Youth circulations: Tracing the real and imagined circulations of global youth

This chapter discusses the development of Youth Circulations (www.youthcirculations.com), an online exhibit that traces real and imagined circulations of global youth. It does so via a curated media archive, art, and writing by im/migrant youth themselves, and also by international journalists, and multidisciplinary scholars. As editors and curators, Heidbrink and Statz seek to hold themselves and other adults who claim to speak for youth-even, or most often, as youths' "advocates"-accountable to the agentive, diverse, transnational lives of global youth. The result is a fluid experiment in the politics of representation, one that spans artistic, legal, media, policy, and scholarly understandings. The authors discuss this experiment in the chapter and also reflect on its origins in their individual research. They consider the challenges of applied work, and the unanticipated discoveries they have made, including the committed and generous energy of diverse individuals and collectives.