Youth in motion: a critical ethnography of citizenship, language and inhabited spaces

Abstract

This critical ethnographic study explores the citizenship practices of seven young English language learners enrolled in an English course at the Language Institute of a public university in Bogotá. The research investigates how these students, through their everyday practices, negotiate meaning and make choices within sociocultural, political, and economic contexts. Central to the study was a pedagogical innovation grounded in dialogic inquiry and a spatial approach to learning, which positioned students’ urban and digital inhabited spaces as meaningful sources for reflection, expression and citizenship practice. Data collection included students’ course class works such as spatial maps, personal essays, and video presentations, alongside teacher-ethnographer field notes and dialogic conversations. These particulars provided rich insight into how youth engage with English not only as an academic subject but as a tool for identity construction, social participation, and future aspiration. The findings suggest that those research companions’ enactments of citizenship are dynamic, situated, and space dependent. Youth citizenship is constituted by fluid, relational practices shaped by emotional, spatial, and ideological conditions, rather than fixed institutional roles. Urban and digital spaces played an active role in mediating how youth navigated identity, belonging, and civic participation. Ultimately, the findings challenge traditional views of ELT and citizenship, urging educators to value youth’s diverse, lived expressions of agency and community. The study affirms the potential of spatially grounded, dialogic pedagogies to recognize and expand young people’s plural, lived experiences of language and citizenship.