Teenagers, sexualities-education assemblages and sexual citizenship: a new materialist analysis

Abstract

In this chapter Alldred and Fox explore teenage pregnancy, sexualities education and sexual citizenship using a new materialist toolkit of assemblages, affects and micropolitics. They use data from two studies to study the impact of different sexualities-education assemblages (constituted around teachers, school nurses and youth workers) upon the sexual and non-sexual capacities produced in young people. These capacities – for instance, a capacity to assert rights to express specific sexual desires or a capacity to manage fertility proactively – contribute inter alia to young people’s (sexual) ‘citizen-ing’. Alldred and Fox conclude by assessing the wider implications of these assemblages for sexual citizenship – in the context of the continuing emphasis upon educational approaches to address issues of non-normative sexualities including teenage pregnancy and parenting, and the opportunities for an alternative nomadic citizenship of becoming and lines of flight.