City of Fluids,City of Voids : Risk Discourses and the Figurations of Children’s Spatial Cultures in Middle-Class Nairobi

Abstract

Particularly in middle-class milieus, where risk discourses dominate, children’s cultures are increasingly confined to private—domestic, pedagogic, or commercial—spaces. However, middle-class children in cities of the Global South remain barely visible in urban studies. Drawing on childhood biographical interviews and maps, this article examines figurations of spatial and cultural practices of middle-class childhoods in Nairobi and explores how these practices are affected by risk discourses and their materialization in gated housing, chauffeured mobility, and the proliferation of “child-friendly” spaces. The spatial analysis identifies fluids and voids as spatial figures that are prominent in the figuration of middle-class children’s relation to the city. The results reveal a paradox: Middle-class practices expand children’s mobilities across the city while simultaneously reducing their sensory experience of it, leading to spatialized imaginations of fear.