Young People, Place and Identity

Peter E. Hopkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415454391
• eBook ISBN: 9781136975691
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Young People, Place and Identity offers a series of rich insights into young people's everyday lives. What places do young people engage with on a daily basis? How do they use these places? How do their identities influence these contexts? By working through common-sense understandings of young people's behaviours and the places they occupy, the author seeks to answer these and other questions. In doing so the book challenges and re-shapes understandings of young people's relationships with different places and identities.

The textbook is one of the first books to map out the scales, themes and sites engaged with by young people on a daily basis as they construct their multiple identities. The scales explored here include the body, neighbourhood and community, mobilities and transitions and urban-rural settings and how these all shape and are shaped by young people's identities. Each chapter explores how social identities (such as race, gender, sexuality, class, disability and religion) are constructed within particular contexts and influenced by multiple processes of inclusion and exclusion. These discussions are supported by details of the research methods and ethical issues involved in researching young people's lives. Drawing upon research from a range of contexts, including Europe, North America and Australasia, this book demonstrates the complex ways in which young people creatively shape, contest and resist their engagements with different places and identities. The range of issues, topics and case studies explored include: ethical and methodological issues in youth research; youth subcultures; experiences of home; territorialism; youth and crime; political engagement and participation; responses to global issues; engagements with different institutional contexts; negotiating public space; the transition to adulthood; drinking cultures. The author explores these issues through blending together original empirical research, theory and policy.

Individual chapters are supported by key themes, project ideas and suggested further reading. Details of key authors, journals and research centres and organisations are also included at the end of the book. This textbook will be pertinent for undergraduate and postgraduate students and academic researchers interested in better understanding the relationships between young people, places and identities.

1

Introduction

Whether it is due to the shifting nature of transitions to adulthood, the expansion of further and higher education or transformations in household composition and family life, young people are a regular topic of academic, popular and policy discussion and debate. They are a group of society whose experiences, behaviours and attitudes are usually misrepresented, often demonised and frequently distorted. Furthermore, it is clear that young people’s experiences, actions and values vary across space and time, and according to the identities they display or are assumed to possess. It is at the intersections of these categories – age, place and identity – that this book focuses upon. Overall, the aim of this book is to explore the ways in which experiences of being young are mediated by different places and social identities.

Although I write this book as a geographer, it is important to recognise that ‘geography is both an interstitial subject and an impulse to interdisciplinarity’ (S. Smith 2005: 390). The location of geography simultaneously in the middle of, and in-between, a number of other social science disciplines results in this book being as much about social work, sociology and social policy as it is about gender studies, politics and culture. So, I see

geography as an enterprise of relatedness whose vitality is secured by forging connections and crossing intellectual horizons; by pulling the world apart, reassembling it, and adding to it, in a variety of intriguing, ethically charged, sometimes surprising, and frequently controversial ways.

(S. Smith 2005: 389)

The message here then is that this book is not only for geographers, and instead will appeal to those studying, researching or working with young people in a variety of different academic, educational and institutional settings.

Young People

In thinking about how age is constructed in society and across space, Rachel Pain (2001a) differentiates between chronological, physiological and social approaches to age. Chronological age is the number of years a person has lived, or the length of time that has passed since they were born. An approach informed by chronological age is applied to many aspects of young people’s everyday lives. For example, a young person’s chronological age frequently – if not always – determines the year group they are in at school, and influences whether or not a young person can legally consume alcohol, participate in an election by voting or standing for election, drive a motor vehicle, earn a salary or if they are allowed to get married or have a civil partnership. Many of these often rely on a young person being asked to prove their age through presenting a birth certificate, a passport or being asked their date of birth.

The second approach – physiological age – relates to issues connected with the physiological and bodily appearance of a young person and so is often based on factors such as perceived health, sense of medical well-being and general appearance. ‘In contemporary Western societies the age of our physical body is used to define us and to give meaning to our identity and actions’ (Valentine et al. 1998: 2). Third, social age refers to the social values, attitudes and beliefs that are held about people of particular age groups. For young people, this often involves them being assumed to display certain forms of behaviour, use specific places and possess particular values, beliefs and attitudes. Furthermore, it is important to note that these processes do not only influence young people and instead shape the experiences of people of all ages. Like young people, older people are expected to possess particular values, use specific places and display certain behaviours and attitudes.

The experience of being a young person is therefore likely to vary according to the particular approach towards age that is being implemented in different places and times and by various institutions, groups or individuals. As a result of this – and like people of all ages – young people often experience ageism. Bill Bytheway (1995) sees ageism as the result of the ways in which assumptions are made about people having other things in common alongside their chronological age. However, it is important to note that ageism is not necessarily equivalent to racism or sexism in the sense that young people have been children and will get older, meaning that ageism is a constantly shifting phenomenon that changes through time.

The intersection of these different approaches to age in young people’s lives often has powerful influences over how they construct and contest their identities in different places and times. The diversity of what it means to be a young person is highlighted here by Gill Valentine (2003: 38):

Indeed, the terms ‘youth’ or ‘young people’ are popularly used to describe those aged between 16 and 25, a time frame that bears no relation to diverse legal classifications of adulthood. While children aged 5–16 should be at school, young people aged 16–25 may be at school, college or university, other forms of vocational training, in paid work, unemployed, doing voluntary work, travelling and so on. They experience far fewer spatial restrictions than their younger peers because it is easier for a young person in their late teens or early twenties to pass as ‘older’ than they actually are in order to gain access to places such as clubs and bars from which they might otherwise be excluded. Young people also usually have access to some form of income independent from their parents, some live away from the parental home on a temporary or permanent basis, and their independent mobility can be enhanced by the possession of driving or motorbike licences. As a result their lives are less obviously circumscribed by parents, teachers or other adults.

