# Navigating heteronormativity beyond safe spaces: LGBTQIA+ young people and youth movements in peri-urban Flanders (Belgium)

Marjan Moris, Xin Pan, Lara Speijer and Maarten Loopmans

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

**Electronic version**

URL: https://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/83131

DOI: 10.4000/15ccb

ISSN: 2294-9135

**Publisher:**

Société Royale Belge de Géographie, National Committee of Geography of Belgium

**Electronic reference**

Marjan Moris, Xin Pan, Lara Speijer and Maarten Loopmans, "Navigating heteronormativity beyond safe spaces: LGBTQIA+ young people and youth movements in peri-urban Flanders (Belgium)", *Belgeo* [Online], 3 | 2025, Online since 13 December 2025, connection on 07 February 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/83131 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/15ccb

This text was automatically generated on February 7, 2026.

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

The text only may be used under licence CC BY 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) may be subject to specific use terms.
# Navigating heteronormativity beyond safe spaces: LGBTQIA+ young people and youth movements in peri-urban Flanders (Belgium)

Marjan Moris, Xin Pan, Lara Speijer and Maarten Loopmans

## Introduction: Being young, not straight in peri-urban Flanders

<footnote n="1">1. Geographers of gender and sexuality have long regarded the rural and the peri-urban as places of ‘scary heterosexualities’ (Pini et al., 2013), characterized by entrenched cisgender normativity and anti-LGBTQIA+ hostility (Herring, 2010; Dwyer et al., 2015; Gray et al., 2016; Hancock, 2017) where queer people accommodate and conceal their identity to survive (Lewis & Redshaw, 2025). LGBTQIA+ lives were imagined to largely play out in the inner cities of large metropolitan areas (Johnston & Longhurst, 2010; Hubbard, 2012), where ‘gayburhoods’ (Brown, 2014; Bitterman & Baldwin Hess, 2021, Eeckhout et al., 2021) and queer-friendly neighbourhoods (Gorman-Murray & Waitt, 2009), as well as LGBTQIA+ associations and movements (Goh, 2018) provide much needed ‘safe spaces’. Safe spaces carve out ‘zones of exception’ in response to cisgender normativity prevalence, offering refuge from everyday (micro)aggressions in segregated places where LGBTQIA+ identities are affirmed rather than questioned or erased (Fox & Ore, 2010).</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2. However, a growing criticism of metrocentrism (Bell & Valentine, 1995) or even metronormativity (Halberstam, 2005; Podmore & Bain, 2020; Wenzel, 2025) stimulated a more nuanced treatment of queer lives outside metropolitan safe zones (Gray, 2014), detailing how issues of mobility and isolation (Kirkey & Forsyth, 2001; Cooney-Newton, 2022), visibility (Thompson, 2021; Whitten, 2023), belonging (Marley et al., 2023; Grant et al., 2023) and the development of solidarity and activism (Loopmans et al., 2020; Lockett</footnote>
and Lewis, 2022) are negotiated in complex everyday spatial dynamics beyond the
dichotomous perspective of safe vs. hostile spaces.

In this paper, we focus on the everyday experiences of LGBTQIA+ youth in Flemish youth movements. Flanders, the northern part of Belgium, is typically portrayed as a region dominated by peri-urban ('nebular') sprawl and small towns (Dehaene & Loopmans, 2003; Dedecker, 2011; De Olde & Oosterlynck, 2022). Although Flanders has historically been associated with conservative politics (Kesteloot & De Maesschalck, 2001; Loopmans, 2002; Schuermans & De Maesschalck, 2010; Schuermans, 2013; Schuermans et al., 2015) and heteronormative culture (Mougenot, 1988; De Vos & Heynen, 2007; Bervoets & Heynen, 2013), recent surveys reveal a more complex picture, with progressive attitudes on LGBTQIA+ rights coexisting with persistent places of homonegativity (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2024; ILGA-Europe, 2025; Ipsos, 2025). The peri-urban zone is characterized by great internal diversity (Moris, 2021; Loopmans, 2024), including in relation to heteronormativity (Eeckhout, 2016). While attitudes towards LGBTQI+ in Flanders have significantly relaxed over time (Dewaele, Cox, Vanden Berghe & Vincke, 2006) and Flanders and Belgium are now generally recognized as LGBTQIA+-friendly, young people do encounter varying degrees of homonegativity across space. For instance, technical and vocational schools have been identified as more homonegative environments (Aerts et al., 2014), whereas other places stand out as supporting intersectional encounter and solidarity (Spijkers & Loopmans, 2020; Loopmans et al., 2020), leading LGBTQIA+ youth to actively navigate their presence and visibility through space and time (Dewaele et al. 2014) to avoid negative interactions and stress (Cox et al., 2009). In peri-urban Flanders, with its sprawling built environment and facilities scattered across the landscape, such strategies are unavoidably bound up with issues of mobility inequality and community ties (Thissen et al., 2020). While the relative anonymity and invisibility in this decentralized 'residential villages network' (Thissen & Loopmans, 2013) allows some to seek out safe(r) spaces and avoid uncomfortable or threatening interactions, those who do not have access to private motorized transport (e.g. children and many adolescents, elderly people or households on a low income) live more spatially restricted lives and run a higher risk of isolation (Thissen et al., 2020; Loopmans 2024).

For these groups, building a supportive local community and negotiating their identities within such a community might figure as an alternative strategy. Interestingly, Flemish sprawl is interspersed with old village centers where an active civil society is upholding imaginations of separate, localized, ‘rural village communities’, against the condition of generalized sprawl (Rogge & Dessein, 2015; Thissen et al., 2020; De Olde & Oosterlynck, 2022). Today, youth leisure organizations are one of the strongholds of such local community life in non-metropolitan Flanders. Coussée (2008) distinguishes two main types of youth leisure organizations in Belgium. Whereas critical *youth work* with marginalized groups is run by professionals and mainly concentrated in Belgium's larger cities and some industrialized towns, so-called *youth movements* dominate in the peri-urban zone (Coussée, 2009; Matthijssen et al., 2014). Originating in the 19th and early 20th century, often as youth organizations of political movements and parties (Corijn et al., 2014), youth movements have now largely abandoned their political orientation and focus on setting up leisure activities for mainly peri-urban youth. Counting over 260,000 active members in Flanders (Statistiek Vlaanderen, 2024) and 100,000 in Brussels and Wallonia (Mouvements de jeunesse, 2025), they rank amongst the largest voluntary organizations in Belgium.
They are structured in a highly decentralized way, with local groups in almost every Flemish village. In peri-urban areas, youth movements are key socialization places for children and young people from the age of 6 and up, and are unique in being operated and managed autonomously by adolescents and young adults - unlike youth work, where professional, adult youth workers take the lead and mediate between adolescents and the wider society (Moris & Loopmans, 2019). Moreover, in the peri-urban zone, such youth movements are often highly connected with other activities and organizations, such as nightlife (part of which is organized by these movements), education (many youth movements collaborate with the local school to some extent) and local public or private venues (which youth movements use for specific activities).

Despite their prevalence, youth movements have been criticized for their exclusionary character, both on class (Coussée et al., 2009) and racial dimensions (Wildemeersch & Redig, 2013). For LGBTQIA+-adolescents in the peri-urban zones, youth movements can also be 'risky' places that are avoided (despite the potential cost of social isolation). However, youth movements are still some of the rare places which young people are allowed to shape by themselves, providing opportunities to build local solidarities with peers and adults for a more LGBTQIA+ friendly environment.

