My starting point for this project was urban east London in 2007, and the primary research phase continued through to 2012. During this timescale the perceived rise in antisocial and violent behaviour among disaffected youth was at the forefront of public and political consciousness. There was a heightened anxiety about gangs and turf or postcode wars, a constant flow of media reporting and government reports supported the common sense view that this was a worsening inner-city problem that impacted on ordinary citizens (Sherwin 2007; Curtis 2008; journeymanpictures 2008; Rose 2008; Panorama 2009). This fear was based on real events; for example, in a six-week period in early 2007 five teenagers were killed: James Andre Smartt-Ford, Michael Dosunmu, Billy Cox, Kodjo Yenga and Adam Regis were stabbed or shot in separate incidents in London (Mail Online 2007). From 2007 to 2008, a reported twenty-seven teenagers were killed in London (Stickler 2008). Music, particularly the lyrics from grime music, was often seen as part of the problem. It appeared that grime offered a medium for young people to go to war with each other, activating conflicts over territory, reputation or gang membership.
A significant and far-reaching development during the primary research phase was the global recession that began in 2008 and continued throughout 2009. The subsequent economic slowdown contributed to unemployment in the UK rising to levels that had not been experienced since the early 1980s. Long-established businesses, including financial institutions, failed, and the repercussions were compelling at all levels of society. In September 2007, Northern Rock Bank sought an emergency loan from the Bank of England, an act that precipitated images of economic meltdown in the UK as depositors with this bank queued up to withdraw their savings. There was a negative impact particularly on the retail and financial sectors. Furthermore, poor areas, such as those in east London, continued to experience high levels of unemployment. Nationally, the numbers of young people in the NEET category expanded, reaching just under a million in 2008 (LSN 2009). Across Europe, joblessness among the young rose to unprecedented levels; in Greece, for example, 61.5 per cent of young people were unemployed (Taylor 2013).
Young people and unemployment: the impact of a supply-side approach
Leaving school and the family are rites of passage into adulthood. The school-to-work or education-into-employment transitions have been disrupted by structural changes in the UK economy. Whereas in the post-World War II era the majority of young people left school at the end of secondary schooling, now an increasing number stay beyond the compulsory school leaving age. These structural changes mean that fewer entry-level jobs are suitable for young people and therefore the youth employment market has all but disappeared (Furlong and Cartmel 2007; Murray and Gayle 2012). This led to increased levels of youth unemployment (Casson 1979). Youth unemployment rose more in 1980 than it had during the previous decade in total (MacDonald 2011, p. 429). In common with the current economic situation, the 1980s were a time of deep recession, social inequality, severe public spending cuts and civil disturbance. Today, almost one million young adults are unemployed, and tackling the NEET problem has remained a key youth policy since 1997 (MacDonald 2011, p. 430).
Youth unemployment, while it had been a matter of concern in the UK since the last instance of mass unemployment in the 1980s, became a more pressing political issue with the most recent global economic downturn in 2008. At the start of this project, it became evident that young people with further and higher educational qualifications were becoming NEET. In the UK, unemployment among graduates, combined with increased levels of student debt, became a more acute political matter (Harrison 2013; Office for National Statistics 2013). The detrimental consequences for young people not being able to make the transition into adulthood through the usual rite of passage of paid employment are well documented and include lower lifelong earnings, as well as professional and psychological scarring (Kingsley 2011; Lee and Wright 2011; Sissons and Jones 2012).
Mass unemployment in the late 1970s and early 1980s had a critical effect on young people, who as a result experienced wage scarring and limited opportunities. Therefore as individuals they were facing the possibility of life on the margins; at a societal level, large numbers of unemployed, unskilled young people posed an increased risk of creating civil disturbance, as evidenced by the riots in Brixton, Bristol and Birmingham in 1981 (Scarman et al. 1982).
The Youth Training Scheme (YTS) introduced in 1983 was one of a number of policy initiatives established to address the problem of unemployment among the young. It was aimed at those of school-leaving age and it offered a one-year (later extended to two years) programme of work experience and training (MacDonald 2011). It can be viewed as a precursor to the current governmentâs focus on the creation of apprenticeships for young people as a solution to increased levels of unemployment. Yet the push to drive down the youth unemployment figures avoids one obvious difficulty: the lack of jobs generated by the economy. Instead it focuses on what young people are lacking in employability, attitude and qualifications. Nevertheless, since the 1980s, education policy on attainment and subsequent access to tertiary education, employment and training has had a significant impact on the NEET category.
Education policy and its relationship to the NEET category
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranks the United Kingdom as one of the richest countries in the world. Britainâs continuing prosperity depends on ideas and fresh talent, particularly because globalisation and technological change mean that economic success in the twenty-first century demands âhigher levels of innovation, faster response to change and increased creativityâ (Leitch 2006, p. 6). Therefore the challenge for schools and the education system is to focus on and improve economically valuable skills. The expansion of higher education is part of a wider project that sees higher education as a driver for long-term economic growth and national prosperity. Indeed, a well-educated population is still viewed as a prerequisite to the UK being able to compete in a world arena (Sissons and Jones 2012).
The ideological debates over the purpose of education continue apace. The gradual shift from the notion that a quality education for all is a good thing in itself to a market-controlled commodity underpins the discussion about whether education means to acquire basic skills required by industry or to understand ideas and use knowledge for broader purposes (Allen and Ainley 2007; Bassnett 2007; Benn 2012). From the 1980s neo-liberal education theories were pushed to the fore at the same time as deep economic recession and intensified global competition. Free market economics began to replace Keynesian economics, and education and learning needs were incorporated into free market economic principles. On the one hand there was widespread discussion regarding new forms of learning and how young people now have a chance to learn in less restrictive environments but on the other hand, there was a strong emphasis on economic competitiveness, privatising of educational facilities and responsibility for learning was now pushed to the learner (du Bois-Reymond 2004). In the UK, an enduring legacy of the economic policies of the 1980s is the groups of alienated and dispossessed people mainly living in inner-city council estates where jobs have disappeared (Tomlinson 2005, p. 106; Sergeant 2009a; Hills 2010). The continued policy changes have been in response to an ongoing concern that the education sector is failing or in crisis. Low educational attainment is a symptom of this.