Mary Jane Kehily (2007a: 3) notes that ‘definitions of “youth” in Western societies usually refer to the life stage between childhood and adulthood, the transitional period between being dependent and becoming independent’. So, young people are often associated with the chronological age range of 16–25, located uncomfortably between – yet simultaneously overlapping – childhood and adulthood. As noted above, young people are less spatially restricted than younger children yet may not possess a number of the key qualities associated with adulthood. This picture is further complicated by the diversity of everyday situations young people may experience. Unlike children they may not be at school, although some still are and more still are involved in learning in some form or another. They may be very independent in terms of their housing and financial circumstances, although many young people still rely on family support for some – if not all – of their living expenses. This ambiguous phase is further complicated by the fact that being a child is ratified in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as being a person of up to 18 years of age, and adulthood – and the vast majority of the rights and entitlements associated with it – are available when a person turns 18 (although certain entitlements also vary further depending on the spatial context in which young people find themselves).

For Johanna Wyn and Rob White, young people are not adults and are seen as being in need of guidance. For them, youth is a relational concept, highlighting the power relations that are part of the experience of being young:

Youth is a relational concept because it exists and has meaning largely in relation to the concept of adulthood. The concept of youth, as idealised and institutionalised (for example in education systems and welfare organisations in industrialised countries) supposes eventual arrival at the status of adulthood. If youth is a state of ‘becoming’, adulthood is the ‘arrival’.

(Wyn and White 1997: 11)

As highlighted in Box 1.1, youth is seen in relation to adulthood, highlighting the relationality that is a key aspect of being a young person.

Box 1.1

Notions of Youth and Adult

Youth	Adult
Not adult/adolescent	Adult/grown up
Becoming	Arrived
Presocial self that is emerging	Identity is fixed and given
Powerless and vulnerable	Powerful and strong
Less responsible/irresponsible	Responsible
Dependent	Independent
Ignorant	Knowledgeable
Risky behaviours	Considered behavior
Rebellious	Conformist
Reliant	Autonomous

Adapted from Wyn and White (1997: 12)

Although some young people are also children and many young people are defined by the fact that they are not adults, there are young people who are adults and embody many of the qualities characteristic of adulthood. This diversity is probably one of the main reasons why studies of youth are characterised by a diverse range of theoretical approaches.

The young people discussed in this book are generally aged 16–25, although some may be younger or older depending on the particular study, situation or issue being discussed. In thinking about young people, place and identity, you may regard yourself as a young person and so will have an ideal vantage point to think critically about what being a young person means. However, you may be older and may feel that you are no longer a young person. An important issue to consider here is highlighted by Chris Philo (2003: 9) when he notes:

‘all adults have at an earlier time of their lives been children. We have all ‘been there’ in one way or another, creating the potential for some small measure of empathy – some sense of recognition, sharing and mutual understanding, even if slight – with the children whom we encounter in our adult lives.

Likewise, even if we do not consider ourselves as being a young person, we have all been young people and so we have all experienced youth.

Identities

Just as ‘young people’ or ‘youth’ are complex terms with many meanings and definitions, the same too can be said about identity. As Steph Lawler (2008: 2) notes ‘it is not possible to provide a single, overarching definition of what it is, how it is developed and how it works. There are various ways of theorising the concept, each of which develops different kinds of definition.’ It is not therefore possible to answer the question, ‘What is identity?’ However, there are certain key facets to identity that can be acknowledged. Starting with the Latin root of the word identity – identitas, from idem – we learn that identity has a connection with being ‘the same’ as something else. This implies both absolute sameness as well as distinctiveness (Jenkins 2004). So, ‘approaching the idea of sameness from two different angles, the notion of identity simultaneously establishes two possible relations of comparison between persons or things: similarity, on the one hand, and difference, on the other’ (Jenkins 2004: 3–4). Similarity suggests that ‘we share common identities’ (Lawler 2008: 2) – say, if we are young, white and male – yet we are also different as well. Yet, being similar and being different from another person are open to negotiation, management, disagreement and contestation. As key components of identity, similarity and difference are dynamic and can change over time, taking on new meaning or forms, or being reinterpreted and renegotiated. Likewise, other senses of similarity or difference may not change much at all over time and may be more durable, more consistent and less flexible depending upon how they are articulated, where and when.

Identity is therefore about

the ways in which individuals and collectivities are distinguished in their social relations with other individuals and collectivities. It is the systematic establishment and signification, between individuals, between collectivities, and between individuals and collectivities, of relationships of similarity and difference.

(Jenkins 2004: 4)

Many would therefore classify young people or youth as an identity in that they recognise ways in which young people are distinguished in their social relations from other groups in society. Moreover, identity is also about ‘our understanding of who we are and of who other...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Researching Young People Methods and Ethics
• Part II Scales
• Part III Themes and sites
• Appendix A: Key Authors
• Appendix B: Journals about Young People, Place and Identity
• Appendix C: Research Centres and Organisations
• Bibliography
• Index