Displacement has become one of the most prominent themes in contemporary geographical debates, used to describe processes of dispossession and forced eviction at a diverse range of scales. Given its frequent deployment in studies describing the consequences of gentrification, this paper seeks to better define and conceptualise displacement as a process of un-homing, noting that while gentrification can prompt processes of eviction, expulsion and exclusion operating at different scales and speeds, it always ruptures the connection between people and place. On this basis – and recognising displacement as a form of violence – this paper concludes that the diverse scales and temporalities of displacement need to be better elucidated so that their negative emotional, psychosocial and material impacts can be more fully documented, and resisted.

This paper engages with Hanson Thiem’s (2009) critique of geographies of education. Accepting the premise that education warrants fuller attention by geographers, the paper nonetheless argues that engaging with research on children, youth and families reshapes understanding of what has been, and might be, achieved. Foregrounding young people as the subjects rather than objects of education demands that attention be paid to their current and future life-worlds, in both inward and outward looking geographies of education. It also requires a broadening of our spatial lens, in terms of what ‘count’ as educational spaces, and the places where we study these.

Recent studies of sexuality and space have demonstrated that public spaces are constructed around particular notions of appropriate sexual comportment which exclude those whose lives do not centre on monogamous, heterosexual, procreative sex. In a wider sense, such studies have noted that this spatial exclusion of sexual dissidents reflects (and reproduces) notions of citizenship based on heteronormality. Elaborating these ideas, this article proceeds to explore the way in which dissidents have transgressed public and civic spaces in their attempt to undermine this dominant notion of citizenship. In so doing, the article questions the idealization of public space as a site where new notions of sexual citizenship can be forged, arguing that the relationship between intimacy, citizenship and space is less straightforward than some commentators suggest.

Off-campus student accommodation in the form of shared rental housing has become increasingly significant in the UK, with studies suggesting that this is having important consequences for housing markets in university towns. However, the continuing expansion of higher education, the increased involvement of private investment capital, and changing student demands are seen to be encouraging a move away from houses in multiple occupation towards purpose-built accommodation. Drawing on housing surveys and interviews conducted with current students in Loughborough (in the English East Midlands), I conclude that such purpose-built developments are implicated in processes of urban gentrification, having potentially major consequences for studentification and community cohesion in British cities.