L’organisation de l’espace mondial chez les enfants : les contours d’une géopolitique enfantine

Les géographes francophones se sont peu intéressés aux représentations enfantines du monde et des espaces de petite échelle de manière plus générale. Cet article, qui s’appuie sur une enquête de terrain menée auprès de 248 enfants âgés de 6 à 10 ans dans quatre écoles primaires parisiennes, montre que les enfants ont bel et bien des représentations du monde, et qu’elles révèlent des enjeux politiques forts. Les différentes activités menées (dessin, discussions, épreuve par tâches ; observation et entretiens avec les enseignants) permettent de retracer les contours d’une véritable géopolitique enfantine. Il s’agit alors de voir comment cette dernière se construit et dans quel(s) contexte(s). L’organisation de l’espace mondial par les enfants reflète l’image d’un monde hiérarchisé qui souligne l’existence d’un sens politique et social dès le plus jeune âge. Mais les différences de traitement entre les espaces et les sociétés, parfois expliquées et justifiées par les enfants eux-mêmes, doivent également se comprendre à partir de l’analyse de l’influence de différentes instances socialisatrices (la famille, l’école, les médias). Retracer la genèse des représentations enfantines du monde permet donc de montrer que certains découpages du monde sont intégrés dès l’enfance et que la socialisation primaire est fondamentale pour comprendre les rapports de forces qui structurent l’espace mondial contemporain.Children’s geographies do not exist as a field of study in French Academia (Lehman-Frisch et Vivet, 2011) despite being a vivid one in English-speaking research (Holloway et Pimlott-Wilson, 2011). Nevertheless, both scientific traditions have shown little interest so far in children’s reprentations of the world and of small-scale spaces in general, despite the calls of influent researchers (Philo, 2000 ; Ansell, 2009). In the French tradition this could be explained by the legacy of cognitive psycholgy and more precisely of Jean Piaget’s work. Indeed, the cognitivist approach favours the development of children's spatial representations in stages, for instance, young children would only have representations of their close and familiar space (Piaget, 1926 ; Piaget et Inhelder, 1947). Although for very different reasons the New Social Studies of Childhood (NSSC), which have held a crucial role in English-speaking research since the 1990’s, also favour the local scale in their work on children's spatial representations (Ansell, 2009). By highlighting the importance of considering children as social actors, the NSSC prefer to focus on the perspectives of children themselves and thus on the direct experience that children have of their environment and how they can influence it. The underlying idea is that children can only have direct experience and practice of the spaces they frequent in their daily lives. My PhD thesis (in progress) based on a field survey of 248 children aged 6 to 10 years from four Parisian primary schools, argues that children do, however, have representations of the world. This research relies on a multi-methodological protocol composed of four different activities : drawing, a whole-class brainstorming session, a task test (the children were invited to create an illustrated planisphere) and small group interviews (Ott, 2020). This methodology made it possible to vary the types of activities but also the conditions under which they were carried out (e.g. large groups vs small groups). In addition, I did some observation in the classrooms and conducted informal and semi-directive interviews with the teachers to measure the potential influence of the educational insitution on the representations of the children encountered in the field. The various activities highlighted in particular that children’s representations reveal strong political views, making it possible to trace the outlines of children’s geopolitics. I therefore investigated how the latter is constructed and in which context(s). This paper underlines that children’s organisation of the global space reveals a hierarchical world; it is structured by symbolic places that are omnipresent in their geographical imagination, while other places are altogether absent. Moreover, the spaces present in their drawings and speeches are judged differently: some are highly appreciated and others depreciated. The distinctive ways in which they consider spaces and societies, which they are sometimes able to explain and justify themselves, emphasizes the emergence of a political and social awareness from a very young age. Yet, those hierarchical representations must be analysed in the light of the influence of different social bodies (the family, the school, the media). Tracing the genesis of children's representations of the world therefore shows that some global divisions are integrated from an early age, and that primary socialisation is fundamental to understand the power relations that structure the contemporary global space