Young people and violent territorial conflict: exclusion, culture and the search for identity

Abstract

This paper strives to explain the enactment and persistence of violent territorial conflict between groups of young people (predominantly young men) from neighbourhoods of multiple disadvantage. Young people clearly recognise that participating in violent territorial conflict risks severe injury, restricted mobility and criminalisation. So what are these young people fighting for? Drawing on the findings of an empirical study of young people and territoriality in six locations across Britain, this paper explores the risks and rewards that young people attach to violent territorial conflict. It finds that the rewards of such behaviour are articulated by young people in terms of respect, protection and excitement. However, these accounts should not be accepted at face value. The enactment of violent territorial practices requires to be interpreted as being framed by the structural exclusions manifest, and the cultural responses embedded, in these neighbourhoods. Moreover, violent territorial conflict requires to be understood as a socio-spatial practice that serves to secure and fuse important aspects of individual, social and place-based identities.

Keywords:

• violence
• territoriality
• exclusion
• culture
• identity

Notes

1. In holding inter-group violence as the focus of our investigation we do not imply the absence of inter-personal or indeed intra-group violence in the case study locations.

2. The Index of Multiple Deprivation (and similarly the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation) ranks small areas from the most deprived to the least deprived through combining data on distinct dimensions of deprivation, these being: income; health and disability; education, skills and training; barriers to housing and services; living environment; and crime. Detailed descriptions of the case study areas can be found in Kintrea et al. (2008).