Research on the peri-urban experience of LGBTQIA+ adolescents in Belgium is scarce, and the role of youth movements for LGBTQIA+ youth in particular is almost non-existing. To better understand how heterosexism and heteronormativity is (un)settled in youth spaces outside the metropolis, we need to look beyond the dichotomy of safe/unsafe spaces. Mobilizing an unconventional reading of Foucault's concept heterotopia as places contrasting with, but simultaneously connected to wider society, this paper discusses youth movements as places where LGBTQIA+ adolescents have to navigate heteronormativity, but through which they also try to forward LGBTQIA+ inclusion and empowerment in wider society (Mayberry et al., 2013; Wagaman, 2016; Moris et al., 2021). In the following sections, we first elaborate the theoretical relationship between heteronormativity, safe(r)/braver spaces and heterotopia. Secondly, we discuss our methodology. In our empirical section, we focus on the experiences and practices of LGBTQIA+ adolescents in youth organizations as heteronormative spaces, safer spaces and heterotopia. In the conclusion, we reflect upon the theoretical and political potential of conceiving of peri-urban youth organizations as heterotopia.

## Heteronormativity, safe spaces and heterotopia

Following Foucault, heteronormativity is defined as a strategy of biopolitical control which normalizes and structures heterosexuality by “regulating those kept within its boundaries as well as marginalizing and sanctioning those outside them” (Jackson 2006, p. 105). Public institutions such as the police apparatus, medical institutions, the education system or the labour market, as well as the professionals working in them, all play an active role in disseminating these norms throughout society (Johnson, 2002). Geographers have long emphasized varieties in reach and intensity of such institutional penetration, revealing highly uneven geographies of heteronormativity (Browne et al., 2007; Hubbard, 2008; Brown & Browne, 2016), which allow sexual ‘Others’ to carve out spatial biographies of their own (Gorman-Murray & Nash, 2014; Bettani, 2015; Ferreira & Salvador, 2015). This spatial diversity opens up a spectrum of strategies to (un)do the risks emanating from heteronormativity (Nygren et al., 2016), between accommodation
to mainstream norms and concealing one's identity in highly heteronormative spaces (e.g. Lewis & Redshaw, 2025) to avoidance of heteronormative pressure by seeking refuge in alternative spaces.

8. The term ‘safe spaces’ has been coined to denote such places where dominant norms are interrupted and a degree of freedom is offered to non-hegemonic identities, allowing for spatial avoidance of heteronormativity. However, its use has triggered controversies. Critics contend that ‘safe spaces’ falsely convey a notion of total protection (Flaherty, 2016; Shlasko, 2015), and tend to (re)produce normativities and exclusions of their own (Hahnhardt, 2013; Cisneros & Bracho, 2020; Vo, 2021). Some have argued to use the term ‘safer spaces’ instead to take into account the incompleteness of spatial safety.

9. Others have argued that safe(r) spaces might provide comfort in limited segregated settings, but do not contribute to changes in wider society. Educators and facilitators in particular have suggested to emphasize ‘brave spaces’ over safe spaces, as pluralist environments where power relations are tilted sufficiently to facilitate engagement, critical dialogue and confrontation of hegemonic norms (Arao & Clemens, 2013; Herrmann, 2017; Campbell & Eizadirad, 2022). Brave spaces introduce a third type of strategy to handle the risks of heteronormativity: instead of accommodating to or avoiding heteronormative pressure, such strategy focusing on *altering* mainstream norms.

10. In this paper, we contend that the concept of heterotopia allows to expand the idea of ‘brave’ spaces for alteration beyond educational settings, while better situating their role in a wider relational network of places and on the spectrum of spatial strategies between accommodation, avoidance and alteration. Literally meaning ‘other places’, the idea- of heterotopia was introduced by Michel Foucault in the 1960s in his lectures (published later as Foucault, 1984) to indicate places which are at odds with normal or everyday spaces.

11. Given its sparse and contradictory use by Foucault himself, the concept has remained a source of confusion and debate. In geographies of sexualities, the concept is often used in binary ways, as a safe space or ‘countersite’ (Saldanha, 2008), hidden and segregated from a wider heteronormative world, where queer life can flourish (See e.g. Kong 2012; Kannen 2014; Mountney 2015). However, Johnson (2013) argues how such a dichotomous reading of space contradicts the relational ontology that Foucault offers throughout his publications, and suggests that heterotopia should not be read as segregated spaces in opposition to normal space, but stand in fundamental relation to the rest of society: they are places where that which cannot be controlled is given a place in society.

12. Instead of a homogenous world with a handful of carved out spaces of difference, Foucault's spatial imagination reveals a diversity of spaces that fragment, differentiate, split and transform. Heterotopia presents itself more as places which allow for a certain degree of freedom and imagination (for example, spaces of play, Dehaene & De Cauter, 2008), but which are not fundamentally distant or segregated from the rest of society. Foucault mobilizes the analogy of a mirror: as spaces connected, but at a variance with other spaces, heterotopia, through their existence, question, distort and unsettle these ‘normal’ spaces. As separated spaces, they can combine elements of resistance with experiments for social reordering; as spaces related to the wider system though, they become nodes from which wider social institutions can be reordered or reshuffled (Pan
& Loopmans, 2021). Characterized by a combination of alterity and relationality, they are sites where transformative solidarities can be imagined and experimented with, but from where these can also be expanded and developed across differences (Oosterlynck et al., 2016; 2017; Loopmans et al., 2020). Instead of bordered zones set aside from a uniformly oppressive field, heterotopia are to be conceived as nodes in a wider societal mesh to be navigated. More than segregated brave or safe spaces, heterotopia should be conceptualized as spaces of transformation or alteration for the wider society (Pan & Loopmans, 2021). It opens our eyes to a wider diversity of spaces of possibility.

## Methods

We used a qualitative multimethod approach (for a more detailed discussion of the methods, see Moris et al., 2020). Through individual, semi-structured interviews and focus groups, we tried to map out the experiences of LGBTQIA+ youth in youth organizations. We listened to 13 key figures and experts, 34 adolescents and young adults between the ages of 16 and 29 who identify as LGBTQIA+, and 30 volunteer movement leaders or animators and professional youth workers. In addition, we collaborated with youngsters, training them to conduct their own participatory research in 12 youth work practices. Throughout this article we show pieces of the collected data for illustrative purposes. To do so, we translated all quotes and corrected colloquialisms to increase readability. We also removed data that compromised the anonymity of individuals and organizations.

Interviews with key figures and experts in youth work (e.g., executives and diversity workers from youth work umbrella organizations and youth welfare organizations) provided us insight in current debates about LGBTQIA+ wellbeing in the wider 'youth sector'. These interviewees often also functioned as gatekeepers, providing us entry in local organizations and movements.

Through focus groups, individual interviews and activities, LGBTQIA+ youth spoke to us about their experiences in youth organizations and its role in their gender and sexual identity development. Our semi-structured interview protocol was tested and refined to allow for flowing conversations and to strike a balance between predefined topics (e.g. identity, safe spaces, allyship) and new topics introduced by our interlocutors (e.g. playfulness and humor, toxic masculinity), which led to additional insights about elements in leisure that influence wellbeing. Purposive sampling allowed for maximal diversity of perspectives, in relation to gender and sexual identity expression, as well as other characteristics such as age, place of residence, ethnicity and type of education.

