Making a home in the city. How young people take part in the urban space

The aim of this chapter is to discuss spatial aspects of young people's participation through a closer look on spatial appropriation practices. Specifically, we look at public and semi-public spaces in the city that young people appropriate as their 'homes', focusing on processes that, within the home and urban studies debates, are commonly defined as domestication of public space. The chapter scrutinizes how through domestication young people turn spaces into meaningful and familiar places. Looking at how young people make their 'home' in the urban space is also a way to look, from a micro perspective, how young people deal with urban transformations. The analysis of the empirical material shows, first of all, that, for young people, home does not necessarily take place in private spaces; instead, home can also be in public or semi-public spaces. The homes the young people create usually involve strong emotional components, going along with the attribution of great symbolic values to objects, activities and people who constitute homes. Home-making processes, moreover, can stand in opposition to control by state authorities or youth workers when their control is experienced as coercive. More generally, home-making in public or semi-public spaces can also involve challenging taken-for-granted meanings, potentially leading to conflicts with co-user of the urban space.