mental Mapping as a Method for Studying Borders and Bordering in Young People’s Territorial Identifications

Virpi Kaisto and Chloe Wells

Journal of Borderlands Studies, 2021, vol. 36, issue 2, 259-279

Abstract: This paper analyzes and compares two mental mapping studies – one with young people (aged 16–19) in Finland and one with Finnish and Russian young people (aged 9–15) in the Finnish-Russian borderland. These studies show that mental mapping is a valuable method which can illuminate crucial aspects of how borders and bordering are related to young people’s territorial identifications. We argue that it is important to pay special attention to the research methodology, including the mapping scale and the complementary data collection methods, as these determine what aspects of borders and bordering in young people’s territorial identifications can be discovered, and how profoundly identification processes can be studied with mental maps. This paper contributes to the theoretical discussion on borders and territorial identity by visualizing the complexity of how borders and territorial identifications are intertwined, and how young people engage in the social, cultural and mental construction of borders and the negotiation of territorial identities. The paper enriches the mental mapping methodology by demonstrating two different ways mental maps can be used for studying young people’s territorial identifications.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08865655.2020.1719864 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rjbsxx:v:36:y:2021:i:2:p:259-279

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rjbs20

DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2020.1719864

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Borderlands Studies is currently edited by Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, Henk van Houtum and Martin van der Velde

More articles in Journal of Borderlands Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().