The professional youth workers and volunteer youth movement leaders reflected on their role as organizers and their practices in relation to issues of gender and sexuality. Here too, a balance was sought between introducing predefined themes, while allowing new topics to arise from the conversation. A number of individuals shared with us their observations of everyday experiences in relation to gender and sexual diversity in youth movements.

Data collection and analysis followed an iterative and circular process, with intermittent results discussed with a steering committee of experts every four months. This allowed us to improve research strategies (e.g. an extra researcher to overcome language barriers) and refine emerging thematic foci.
18 In line with common practice in ethnographically inspired research, all interview data were recorded and transcribed verbatim, and all data were anonymized to protect participants' identities. Coding was done manually by five researchers in multiple rounds, from initial open coding, over grouping codes into themes linked to research questions, and iterative refinement of chosen themes and selection of illustrative quotes.

19 Combining this diversity of perspectives and methods does not allow us to make generalizing statements about youth movements or youth work, or about LGBTQIA+ experiences across Flanders. They are situated, yet diverse and in-depth accounts of youth movements which do provide us with an insider perspective and a deeper understanding of the processes and actions producing the experiences of young members of the LGBTQIA+ communities in Flemish youth movements.

## LGBTQIA+ Heterotopia in peri-urban Flanders?

20 In the following sections, we discuss how youth movements are not only spaces of play and sociability, but also locations where peer socialization and the shaping of identity takes central stage. Youth movements are in general self-governed and unsupervised by (older) adults, although not entirely undirected, as the sociospatial context has an important impact on interactions. Consequently, youth movements are highly divers in terms of their relation to cis-heteronormativity, a diversity which we, in this study, have reduced to a threefold typology of heteronormative, safer and heterotopic spaces. In the following three sections, we will discuss youth movements in the light of these three different lenses, as experienced by LGBTQI+ young people.

### Struggling with heteronormativity in youth movements

21 As important civil society institutions in Flanders and key places for socialization, youth movements are likely to propagate cisgender and heterosexual norms through society (Johnson, 2002). Societal norms are defended and reproduced in organizational structures and actions, as well as everyday practices. In our analysis, young LGBTQIA+ people are indeed confronted with heteronormativity in youth spaces in various ways.

22 First of all, youth movements bring together groups of young people, where peer pressure can be a strong factor in the enforcement of majority norms. LGBTQIA+ participants in mainstream youth movements often emphasize how as sexual or gendered minorities, early on they are confronted with subtle signs of not fitting in by the other children:

> When I was five or six, my parents tried to put me in a mainstream youth movement, but I really didn't want to. They segregate you there. Not the organization or the leadership, but the kids themselves. Not that they want to, but very subtly they do. You feel it in the little things. (Transgender woman, 24, recalling her experience in a mainstream youth movement as a child)

> Once I went to the [mainstream local youth movement] for a month and I really felt out of place there because I was very ashamed of myself. I was young, I looked like a boy. [...] I remember I even tried to put my hair in a ponytail then, but with lots of pins and stuff, to still look feminine. But I felt sooo ugly at that time. (Cisgender woman, lesbian, 24, about her experience in a mainstream youth movement when she was 11)
23 Because of the group dynamics in youth movements, peer pressure about what to do and what to like can be high:

> Looking back at my experiences in the [mainstream youth movement]: Ok, I was only 7 to 10, but it is indeed a lot like: 'Ooh, wild!' and 'We are all going to get dirty in this game and you have to like it!'. And at a later age, all the [alcohol] drinking at that. They prescribe a lot more what everyone needs to participate in, and what you need to like doing, it seems (Cisgender woman, 18, lesbian)

24 While age is often foregrounded in discussions of peer pressure, our findings suggest that spatial autonomy, or the lack thereof, plays a similarly critical role. Young people are frequently placed in environments not of their own choosing, with limited agency to avoid undesirable interactions and settings. This reduced spatial autonomy can intensify the need to conform to peer norms, as the ability to retreat or reposition oneself socially and physically is constrained. In this sense, peer pressure is not only age-related but also spatially aggravated.

25 Secondly, the youth movement organizers (voluntary animators and professionals) play an important role. From an early age, children are often assigned to specific types of spaces based on gendered expectations: girls are encouraged to occupy gentle, cozy, and indoor environments, while boys are associated with rough, wild, and outdoor settings. These spatial prescriptions shape not only how young people move through their environments, but also how they interact with peers and internalize social norms. By splitting up groups according to binary gender lines, or by choosing gender-stereotypical activities and uniforms, the organization reinforces the movement's heteronormativity, to the detriment of those who do not feel comfortable with these stereotypes:

> If you look at a boys(group] and a girls(group)... The boys who come back as dirty as anything and then the girls who come back with nail polishes. And then I think of: Can you stereotype even more? Can you push gender roles even harder?" (Transgender man, 22)

> At one point we were only three girl members as members, and the rest all boys and a male-dominated leadership, three boys and one girl ...or even none. So a lot of soccer games, always a lot of typical boys' games... So real that it happened that the girls sat on the side and nothing was done about it. I then wept a lot for that at home as a child. (Cisgender man, gay, 24, about his experience in a mainstream youth movement)

26 Moreover, homonegative stereotypes occur spontaneously in children's play, and are often left unquestioned:

> Homophobic behaviour, that's 'just kidding', they say. With hand gestures and so on, that is 'funny'. That is soooo normalized! You can't always react to that, it is really striking [how normalized it is]. (professional coach for youth workers with young children)

> Interviewer: they [youth movement leaders] did not intervene?

> Respondent: Pfff, well in a very general way like 'bullying is not tolerated', but... (Cisgender man, 24, gay, about experiences as a child in the mainstream youth movement)

27 Finally, the gendering of space reinforces broader patterns of inclusion, exclusion, and conformity. Youth movements organize their activities in existing buildings, the architecture of which often reinforces binary gender divisions. In youth workplaces or camp sites, young people share intimate spaces such as toilets, showers, tents or bedrooms. These places are also often very gender-binary. Having to use this
infrastructure causes a lot of minority stress among LGBTQIA+ youth, who can be afraid to shower together because they may be watched, bullied or excluded, and fear to be suspected of inappropriate sexual behavior. Sharing a sleeping place or restroom with straight peers can be fraught with tensions:

> I am someone who does over-analyze everything, and that's when you do think of: "I hope this person is not homophobic because then they might think I want to make a move on them", and I would never have that with a lesbian friend. Also because those also know that just because you are lesbian doesn't mean you fall for everyone who is female. (Cisgender woman, 28, lesbian, about staying with straight friends)

Moreover, the gender divide is even more strictly policed in these places, as experienced by children with gender non-conforming looks:

> I found it very difficult to go to the bathroom in a girls' restroom because I knew people were going to look and make comments. I found that very difficult. While I did consciously choose to look so [boyish] myself. (Cisgender woman, 24, lesbian, about a period in her childhood when she looked like a boy)

For LGBTQIA+ youth, navigating such heteronormative spaces accounts to a combination of strategies. First of all, some LGBTQIA+ youngsters simply leave the youth movement, to avoid having to confront its heteronormativity.

