“I couldn’t Even Be in the Corridors During Breaks Because I Didn’t Feel Safe”: LGBTQ+ Students’ Experiences of (Un)Safe Spaces in Secondary Schools

LGBTQ+ students are exposed to student violations and discriminatory acts in secondary school to a much higher degree than non-LGBTQ+ students. In this article, we investigate how different spaces in school interact with processes of social inclusion and exclusion and how this affects LGBTQ+ students’ experiences of belonging and safety at secondary school. The analyses in the article are presented as movements through classrooms, corridors, canteens, changing rooms, toilets, and outside areas and examine LGBTQ+ students’ experiences of the interplay between spaces, actions, relations, and norms of gender and sexuality. The article is based on 42 qualitative individual interviews with 15–18-year-old LGBTQ+ teenagers in Denmark and Sweden in a research project on student violations and wellbeing among LGBTQ+ students at schools in the two countries. Theoretically, the analyses employ a perspective of space as relational, performative, affective, and socially produced (Massey, 2005; Davies, 2000). The article examines the complex social interactions to reveal not only the extensive risk faced by LGBTQ+ students of violation and discrimination through all school spaces, but also how, in subtle ways, physical and digital social interactions create spatial limitations that leave some LGBTQ+ students struggling to achieve a sense of belonging.