The New Labour government elected in 1997 retained free market principles of choice and competition. However, there was a shift in terms of New Labourâs desire to use education to tackle social exclusion. The 2010 coalition continued with the creation of academies and free schools (institutions funded by the public purse but the curriculum, organisation and staffing lie outside of local authority control). In a further bid to improve educational achievement, the 2015 Conservative government recently announced that by 2020, all schools are to become academies (Stone 2016).
Education is considered a vital institution for the development and growth of the economy, as well as a means to improve life chances and opportunities; yet in the UK, one in six young people leave school unable to read, write or add up properly (Leitch 2006, p. 22; MacLeod 2006; Stevenson and Jarillo 1990). More than ten years of the national literacy and numeracy hour initiatives have had little impact on this statistic (Sergeant 2009b; Shepherd 2010). A recent OECD report ranked England and Northern Ireland 21st and 22nd out of 24 for literacy and numeracy standards respectively (Ramesh 2013). At the same time, there is an ethnic and cultural dimension to this issue, in that a significant proportion of young people from BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) communities (particularly those of Caribbean descent) become NEET (Leitch 2006; Hills 2010). Furthermore, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest that black males aged 16â24 have an unemployment rate in excess of 50 per cent â a rate that has almost doubled since the 2008 recession (Ball et al. 2012).
While questions have been raised recently regarding the low academic achievement of white working-class boys (Skidmore 2008; Sergeant 2009b; Bingham 2013), the relative underachievement of pupils of Caribbean descent has been a matter of concern for at least three decades (Richardson 2007). Since the 1970s, growing numbers of black students have variously been classified as âEducationally Sub Normalâ (ESN), âmarginalisedâ and âunderachievingâ (Allen and Ainley 2007; Richardson 2007, p. 137). Furthermore, the attainment gap between black children and their peers is still an issue (Department for Education 2013).
A combination of factors has supported the maintenance of the status quo where young people from poor areas continue to achieve less than their middleclass counterparts (Hamnett et al. 2007). These factors include ranking (development of lower tier qualifications), increased competition among schools for the more desirable pupils (those who could take and achieve the higher level qualifications) and the establishment of league tables to identify âgoodâ and âfailingâ schools. This has helped to create what Lucey and Walkerdine argue is a construction of a middle-class, masculine hegemony in which it is acceptable for middle-class boys, but not working-class or black boys, to be laddish and high achievers (Tomlinson 2005, p. 198). It is within this context that schools are able to âreject, neglect or loseâ students who could not attain the five Grade A*âC GCSE passes that act as a gateway to further and ultimately higher education opportunities (Tomlinson 2005, p. 189). Without these qualifications, the risk of becoming NEET increases, particularly for those from poor backgrounds.
East London: the birthplace of grime music
It is accepted that the east London area â specifically the inner London boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Newham â is the birthplace of grime music (Campion 2004; Hampson 2009; Dreamers row 2012; Hancox 2013). Within the urban spaces of east London municipal housing, it is possible to see the residual marks of each community that has come and gone. What remains is a complex and multilayered network of people who draw on diverse cultural and historical backgrounds. These communities operate in a landscape that is changing, but these locations continue to contain sites of poverty and marginalisation. This confluence of people and place created an environment for grime music to emerge, and it is evident that the physical nature of this location has an impact on creative and cultural expression. Adam Krims suggests that urban spaces shape our everyday social and economic behaviour and that as music is embedded within this urban life, it is evident that it delineates time and place (Krims 2007, p. xviii). It is unlikely that grime music would have emerged from the leafy suburbs of Richmond-upon-Thames, because there is a symbiotic relationship between music, place and community, particularly as it relates to new musical practices that come out of movement and migration (Connell and Gibson 2003).
The east London area has a long history of movement and migration, from the French Huguenots who came to Spitalfields in the seventeenth century to Jewish settlement in the early twentieth century. This was followed by the subsequent migration from the Caribbean, Africa and the Indian subcontintent from the 1950s onwards (London Borough of Hackney 2005; London Borough of Newham 2005; London Borough of Tower Hamlets 2005; Tames 2006). Currently Newham and Tower Hamlets have higher populations of Asian and British Asian (34 per cent) than London as a whole, while Hackneyâs Black British population stands at 20.9 per cent (Neighbourhood Statistics 2007). Since the 1880s the Tower Hamlets areas of Limehouse and Stepney have also had a significant, but now declining, Chinese population (Benton and Gomez 2011). On the whole, east London has remained a multicultural, relatively poor part of London, despite its proximity to the city and local and national initiatives for regeneration. The Thinkpiece Report, prepared by MacRury and Poynter, was commissioned by the Communities and Local Government Department with a brief to identify socio-economic problems in the five host boroughs and map out a legacy for the London 2012 Olympic Games. It outlines the situation of east London as a site that had remained relatively poor since the nineteenth century, the impact of the closure of the docks and the subsequent regeneration intitiatives creating âan area that is socially polarized, containing pockets of relative affluence within an area that has a high concentration of relative poverty and deprivationâ (MacRury and Poynter 2009, p. 5).
Hackney was created as a metropolitan borough in 1899, fo...