> Well, I quit I felt like: 'ooh no'. I was still very young too, but it quickly was like ': because '[name] is a girl!'. So stupid (laughs), do you get it? But these gender things were playing already back then. And there was totally no.... things for... So I simply quit. I never asked questions about it, it was not my place. (Cisgender man, 24, gay, about experiences as a child in the mainstream youth movement)

Especially young people who combine several minoritized identities at once emphasize how youth movements can feel too oppressive. A young woman describes how the youth movement felt unsafe to her as a black woman who doesn't drink alcohol, even before she discovered her sexual identity:

> I have been in a mainstream youth movement for 12 years. I quit because I couldn't live with it anymore. The alcohol! I don't drink. The racist comments! All these things, I couldn't handle them anymore. (Cisgender woman, 22, queer)

Those who chose to remain in the youth movement often negotiated their identities not only through silence but also through microspatial strategies - physically repositioning themselves to avoid situations where stereotypes might surface or where they risk being problematized.

For some, this meant staying silent about aspects of their identity in highly traditional settings:

> Well, the [mainstream youth movement], it is like, there are many different kinds [of groups]. But I am from a traditional [group]. It is catholic, we go to mass and so, we pray before dinner. It's extremely traditional, with uniforms and all, a priest visiting during the summer camp (laughs). It's extremely traditional so there I would be like 'Ok, I'm gonna stay silent, I'm not gonna speak about my 'gayness'. It's just the whole mindset: those people are very traditional, very catholic, very old school, so not very open-minded (Cisgender woman, 16, unlabeled, about her mainstream youth movement group)

Those who did disclose their non-normative sexualities, adapted their spatial practices, in order not to reinforce stereotypes or out of fear to be problematized. For instance, a lesbian animator decided to get dressed earlier after swimming, to avoid sharing the changing room with children.
34 Even when feeling accepted in their identity, LGBTQIA+ youngsters sometimes feel like they miss something for not being in the right place to discuss their identity and related issues with the rest of the group:

> What I do miss in my [youth movement group] is that no one else besides me is gay amongst the animators. I do miss that. They are all very open-minded and so on, but we do not speak about things like.... If I do talk about it, like with [friend in focus group] about gay stuff and so,... I can't do that in the [youth movement]. (Cisgender woman, animator mainstream youth movement, 18, bisexual)
> 
> Gee, we don't talk about this too much, in fact, in any case. It's accepted, that's for sure, I really believe so, but raising the topic is something different, that's a lot less... (Cisgender woman, 22, lesbian, animator mainstream youth movement)

35 Many participants described how their relationship to the spaces of youth movements changed over time, revealing a temporal layer to the spatial strategies they used to navigate heteronormativity. Places that once felt obligatory or unavoidable — such as camps or meeting halls — later became sites of discomfort or exclusion, prompting shifts in how participants positioned themselves within or outside these environments.

> Around age 15, I was preoccupied with my sexual identity, and I often thought like 'I'm gonna quit the [mainstream youth movement]'. Because it was often really a masculine thing, and I noticed that I was more on the girlie side. (Cisgender man, 22, gay, about his experience in a mainstream youth movement)

36 Similarly, youth workers and organizational leaders emphasize how time matters in how they react to homophobic behaviour. As adolescents, animators do not automatically occupy a position of authority, and constantly have to negotiate between developing trust or connection with a new group of children, and correcting their behaviour:

> With the kids I am working with now, it is more difficult [to correct them]. My previous group, they knew my point of view, they knew I had a different opinion about it and wasn't attacking them personally or so. This group still has to get to know me. (Professional youth worker)

37 To conclude, youth movements are not only important socialization venues for young people in peri-urban Flanders, but also spaces that reproduce the heteronormativity of mainstream society through their organizational structure and the practices of peers and animators. LGBTQIA+ youth often do not feel comfortable in these places, and have different strategies to deal with heteronormativity that are as much spatial as they are social, ranging from accommodation and invisibilizing their gender or sexual identity, to outright avoidance. For some, LGBTQIA+ youth safe(r) spaces provide a suitable alternative to turn to.

## Navigating safe(r) spaces

> Every time I walk by somewhere and see a rainbow sign, I'm like: 'Ah, tomorrow I'm going there!' Get it? Then I'm like (makes happy face). (Cisgender woman, 18, bisexual)

38 Some professional youth work specifically targets LGBTQIA+ youth. Earlier studies have indicated how such organizations and movements provide important safe(r) spaces to LGBTQIA+ young people (Goh, 2018; Fox & Ore, 2010). As the above quote reveals, LGBTQIA+-safe(r) spaces play an important role in the wellbeing of young queer people in Flanders. LGBTQIA+-oriented youth organizations are present in many, also smaller
cities. They pay particular attention to awareness, mutual support and positive identity
development.

[The training happens] in small groups every evening, and a different topic is then discussed each evening. The topics are coming in, coming out, falling in love and relationships, sexuality, gender and then one to conclude, I forget for a moment. And yes, that is actually a moment where we can give them some basic things, but where they can also just say something. There are also agreements that everything stays within the group, that nobody tells anyone what was said there. (Volunteer supervisor LGBTQIA+ youth work about summer camp)

39 In such safe(r) spaces, LGBTQIA+ youth can find confirmation for who they are, work on self-acceptance and confidence toward the outside world. They support each other and it is less risky to try out and live different identities.

That peer support is also something very important, I think. If I hadn't had this safe space where young people talked about their experiences and shared their experiences... That has shaped me as a person, helped me discover and develop my identities. (Non-binary person, pansexual, about participating in LGBTQIA+ specific youth work group)

There was a person who said 'I don't feel like a boy, I don't feel like a girl: I'm non-binary. I was like: "What the fuck? Does that exist? Is that an option?!"'. It was like these four years of self-loathing and doubts disappeared at once: I'm non-binary. That moment, I just knew it, no extra information needed. It was like: ok, that's me! (Non-binary person, 23, pansexual, about an experience in a gender-inclusive sports club)

40 However, scholars have criticized how safe spaces (re)produce normativities and exclusions of their own (Hahnhardt 2013), e.g. in relation to ethnic or gender-non conforming minorities (Cisneros & Bracho, 2020; Vo, 2021). Indeed, in Flanders too, not all participants felt at ease in such safe spaces, although organizers who are aware of these exclusionary tendencies attempt to mitigate their effects.

41 Some interviewees emphasize how safe spaces are shaped by unspoken and taken for granted ideas, such as, for example, the expectation that everyone wants to out themselves, or pursue a fixed, monogamous relationship, or fail to avoid hurtful stereotyping comments:

> Which is not to say that it's all rosy, because L, G, B and T and all the rest are very different, and sometimes we do have problems among them. That there is a misunderstanding. For example, that someone who is gay makes a transphobic comment, probably not meant badly but then it falls on bad ground with them. So that does happen. So we try to avoid that as much as possible. It's never because they're transphobic, I'm sure, but that sensitivity... (Supervisor LGBTQIA+-specific youth club)

42 The visible branding and of safe spaces through flags, logo's or names that clearly target specific gender and sexuality profiles, can also be a barrier to young people who do not want to publicly disclose their identities and desires. This is why some LGBTQIA+ organizations are very careful about choosing venues for meetings and activities:

> Some people don't yet know how to reconcile their sexuality with their religion, or just with their identity on a lot of levels, or their traumas. So then you can't go waving your flag, or say, 'we'll meet at [known LGBTQIA+ association]'. No, then it has to be neutral. (Professional in LGBTQIA+ youth work group targeting youth from immigrant backgrounds and youth of color)
43 Some organizations try to provide a refuge from such ‘less safe’ spaces, accommodating for the needs of more specific audiences at the intersection of various identities. A young woman with a migration background explains:

