Talk by Dominik Laute at RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2026, Royal Geographical Society, London
Session: Children’s legal geographies
Session-Organizer: Elsa Noterman (University of Nottingham)
As discussions in recent legal geographies demonstrate, processes of spatialisation of and through law must be understood in terms of their everyday situatedness (Valverde 2012), materiality (Davies 2017), and plurality (Robinson and Graham 2018). Building on these discussions, this paper examines how children encounter law not primarily through explicit legal interactions or legal address as rights- bearing subjects, but through legally authorised materialisations of environments that organise everyday spatial practices.
The built environment is produced through often overlooked micro-justices such as inspections, fines, and surveillance practices (Valverde 2012, 21). In particular, largely unnoticed safety standards contribute to the technologisation and securitisation of everyday objects and spaces. As “legally recognised technical rules”, standardisation operates at the intersection of law, economy, and institutionalised spatial production (planning, architecture, design), constituting a powerful legal landscape that normalises specific socio-material orders.
Children are a key target of these safety-oriented spatialisations. Across more than 6,000 standardisation documents, childhood is regulated and spatially governed. Standards claim to provide environments with “the necessary safety measures” (DIN/EN 1176-1, 7) that children, due to their “lacking sense of safety” (CEN/CENELEC 2009, 13), are presumed to require. This becomes particularly evident in playgrounds, where safety regulations materialise through specific architectures that both constrain and stimulate play and movement in order to organise a normalised developmental trajectory.
Drawing on empirical research on the standardisation of playgrounds, this paper argues that children’s spatial encounters with law occur less through legal address than through subtle materialisations of legal landscapes as environmental technologies (Massumi 2009; Foucault 2008, 261; Lemke 2021). These encounters organise children’s legal geographies by embedding adultist legal norms into playgrounds as everyday infrastructures.
Literature:
- CEN/CENELEC (2009): Guide 14. Child Safety: Guidance for its Inclusion in Standards. Brussels.
- Davies, M. (2017): Law Unlimited, Materialism, Pluralism: and Legal Theory. London: Routledge.
- DIN e.V. (Hg.)(2017): DIN EN 1176-1 Spielplatzgeräte und Spielplatzböden: Teil 1 Allgemeine sicherheitstechnische Anforderungen und Prüfverfahren. Berlin: Beuth-Verlag.
- Foucault, M. (2008): The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-79. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Lemke, T. (2021): The Government of Things. Foucault and the New Materialisms. New York: New York University Press.
- Massumi, B. (2009): National Enterprice Emergency: Steps Toward an Ecology of Powers. Theory, Culture &Society 26(6), 153–185.
- Robinson, D. und Graham, N. (2018): Legal Pluralisms, Justice and Spatial Conflicts: New Directions in Legal Geography. The Geographical Journal 184, 3–7.
- Valverde, M. (2012): Everyday Law on the Street: City Governance in an Age of Diversity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2026
1-4 September 2026
Royal Geographical Society, London