The metaphorical cage: political presence and lived citizenship of a young refugee girl

This article examines the interplay between lived and legal citizenship through the metaphor of a Cage, illuminating the complex dynamics experienced by refugee youth whose everyday belonging diverges from formal legal status. Drawing on the compelling narrative of Salma, a 15-year-old Syrian refugee girl living in Turkey, the study explores how she navigates systemic constraints – including racism, economic hardship, and gendered discrimination – while asserting political presence, agency, and resilience. Using a geosocial methodology informed by feminist geography and situated intersectionality, the research combines in-depth interviews, participatory techniques, digital mapping, and creative artefacts to foreground Salma’s lived experiences. The Cage functions both as an analytical metaphor and an expression of structural confinement, revealing how Salma reclaims space for self-definition through acts of creative resistance, storytelling, and co-research. Her interpretive agency challenges dominant narratives of victimhood and reframes citizenship as an embodied and performative practice shaped by youth subjectivity. In centring a child’s voice and political presence, the study contributes to critical debates on refugee childhoods and lived citizenship, showing how metaphorical analysis and participatory narrative methods can reimagine the geographies of young people living under constrained legal regimes.