> I am very happy with this project because I feel we can create a safe space for everyone. You don’t need to be of a specific group, you don’t need to be a Muslim to come here, not queer & Muslim, you don’t need to be a religious person and queer, you don’t need to be white and queer, you can literally be anyone. (Cisgender woman, 23, queer)

44 But the accessibility of safe(r) spaces is not only determined through normativities; also their location and type of activities on offer affect who might (not) be able to access them. Some young people for instance emphasize that such targeted initiatives do not always fulfill the same needs as mainstream youth work or youth movements do. They underline how the focus on talking instead of play was not what they hoped for:

> I need this outlet, and yeah, I thought ‘Oh, nice, a bunch of people in the same boat of society’. But it was really more of a chat session. (Transgender man, 22, straight)

45 The practice of LGBTQIA+ targeted youth work was something many participants considered as something which they do not, or no longer need:

> I for instance never felt any need for it when I was young. And I think it is because of the internet, and because I grew up in an open environment’. (Cisgender man, 24, gay)

46 However, those who do (want to) make use of these facilities, emphasize how, even with a diversity of safe(r) spaces on offer, accessibility, especially in the most peripheral areas, remains a problem. In peripheral villages with poor public transportation, spatial isolation makes it difficult to access safe spaces, even if they are located in nearby towns.

> I was bullied. I come from a very small village and they’re not so ... I mean, if you don’t fit within your age group, which is very limited, then it’s not like you can just swap the [mainstream youth movement] for the [another mainstream youth movement] or something. [...] I think especially in smaller villages like mine, there is work to be done in terms of inclusiveness, and in terms of more facilities in general. (Cisgender woman, 24, bisexual, on her experience as a child in a mainstream youth movement)

47 We can conclude that a simple binary between heteronormative and LGBTQIA+ safe ‘youth’ spaces does not capture the lived realities of peri-urban geographies. Although safe(r) spaces certainly respond to certain needs, they also come with their own normativities, exclusions and limitations. Both mainstream and designated safe(r) spaces require navigation and negotiation, and safe spaces are not a panacea for LGBTQIA+ youth. Exploring the transformative potential of mainstream youth movements, our last section further complexifies the picture.

## Transformative practices and heterotopia

48 The above discussion on heteronormative and safe spaces reveals how young LGBTQIA+ individuals may not always find a fitting strategy to deal with heteronormativity on the spectrum between accommodation and avoidance. Heterotopia, as spaces which are both segregated and connected (Johnson, 2013; Pan & Loopmans, 2021) and where not only accommodation and avoidance, but also alteration is possible, emerge as an alternative perspective to youth movements in Flanders. Indeed, scholars have
emphasized how also other spaces of socialization for young people like schools (Dalley & Campbell 2006, Schroeder 2012), homes (Gorman-Murray 2008), and social media (Fraser 2010) are not merely heteronormative spaces, but also offer opportunities to open up and bend sexual and gendered norms locally, as well as in wider society.

49

Strikingly, our participants indicate that the heteronormativity of mainstream youth movements and youth work varies significantly, and that youth movements, through their focus on local self-governance by adolescents and young adults, are open to change from within. Some of these changes consist of ad hoc adaptations to the needs of individual children by reorganizing routines, and managing movement and visibility in spaces like bathrooms or dorms:

- Interlocutor: In terms of transgender children [...] who are then just often put separately in a room with a friend of theirs, so that they're in a separate room, with two or three, and that's then solved like that. And showering, that's just in the room. So that's not a problem.

- Interviewer: And the accommodation provides for that?

- Interlocutor: Yes, or else we just say ten minutes before the end of the game, 'If you already want to take a shower go and take a shower.' Then if those other kids ask, 'Oh, what has that one already gone to do?' then you say, 'Yes that one has to go to the bathroom', and period. (Volunteer supervisor mainstream vacation organization)

50

Spontaneous, improvised solutions within a given framework and infrastructure are always well-intentioned and reveal the malleability of youth spaces. The impact of these ad hoc responses is however not unequivocally positive, as they place the burden of navigating heteronormative environments on LGBTQIA+ children and youth and require a lot of initiative and courage from them. However, in Flemish youth movements, children are not passive receivers of governance decisions; their unique model of self-governance allows them to take responsibility for their own play-environment. Consequently, more proactive, organization-wide policies are often introduced when LGBTQIA+ adolescents move into leadership roles and gain authority over the spaces and situations they once had to navigate themselves.

Once gays joined as animators, great care has been taken not to use 'gay' as a swear word because it could hurt them. No rules have ever been made or talked about, but this is just generally applied. (Excerpt from the observation report of a gay group leader, 24, in a mainstream youth movement)

51

As animators, LGBTQIA+ youth who are out have a big impact on how their children view gender and sexuality and can be liberating role models for LGBTQIA+ children and youth.

With me, that actually started when I came out that I liked girls in the [youth movement group]. Because... practically half, yes more than half of my animatorship there were lesbians themselves, since that it was a girl [youth movement group], so yes.... (Transgender man, 20, about his experience in the girl group of a mainstream youth movement where he used to be a member for several years)

52

Moments of openness during shared activities illustrate how ordinary spaces can become arenas for renegotiating norms and creating new possibilities for belonging:

I also organized a camp myself this summer for toddlers to do crafts and then they also asked 'Ooh do you have a sweetheart?'. Then I also answered 'yes' honestly and then they asked 'What's his name?'. And then I said the name and it was a girl's name. And she was like: 'Huh that's a girl's name?' 10 minutes after that, she said herself like: 'I have a sweetheart and that's a girl too'. So if an animator is open
about that herself, other people do look up to that or something. (Cisgender woman, 19, with a female lover, about her animator role)

53 However, their potential impact on the LGBTQIA+ inclusiveness of a youth movement, puts a lot of pressure on LGBTQIA+ animators themselves. A leadership role involves not only shaping group dynamics but also influencing the atmosphere and routines of the spaces where activities unfold. Not everyone always has the strength to take up that responsibility:

> I think I am less of a role model with the younger groups (to a fellow gay animator in the conversation): I would say you are more of a figure who, of a role model so to say. I was less like that because at that time I was still like ‘will they still like me’ and so. (Fragment of a focus group with animators from a mainstream youth movement, both cisgender and gay)

54 However, through their animator-training, youth movements provide top-down support for movement animators willing to raise awareness and work on LGBTQIA+ empowerment in the places they have authority over. This organizational backing helps young people feel more confident in claiming and shaping these spaces.

> I have always been like: ‘I don’t care so much what you think of me or do’. But back then, I didn’t share my opinion either, I didn’t debate, if I disagreed with something, I would just retreat in silence. Thanks to [mainstream holiday organization], being an animator and going on holiday, it changed, I now dare to defend my own view on things. (Cisgender man, 22, bisexual)

55 Even more important is the peer support offered by fellow animators. Long-term engagement in the youth movement creates strong bonds and friendship ties with other animators. Thus LGBTQIA+ animators often enjoy peer support and solidarity from the rest of the group:

> When we were in the group as members, it was super clear to us who of the leadership was gay or bi or whatever, and that has always been well received. And I do feel really grateful for that, that this is such an association where everyone does have their place. (Cisgender woman, 22, lesbian, about mainstream youth movement she is animator of)

56 Such peer alliances create brave spaces where heteronormative practices can be challenged:

> With our team, we are really strong. And the same thing, if you said something to a friend of mine, that I would pick up on that, that they would do the same for me. So I always feel very safe. (Cisgender woman, 22, bisexual, about a mainstream vacation organization)

57 Through these everyday interventions and alliances, heteronormative spaces become negotiable and malleable, allowing LGBTQIA+ animators to carve out zones of recognition and safety within mainstream youth organizations.

