Third places for queer spaces: LGBT+ adolescents and the discursive composition of a community

Abstract

The study considers how, in a period of shifting away from legal oppression, young LGBTQ+ people and educators create community in educational spaces in the absence of access to bars, coffee houses, hair salons and other adult 'third place' spaces of sociability and connection (Oldenburg 1999). Given "how the meaning of space is reframed when the same space is used for very different activities" (Keating 1999, p. 235), data is drawn from an ethnographic research project in secondary schools in London, focusing on one group's after-school gatherings of LGBTQ+ students (ages 11-17), called the 'Pride club', to observe how queer affective connection is formed and articulated. This occurs not simply by chance socialisation outside of lessons, but through acts of talk and play between young people and teachers that build solidarity and create an othered place of belonging or affective community in the periphery of the urban-like school space. It is one in which the mood is playful, and the ensuing discussion of films, weekend plans, romantic interests, and the playing of boardgames, is light-hearted for young people and adults alike. At other times, it is a space where the proliferation of spatial activism (Misgav 2015) can be observed, challenging the centralisation of hegemonic cis-heteronormativity and the peripheralisation of historically minoritised groups