Whose space is it anyway? A study of young people's interaction with security guards in New South Wales

Abstract

Limited research has been conducted in relation to the impact of private policing on young people. Research has primarily focused on young people and their use of public space, their use of the street or the policing of working class families and their children. This paper outlines an investigation of young peoples use of public spaces and their experiences of security guards within the greater Sydney metropolitan area of New South Wales. The paper also outlines the experiences of shopping centre managers in relation to the management of young people within their centres. The research found that young people are over policed within public spaces and especially in shopping complexes. Young people are primarily over policed within these spaces because of the perceived fears other groups within the community hold in relation to young people, especially those in groups.     

Children's experience of public space

Children and young people regard the external physical environment as important for their needs. Their use of space varies according to age and circumstance and includes designated play and leisure facilities as well as other informal areas within their neighbourhoods. However, children have little influence over the development of public space as they do not have the opportunity to contribute their views to local processes. This paper explores children's and young people's views and experience of public space in regeneration areas. It considers whether children's perspectives are accurately reflected in public policy. It draws on primary research with young people aged ten to 14 years and representatives from local organisations in a disadvantaged urban area in Scotland.     

Children and regeneration: setting an agenda for community participation and integration

Unlike other marginalised groups children are often not in a position to enter into dialogue with adults about their community needs and environmental concerns. Despite the current emphasis on involving communities in the regeneration of their own neighbourhoods, young people are still seemingly invisible in decision‐making processes. This paper looks at recent attempts to increase public participation in local decision‐making, proposes a typology of community action that recognises the different ways in which children may be drawn into the process of neighbourhood renewal and offers a set of recommendations that, if taken up, provide an agenda that will strengthen the active social commitment of young people in general. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How to integrate digital media into a drop-in for homeless young people for deepening relationships between youth and adults

This paper reports on a curriculum called New Tech for Youth Sessions, designed for homeless young people, aged 13-25. Motivated by the ordinariness of digital media and its importance in communicating with society's institutions, the primary goal of the curriculum was to develop students' life skills for information technology and digital media. A crucial secondary goal was to position students to recognize their self-worth, through meeting challenges, positive communication with adults, and reciprocal peer support. The paper describes how these goals were addressed by incorporating a community technology center into a multi-purpose drop-in for homeless young people and by a curriculum that guides students through an integrated series of activities related to finding employment. The paper discusses the principles underlying the curriculum, the class processes, and the social structure that supports the learning environment. A far-reaching result, based on offering 13 classes to over 75 youth over 16 months, is the hypothesis that instruction in digital media can create visceral, life-affirming experiences of challenges overcome, which can help strengthen relationships between the youth and the drop-in staff. The paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned for incorporating digital media into drop-ins for enabling access and for improving life skills.     

Change and continuity in youth transitions in Eastern Europe: Lessons for Western sociology*

This paper argues that the evidence from research among young people in post‐communist countries vindicates and should consolidate confidence in the Western sociology of youth's conventional transitions paradigm which seeks links between social origins, routes and destinations. Contrary to claims about postmodern fluidity, individualisation, and a blurring of traditional structural boundaries, the expected links between origins, routes and destinations have persisted throughout the transformation of the former communist countries. The relevant evidence also confirms the primacy of education‐to‐work and family/housing life stage transitions. Other aspects of young people's lives – their uses of leisure, levels and patterns of social and political participation, and socio‐political attitudes, for example – become meaningful and explicable only when set in the context of the routes that individuals’ lives have taken, and the stages that they have reached, vis‐à‐vis their school‐to‐work and family and housing transitions. The paper proceeds to argue that the exceptionally thorough changes that are still in process in East‐Central Europe and the former USSR reveal with exceptional clarity the processes whereby young people's life chances are structured in ways that are not of the individuals’ own making. It has been, and it remains, possible to observe how young adults learn from their own youth life stage transition experiences and, where applicable, use the assets that they acquire or retain, to advantage their own children thereby structuring the opportunities that confront all members of subsequent cohorts of young people. Finally, it is argued that the sociological approach being advocated is uniquely able to use the evidence from young people as a window through which to identify the impact of the ongoing macro‐changes in former communist countries among different socio‐demographic groups in the wider populations.     

Integrating process and structure in the concept of youth: a case for secondary analysis

During its eighty-year history, the sociology of youth has provided a succession of partial explanations of the circumstances and responses of the young. The paper critically reviews this history and defines the challenge currently faced by sociologists: to develop a conceptual framework for understanding both the transitions young people pass through as they become adult, and the differential experiences of young people from different social groups. It is argued that such a framework requires the integration of the concepts of process and structure Secondary analysis of existing large data sets is suggested as an available means of meeting the challenge, since such data sets can provide both large representative samples which allow inter-group comparisons, and wide-ranging longitudinal data which allows the study of processes     

Exploring Underlying Dimensions of Social Connectedness in the Experiences of Suspended Young People from Ethnically Diverse Populations in the USA

In the USA, out‐of‐school suspension leaves numerous young people in transition, caught between the school and their communities. A limited body of literature neither documents the experiences of suspended young people from ethnically diverse populations nor provides insight into the spaces they occupy. This study used an exploratory mixed methods design to identify psychological, social and spatial dimensions of social connectedness in the experiences of suspended young people participating in a community intervention. The study aimed to explicate social connectedness as a protective factor and how underlying dimensions of social connectedness construct sites of recovery for suspended young people.     