58 Moreover, mainstream youth movements can also become vehicles to transform the position of LGBTQIA+ youth in the rest of the community. For cisgender heterosexual youth and children, youth movements can be sites of informal learning that make them aware of the reproduction of heteronormativity and the exclusion and pain it causes; lessons that are taken to other places as well. Good practice transfer is not limited to specific local youth movements, but also happens during exchange sessions with movements from other places, often organized by umbrella organizations:

> The volunteers on exchange were there to party, and they got to know each other with those pronouns, which I found very interesting. When you introduce yourself you don’t just say who’s there, but ‘I’m X, I’m from Ghent’, and then you add what
you want to be called: 'she/her'. This kind of thing is really cool. (Reflection of an animator of a mainstream youth work organization on what she learned from their exchange project around gender)

Moreover, being well-connected to the rest of local civil society, youth movements can propagate values developed internally to adults outside the movement, like parents who are connected to the youth movement through their children.

With us, there is really a commitment to [parental acceptance]. I have also always felt that I can just be who I am. (Cisgender woman, 22, bisexual, about a mainstream vacation organization)

To conclude, when looking at youth movements as heterotopia, it is clear that their self-governance and friendship networks can make them into brave spaces which offer unique opportunities to empower LGBTQIA+ young people to not only alter their spaces of socialization and play into warmer environments for LGBTQIA+ youth, but, through their relational connectedness to local communities, also counter heteronormativity in wider society.

## Conclusion: navigating peri-urban heteronormativity beyond accommodation and avoidance

In this paper, we have discussed how peri-urban LGBTQIA+ youth navigate the uneven geographies of heteronormativity in their everyday life, through the lens of youth movements and youth work in Flanders. Our study nuances the metronormative stereotype of the peri-urban as a uniformly homonegative space where options for LGBTQIA+ young people is limited to accommodation or avoidance. Whereas young people in Flemish youth movements and youth work are indeed often confronted with oppressive heteronormativity, peri-urban space reveals itself not only as a diverse, but also a malleable space, allowing for sociospatial strategies in relation to heteronormativity varying between accommodation, avoidance, but also alteration.

Indeed, peri-urban youth movements, while key socialization venues for young people, can be strongholds of exacerbated heteronormativity. Heteronormative organizational traditions and infrastructures (for example, gender-segregated places like toilet and changing room), youth workers who embody heteronormativity (for instance, animator's implicit tolerance of hurtful jokes/slangs could leave the pain of LGBTQIA+ young people disregarded), and group pressure of children and adolescents to fit in, all facilitate (re)production of unsafe conditions for youth with non-normative sexual and gendered identities. LGBTQIA+ youngsters deal with such heteronormative places through spatial strategies varying between accommodation and avoidance. To accommodate oneself, LGBTQIA+ youngsters remain silent over their sexual or gendered identity, de facto sacrificing one part of their identity for the sake of being able to explore and develop another.

Others feel forced to withdraw from and avoid mainstream youth movements or youth work. As emphasized in earlier studies, some might seek refuge in LGBTQIA+-focused youth organizations. However, such venues, while functioning as safe(r) spaces to some, present their own barriers and limitations in terms of activities, norms and location. Many focus less on social play, and more on self-awareness and self-development, which not always caters to what one needs at a particular moment in life. Furthermore, these places are governed by their own exclusive normativities (e.g.
homonormativity, whiteness). And, due to their concentration in urban areas, may be
out of reach to LGBTQIA+ young people living in peri-urban areas.

64

For a more hopeful and indeed more helpful perspective on the possible spatial tactics of LGBTQIA+ youth, we have adopted an alternative reading of the concept of *heterotopia*. Instead of equating heterotopia with safe places where separation from mainstream life allows alternative normativities to flourish, we indicate how Foucault stresses their connectivity with other places and compares them to mirrors which reflect normality - and makes us reflect upon what is seen as normal. Flemish youth movements bear the potential of becoming such relationally connected 'heterotopia', as they are to some degree open to *alteration* by LGBTQIA+ youth.

65

The particular socio-spatial constellations of youth movements as self-managed, unsupervised youth spaces allows young people a degree of agency to *alter* such spaces into spaces where alternative norms are imagined and practiced. At instances where LGBTQIA+ youngsters take up a leading role in a youth movement group, they are often able to question and change heteronormative tendencies, and shape the youth movement into a more LGBTQIA+-friendly space.

66

Moreover, in line with Foucault's emphasis upon the interconnectedness of heterotopia with other places, the strong embeddedness of youth movements in local civil society allows them to propagate LGBTQIA+-friendly norms into wider society. Building on the central position of youth movements in local communities, they can show and teach different perspectives on gender and sexualities to the heterosexual, cisgender young people in their groups, as well as the adults and adult organizations they are collaborating with.

67

Looking at peri-urban youth movements as heterotopia, this study has contributed to unsettling metronormative understandings of peri-urban sexuality and gender, where accommodation (concealment and passing) and avoidance (moving to urban 'safe spaces') are often conceived as the (only) two, mutually opposing options for young people struggling with heteronormativity. Navigating peri-urban heteronormativity as LGBTQIA+ youth in Flanders reveals itself as operating with a richer spatial and strategic vocabulary. LGBTQIA+ young people are not merely reacting tactically to a given topography of heteronormativity through accommodation or avoidance, their register of spatial tactics also involves the alteration of this topography itself through their active engagement in well-connected, but separate heterotopia, of which youth movements have shown to be a fitting example. Thus, this particular study offers us a framework to understand our interactions with heteronormativity in everyday life, expanding the imagination of spatial tactics as a continuum between accommodation, avoidance and alteration, adapting to a landscape varying in heteronormativity, safety and heterotopicity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARAO B. & CLEMENS K. (2013), "From safe spaces to brave spaces: A new way to frame dialogue around diversity and social justice", in LANDREMAN L. (Ed.), *The art of effective facilitation: Reflections from social justice educators*, pp. 135-150, Stylus.

BERVOETS W. & HEYNEN H. (2013), "The obduracy of the detached single family house in Flanders', *International Journal of Housing Policy*, 13, 4, pp. 358-380.

CAMPBELL A. B. & EIZADIRAD A. (2022), “Cultivating brave spaces to take risks to challenge systemic oppression”, in *Counternarratives of Pain and Suffering as Critical Pedagogy*, Routledge, pp. 19-37.

CISNEROS J. & BRACHO C. (2020), “Undocuqueer stress: How safe are ‘safe’ spaces, and for whom?”, *Journal of homosexuality*, 67, 11, pp. 1491-1511.

COONEY-NEWTON T. (2022), “‘Everyone knows everyone here’: Coming out experiences and fluctuating resilience of LGBTQ+ youth in Gozo, Malta”, *Omertaa, Journal for applied anthropology*, https://www.omertaa.org/archive/omertaa0084.pdf

COUSSÉE F. (2008), *A century of youth work policy*, Academia Press.

