Experiencing and practising inclusion through friendships

The late modern change in young people's community life has meant moving from traditional, place‐based communities towards more fluid and situational contexts of belonging. These youth‐initiated attachments often build on amiable relationships that fall under the umbrella of “friendship”. This paper analyses Finnish early youths’ friendship narratives that were produced by sequential participatory methods. It introduces the dimensional and flexible spaces created in and through the participants’ friendships. These indicate relational spheres of actual and imagined activities where young people engage with people and places important to them. As a result, the paper first shows how young people together with their peers develop committed ties of belonging that reach beyond physical connection, and how these ties constitute experiential spatial attachments. Second, it demonstrates how they also make friends with kin and non‐kin adults and how these intergenerational friendships expand the variety of inclusionary spaces available to them. The findings provide alternative insights into young people's experiences and the practices of social and spatial inclusion. We hope they help to develop cross‐generational inclusionary policies that acknowledge youths’ amiable relationships as important potential in their lived communities.