Contested Consent (CoCo): Social and Digital Borders and Orders of Intimacy in Young People’s Romantic Engagements (2019-2023)

Over  the  past  few  years,  giving  and  receiving  consent  in  sexual encounters  has  become  a highly  contested  topic  in  both  public  and political  debates.  This  discussion  is  often saturated  around  young  people, although  it  excludes  their  voices.  It  bypasses  crucial expertise deriving from  young  people’s  everyday  lives  and  lacks  sensitivity  toward intersecting  social  differences  of  ethnicity,  race,  gender,  class, and  sexual identity.

The  project  “Contested  Consent:  Social  and  Digital  Borders  and  Orders of  Intimacy  in Young  People’s  Romantic Engagements”  (CoCo)  addresses  this  knowledge  gap  by  bringing the  question  of  sexual  consent  and  the  limits  of  acceptable  behaviour in  intimate encounters  to  the  focus  of  academic  examination.  The  project  calls  attention  to  young people’s  (15  to  19-­year-­olds)  everyday lives,  including  their  social  and  digital  contexts.  The project  provides  a  holistic  and  intersectionally  sensitive  analysis  of  the  role  of romantic  or intimate  encounters  in  young  people’s  lives  and  the  ways  these  encounters  support  or compromise  their  wellbeing.  We  use this  knowledge  to  nuance  the  prevailing  ideas  and assumptions  regarding  young  people’s  sexual  consenting  which  often  revolves around worry and  moral  panic,  but  in  the  legal  context,  in  particular,  also  involves  ideas  of universalistic  free  will  and  autonomy.

Empirically,  the  analysis  is  based  on  triangulation  of  qualitative  and quantitative  data  sets concerning  young  people’s  everyday  realities (survey and  interview  data)  and  societal discourses  around  sexual  consent  as  a youth  question  (e.g.,  sex  education,  policy  making, law drafting).