COUSSÉE F. (2009), “Youth work and its forgotten history. A view from Flanders”, *The history of youth work in Europe and its relevance for youth policy today*, 41.

COUSSÉE F., ROETS G. & DE BIE M. (2009), “Empowering the powerful: Challenging hidden processes of marginalization in youth work policy and practice in Belgium”, *Critical social policy*, 29, 3, pp. 421-442.

DALLEY P. & CAMPBELL M.D. (2006), “Constructing and contesting discourses of heteronormativity: An ethnographic study of youth in a Francophone high school in Canada”, *Journal of language, identity, and education*, 5, 1, pp.11-29.

DE DECKER P. (2011), “Understanding housing sprawl: the case of Flanders, Belgium”, *Environment and Planning A*, 43, 7, pp. 1634-1654.

DE OLDE C. & OOSTERLYNCK S. (2022), “‘The countryside starts here’: how the urban-rural divide continues to matter in post-urban Flanders”, *European Urban and Regional Studies*, 29, 3, pp. 281-296.

DE VOS E. & HEYNEN H. (2007), “Shaping Popular Taste: The Belgian Farmers’ Association and the Fermette During the 1960s–1970s”, *Home Cultures*, 4, 3, pp. 237-259.

DEHAENE M. & DE CAUTER L. (2008), *Heterotopia and the City*, London, Routledge.

DEHAENE M. & LOOPMANS M. (2003), “De argeloze transformatie naar een diffuse stad: Vlaanderen als Nevelstad”, *Agora Magazine*, 19, 3.

EECKHOUT B. (2016), “Queer in Belgium: Ignorance, goodwill, compromise”, in *Queer in Europe*, pp. 11-24, London, Routledge.

EECKHOUT B., HERREMAN R. & DHOEST A. (2021), “A gay neighborhood or merely a temporary cluster of ‘strange’ bars? Gay bar culture in Antwerp”, in *The life and afterlife of gay neighborhoods: Renaissance and resurgence*, Cham, Springer International Publishing, pp. 221-238.
EUROPEAN UNION AGENCY FOR FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS (2024), *LGBTIQ equality at a crossroads - Progress and challenges: EU LGBTIQ Survey III*, Luxembourg, Publications Office of European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, European Union, https://doi.org/10.2811/920578

FOUCAULT M. & MISKOWIEC J. (1986), "Of other spaces", *Diacritics*, 16, 1, pp. 22-27.

FOX C. O. & ORE T. E. (2010), “(Un)Covering normalized gender and race subjectivities in LGBT ‘safe spaces’”, *Feminist Studies*, 36, 3, pp. 629-649.

FRASER V. (2010), “Queer closets and rainbow hyperlinks: the construction and constraint of queer subjectivities online” *Sexuality research and social policy*, 7, 1, pp. 30-36.

GOH K. (2018), “Safe cities and queer spaces: The urban politics of radical LGBT activism”, *Annals of the American Association of Geographers*, 108, 2, pp. 463-477.

GORMAN-MURRAY A. & WAITT G. (2009), “Queer-friendly neighbourhoods: Interrogating social cohesion across sexual difference in two Australian neighbourhoods”, *Environment and Planning A*, 41, 12, pp. 2855-2873.

GORMAN-MURRAY A. (2008), “Queering the family home: narratives from gay, lesbian and bisexual youth coming out in supportive family homes in Australia”, *Gender, Place and Culture*, 15, 1, pp. 31-44.

HERRMANN J. (2017), “Brave/r spaces vs. safe spaces for LGBTQ+ in the writing center: Theory and practice at the University of Kansas”, *The Peer Review*, 1, 2, pp. 1-16.

HETHERINGTON K. (2002), *The badlands of modernity: Heterotopia and social ordering*, Routledge.

HUBBARD P. (2008), “Here, there, everywhere: The ubiquitous geographies of heteronormativity”, *Geography Compass*, 2, 3, pp. 640-658.

HUBBARD P. (2012), *Cities and Sexualities*, Milton Park, Routledge.

ILGA-EUROPE (2025, 14th ed.), *Annual review of the human rights situation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people in Europe and Central Asia*, Brussels, ILGA-Europe, https://www.ilga-europe.org/report/annual-review-2025/

IPSOS (2025), *Ipsos LGBT+ Pride Report 2025: A 26-country advisor survey*, Ipsos, https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2025-06/ipsos-pride-report-2025.pdf

JACKSON S. (2006), “Interchanges: Gender, sexuality and heterosexuality: The complexity (and limits) of heteronormativity”, *Feminist theory*, 7, 1, pp.105-121.

JOHNSON P. (2013), “The geographies of heterotopia”, *Geography Compass*, 7, 11, pp. 790-803.

JOHNSTON L. & LONGHURST R. (2010), *Space, Place and Sex: Geographies of Sexualities*, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield.

KESTELOOT C. & DE MAESSCHALCK F. (2001), “Anti-urbanism in Flanders: the political and social consequences of a spatial class struggle strategy”, *Belgeo*, 1-2, pp. 41-62.

LEWIS C. & REDSHAW S. (2025), “‘We don’t show everything’: Queer identity concealment in rural Australia”, *Sociologia Ruralis*, 65, 1, p. e12485.

LOOPMANS M. (2002), “From hero to zero. Armen en stedelijk beleid in Vlaanderen”, *Ruimte en Planning*, 22, 1, pp. 39-49.

LOOPMANS M. (2024), « Le droit à la ville à la campagne », *Lava*, 30, https://lavamedia.be/fr/le-droit-a-la-ville-en-dehors-de-celle-ci/
LOOPMANS M., BROWN G. & DE CRAENE V. (2020), “Everyday spatialities of intersectional solidarity and activism”, *Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie*, 112, 2, pp.101-106.

MARLIN L., LEWIS C. & MCLAREN S. (2023), “‘Being able to be yourself’: A qualitative exploration of how queer emerging adults experience a sense of belonging in rural Australia”, *Journal of Homosexuality*, 70, 14, pp. 3306-3327.

MAYBERRY M. (2013), “Gay-straight alliances: Youth empowerment and working toward reducing stigma of LGBT youth”, *Humanity & Society*, 37, 1, pp. 35-54.

MORIS M. (2021), “Belonging from the margin: The changing village and its others”, *Journal of Rural Studies*, 87, pp. 474-481.

MORIS M. & LOOPMANS M. (2019), “De-marginalizing youngsters in public space: critical youth workers and local municipalities in the struggle over public space in Belgium”, *Journal of Youth Studies*, 22, 5, pp. 694-710.

MORIS M., PAN X., LOOPMANS M., SPEIJER L. & BUSSELS M. (2020), ‘Ik zie, ik zie, wat jij niet ziet’: *Gender-en seksuele identiteit in het jeugdwerk: Handvaten voor een LGBTQIA+ vriendelijker vrijetijdsaanbod?*, Departement Cultuur, Jeugd en Media.

MORIS M., PAN X., SPEIJER L., JANSSENS S. & LOOPMANS M. (2021), “Jeugdbeweging als heterotopie?”, *AGORA Magazine*, 37, 1.

MOUGENOT C. (1988), “Promoting the single-family house in Belgium: the social construction of model housing”, *International Journal of Urban & Regional Research*, 12, 4.

MOUNTNEY P. (2015), “Gay subversion: Young men seeking safety in heterotopic spaces”, *Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature*, 23, 1, pp. 53-72.

