Troubled kids? Locational disadvantage, opportunity structures and social exclusion

ABSTRACT

Young people growing up in poverty often have restricted access to out-of-school enrichment activities that are important for generating the soft skills that support post-school transitions. This paper compares young Australians’ accounts of their opportunity structures – their engagement with enrichment activities, their post-school aspirations, and their knowledge of routes to achieve them – in two suburb types – improver suburbs (close to the median on many indicators) and isolate suburbs (severely disadvantaged on most indicators). While young people in improver suburbs felt able to access facilities and networks in equally or more affluent neighbouring suburbs, young people in isolate suburbs felt excluded from neighbouring suburbs, and experienced more restricted opportunity structures than young people living in improver suburbs, even those who were themselves economically disadvantaged. The paper argues that this geographical experience of exclusion prevents many economically disadvantaged young people from accumulating knowledge and skills valued in post-school settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Social exclusion
• opportunity structures
• out-of-school activities
• soft skills
• improver suburb
• isolate suburb

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by two grants from the Australian Research Council's Linkage Program (LP0882352 and LP120100543). These grants were co-funded by Australian Government agencies, state governments of Victoria and South Australia, and non-governmental organisations (Mission Australia, the Smith Family, the Brotherhood of St Laurence, and the Association of Children’s Welfare Agencies). The project team comprised Professor Peter Saunders, Associate Professor Gerry Redmond, Professor Bettina Cass, Dr Jennifer Skattebol and Megan Griffiths. Comments and suggestions from the editors of Children's Geographies and two anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged. Thanks also to Claire Nettle for copy editing. All errors remain the responsibility of the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Gerry Redmond http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6440-4416

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Program (LP0882352 and LP120100543).