Street Corner Society: Leisure Careers, Youth (Sub)culture and Social Exclusion

Abstract

This paper draws upon qualitative research with ‘socially excluded’ young people in the North East of England. It proposes that the concept and study of ‘leisure careers’ is useful in understanding the transitions, (sub)cultural experiences and identities of social groups like this. The empirical focus is upon the significance of leisure careers in the neighbourhood‐based, social networks of some criminally involved, socially excluded young adults. Theoretically, we argue that a focus on leisure careers, as part of a broad, holistic approach to youth transitions, can help overcome some of the problems that currently affect youth studies. In particular, fuller examination of shifting, leisure‐based activities and identities within studies of youth transition may help bridge the analytical divide between that tradition of youth research and that which focuses primarily on youth culture and identity.

Keywords:

• leisure career
• youth
• subculture
• crime
• youth studies
• social exclusion

Notes

1. We stress ‘largely’ because, in each case, there are a small number of studies which might be said to share at least some of the questions and interests definitive of the other ‘tradition’ (see MacDonald et al., 2001).

2. This ESRC funded project was carried out by Robert MacDonald and Jane Marsh (grant reference: L134251024). Tracy Shildrick’s research generated similar empirical findings and theoretical conclusions (2002, 2003). For the sake of clarity, we only discuss the details of MacDonald and Marsh’s project here. All real names of people and their immediate locales have been given pseudonyms. We are indebted to research participants, to the funders and to the editors of Leisure Studies and their anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on the paper.

3. The Prince’s Trust (2004: p. 2) found that ‘almost half of all socially excluded young people…//…believe there is a lack of things for them to do’ in the areas where they live.

4. One youth service response to the apparent hostility of young people to meeting in youth clubs, to their preference for unsupervised association and to the antagonisms that this can generate with older, local residents has been the development of a ‘youth shelter’ on one estate near to East Kelby. This modest initiative – similar to a large bus shelter with lighting and seating, situated several hundred yards from the nearest houses – met with an enormous response, with over 100 young people congregating there on some evenings.

5. Some females reported greater ease of access to pubs and clubs at even earlier ages. Other young women (and men) postponed ‘nights out on the town’ because they feared being turned away from pubs and clubs for being under age. The potential violence that can accompany such nights out was also a deterrent for some.

6. The crucial exception to this being those people who sustained dependent drug use through acquisitive crime: see MacDonald and Marsh (2002).

7. Matty’s commentary here was a rare instance of interviewees reflecting in detail on the potentially negative biographical consequences of living in poor neighbourhoods.

8. Shildrick and MacDonald (2006) say more about how youth cultural studies – and ‘post‐subcultural studies’ in particular – might benefit from closer attention to questions of transition and of social divisions.

9. It is important to stress that these young men still clung to mainstream values about the importance of work, even if their periods of imprisonment, drug habits and street corner socialising hindered them in getting and keeping jobs.