NYGREN K. G., ÖHMAN S. & OLOFSSON A. (2016), “Everyday places, heterosexist spaces and risk in contemporary Sweden”, *Culture, health & sexuality*, 18, 1, pp. 45-57.

PAN X. & LOOPMANS M. (2021), “Intersectional Heterotopia: HIV and LGBTQ+ Movement in China”, *Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie*, 112, 2, pp. 121-134.

PINI B., MAYES R. & BOYER K. (2013), “‘Scary’ heterosexualities in a rural Australian mining town”, *Journal of Rural Studies*, 32, pp. 168-176.

ROGGE E. & DESSEIN J. (2015), “Perceptions of a small farming community on land use change and a changing countryside: a case-study from Flanders”, *European Urban and Regional Studies*, 22, 3, pp. 300-315.

SCHROEDER C.G. (2012), “Making space for queer youth: Adolescent and adult interactions in Toledo, Ohio”, *Gender, Place & Culture*, 19, 5, pp. 635-651.

SCHUERMANS N. & DE MAESSCHALCK F. (2010), “Fear of crime as a political weapon: explaining the rise of extreme right politics in the Flemish countryside”, *Social & cultural geography*, 11, 3, pp. 247-262.

SCHUERMANS N., MEEUS B. & DECKER P. D. (2015), “Geographies of whiteness and wealth: White, middle class discourses on segregation and social mix in Flanders, Belgium”, *Journal of Urban Affairs*, 37, 4, pp. 478-495.

SPIJKERS F. E. & LOOPMANS M. (2020), “Meaningful intercultural contact: how different places pave the way for learning to live together in diversity”, *Social & cultural geography*, 21, 8, pp. 1146-1167.
STATISTIEK VLAANDEREN (2024), *Ledenaantallen jeugdbewegingen*, https://www.vlaanderen.be/statistiek-vlaanderen/cultuur-en-vrije-tijd/ledenaantallen-verenigingen (last consulted 17/07/2025).

THISSEN F. & LOOPMANS M. (2013), "Dorpen in verandering", *Rooilijn*, 46, 2, pp. 80-89.

THISSEN F., LOOPMANS M., STRIJKER D. & HAARTSEN T. (2021), "Guest editorial: Changing villages; what about people?", *Journal of Rural Studies*, 87, pp. 423-430.

THOMSEN C. (2021), *Visibility interrupted: Rural queer life and the politics of unbecoming*, U of Minnesota Press.

VO T. D. (2021), “Gaps in safety within LGBTQ+ leisure spaces for diverse LGBTQ+ people: White homonormativity and considerations for inclusion in safe spaces”, *Social Work & Policy Studies: Social Justice, Practice and Theory*, 4, 1.

WAGAMAN M.A. (2016), “Promoting empowerment among LGBTQ youth: A social justice youth development approach”, *Child and adolescent social work journal*, 33, 5, pp. 395-405.

WHITTEN C. (2023), “Everywhere and nowhere... all at once: Exploring the role of visibility in rural queer narratives”, *Theory & Practice in Rural Education*, 13, 1, pp. 32-51.

WILDEMEERSCH D. & REDIG G. (2013), “Towards multi-cultural and anti-racist youth work in Flanders”, in *Racism In Europe*, Routledge, pp. 123-145.

ABSTRACTS

Youth movements are among the largest volunteer organizations in Belgium, but they also and above all provide very important leisure activities for young people, especially in peri-urban Flanders. In this paper we investigate which role these organization (can) play for the wellbeing of LGBTQIA+ young people, based on interviews with and participatory observations by LGBTQIA+ young people.

A complex picture emerges from our analysis. With group-specific 'safe(r) spaces' concentrated in urban centres and thus less accessible, LGBTQIA+ young people in peri-urban areas are facing cisheteronormativity in their everyday life, including in mainstream youth organisations, and have developed various strategies to nagivate these environments, from avoidance to accomodation.

However, the particular structure of youth movements as bottom up, youth-governed and community embedded organisations also allows them to function as a sort of heterotopia. Foucault defined heterotopia as places characterized by both separation and connection, thus allowing for a sort of real-life utopia. To a certain degree shielded from mainstream society as places for and by young people, youth movements can support the flourishing of different local norms, in particular when LGBTQIA+ young people take up leadership roles in the organisation. Simultaneously, well embedded in local communities, youth movements are nodes from which local norms can infiltrate and alter mainstream society, thereby improving the wellbeing of LGBTQIA+ youngsters in youth organisations, as well as in their wider communities.

Les mouvements de jeunesse comptent parmi les plus grandes organisations bénévoles de Belgique, mais ils offrent aussi et surtout des activités de loisirs très importantes pour les jeunes, en particulier dans les zones périurbaines de Flandre. Dans cet article, nous examinons le rôle que ces organisations jouent (ou peuvent jouer) pour le bien-être des jeunes LGBTQIA+, sur la base d'entretiens et d'observations participatives menés auprès de jeunes LGBTQIA+.

Notre analyse fait apparaître une situation complexe. Les « espaces sûrs » spécifiques à ce groupe
étant concentrés dans les centres urbains et donc moins accessibles, les jeunes LGBTQIA+ des zones périurbaines sont confrontés à la cis-hétéronormativité dans leur vie quotidienne, y compris dans les organisations de jeunesse traditionnelles, et ont développé diverses stratégies pour naviguer dans ces environnements, allant de l'évitement à l'accommodation.

Cependant, la structure particulière des mouvements de jeunesse, en tant qu'organisations ascendantes, gérées par les jeunes et ancrées dans la communauté, leur permet également de fonctionner comme une sorte d'hétérotopie. Foucault définissait l'hétérotopie comme des lieux caractérisés à la fois par la séparation et la connexion, permettant ainsi une sorte d'utopie dans la vie réelle. Dans une certaine mesure protégés de la société dominante en tant que lieux destinés aux jeunes et gérés par eux, les mouvements de jeunesse peuvent favoriser l'épanouissement de différentes normes locales, en particulier lorsque des jeunes LGBTQIA+ assument des rôles de direction au sein de l'organisation. Simultanément, bien ancrés dans les communautés locales, les mouvements de jeunesse sont des nœuds à partir desquels les normes locales peuvent s'infiltrer et modifier la société dominante, améliorant ainsi le bien-être de tous.

## INDEX

**Keywords:** LGBTQIA+, peri-urban Flanders, youth movements, heterotopia

**Mots-clés:** LGBTQIA+, périphérie urbaine, Flandre, mouvements de jeunesse, hétérotopie

## AUTHORS

### MARJAN MORIS

AP Hogeschool, kenniscentrum Stadskracht
ORCID 0000-0002-3045-9168
marjan.moris@ap.be

### XIN PAN

University of Leicester, School of Geography
ORCID 0009-0000-9612-7767
xin.pan@leicester.ac.uk

### LARA SPEIJER

VUB, HYDR
ORCID 0000-0001-8809-3122
Lara.Marianne.Speijer@vub.be

### MAARTEN LOOPMANS

IDREF : https://idref.fr/165886765

ORCID : https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7157-5608

VIAF : http://viaf.org/viaf/59153833152064331112

ISNI : https://isni.org/isni/0000000391194711

Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Division of Geography, KU Leuven
ORCID 0000-0002-7157-5608
Maarten.loopmans@kuleuven.be