Chinese youth performing identities and navigating belonging online

This paper examines the experiences of belonging of young Chinese internet users through an analysis of their online identity practices. Drawing on a qualitative research project about online citizenship practices of 31 young Chinese citizens from mainland China, I explore their experiences of belonging on two online platforms (Weibo and WeChat) and the identities formed and sustained through these experiences. The results show that young people experience different senses of belonging in different social media spaces. Their strategies in navigating these experiences are informed by (a) their perceptions of online spaces as private or public, and (b) using online identity performance as a supplement to or escape from identities in physical life. I argue that young Chinese internet users experience different senses of belonging by flexibly appropriating the affordances of social media platforms for communication and networking; these senses of belonging play a key role in forming and sustaining their identities, and are crucial for their wellbeing.     

Spaces for public orientation? Longitudinal effects of Internet use in adolescence

The article departs from an overarching research question: How does young people's engagement in different Internet spaces affect the development of their public orientation during adolescence? It analyses longitudinal panel data in order to explore how young people's public orientation develops during a phase in life (13–20) which is critical for political socialization. Data are derived from three waves of data collection among young people who were 13–17 years old at the time for the first data collection. The concept public orientation is measured by three indicators: young people's values, interests and everyday peer talk. These indicators are analysed with reference to respondents' Internet orientations, which we conceptualize as four separate but inter-related spaces (a news space, a space for social interaction, a game space and a creative space). The results primarily emphasize the importance of orientations towards news space and space for social interaction. Overall, the findings strongly suggest that orientations towards these spaces are related to adolescents' public orientation. The findings confirm the centrality of news and information in political socialization, but they also challenge the idea that social media facilities – such as Facebook, Twitter and blogging – enable forms of social interaction and creative production that have an overall positive impact on young people's public orientation.     

The interplay of public and private spaces in internet access

The creation of public internet access facilities is one of the principal policy instruments adopted by governments in addressing 'digital divide' issues. The lack of plans for ongoing funding, in North America at least, suggests that this mode is regarded mainly as transitional, with private, home-based access being perceived as superior. The assumption apparently is that as domestic internet penetration rates rise, public access facilities will no longer be needed. Central to this issue are the varied characteristics of publicly provided and privately owned access sites and their implications for non-employment internet activities. What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of these two access modes? More fundamentally, how do people conceptualize public and private spaces and how does this perception influence their online activities? Finally, why do people choose one over the other, and how do they navigate between the two? This article attempts to answer these questions by drawing on data generated within the Everyday Internet Project, a 'neighborhood ethnography' of internet usage. It argues that the conventional view of private and public access facilities as immiscible, fixed alternatives is inadequate. Rather than 'pure' types, they are better understood as offering hybrid spaces whose identity and character are fluid, perceived differently by individuals in light of the activities being performed, life experiences, infrastructure and architecture. The picture emerging from our study is one where public and private access modes intertwine with each other in a variety of ways, their combination offering significant additional value for many users. From a public policy perspective, these findings suggest that if universal access is to be achieved, there is a continuing need for publicly supported broad-spectrum facilities with integrated technical support and learning opportunities, even if domestic penetration rates approach that of the telephone.     

Making projects, making friends: online community as catalyst for interactive media creation

To become full and active participants in today's technologically saturated society, young people need to become creators (and not just consumers) of interactive media. Developing the requisite abilities and capacities is not a wholly individual process; it is important for young people to have access to communities where they can collaborate and share ideas. This article uses the Scratch online community for exploring how different forms of participation and collaboration can support and shape the ways in which young people develop as creators of interactive media. We describe participation in this community in terms of a spectrum ranging from socializing to creating and present examples of three forms of collaboration within the community. We argue that the most exciting interactive media creation and valuable learning experiences are taking place in the middle space, where participants draw on the best of socializing and creating practices.     

Becoming,Being and Having Been: Practitioner Perspectives on Temporal Stances and Participation across Children’s Services

This article is based on a study of the changing meanings and experiences of citizenship and participation for young people in transition from primary to secondary school. One of the primary concerns of the study is to better understand how different professional practices impact upon young people’s uptake of participation and adoption of civic identity. To gain some insight into this area the article first looks at the contexts in which participation work is developing and the interrelationships between these developments across children’s services. How different practitioner’s conceptualise participation is tied into different assessments of young people’s or children’s capacity. Recasting questions of capacity as dialogues across differing temporal stances can offer practitioners new ways to reflect upon the power negotiations within their relations with young people. The key role temporality plays in configuring power relationships and transactions is explored as it arises within practitioner life history interviews. The shifts between temporal stances that young people experience as they interact with different practitioners are illustrated through fieldwork data.     

Comparing transition expectations of young people with moderate learning disabilities with other vulnerable youth and with their non-disabled counterparts

This article uses data obtained from a study that examined transition experiences of young people with moderate learning disabilities. A comparison is made between those experiences and the experiences of both other vulnerable young people and non-disabled youth. It was found that non-disabled youth experience extended transitions with events that signify adult status taking place well into young people's 20s. On the other hand, vulnerable youth transitions are often (out of necessity) rushed, with young people having to take on responsibility beyond their years. The results of the study demonstrate that for young people with moderate learning disabilities the experiences of transition more closely mirror those of other vulnerable youth than they do the non-disabled population.     

Making choices in my life: Listening to the ideas and experiences of young people in the UK who communicate non-verbally

Service user participation and making choices are frequently advocated, however, they are complex concepts and how they are translated and/or experienced in everyday life can vary amongst different groups of service users. Recognising the importance of participation in current international guidance and UK government policy this paper seeks to explore how research can include a frequently marginalised group of disabled young people, in particular young people with learning disabilities and/or who communicate non-verbally. The paper discusses the use of non-traditional research methods, especially symbol based interviews developed in an ongoing English longitudinal study exploring choices and decision-making processes for young people with life-limiting conditions. The paper then presents some research findings and concludes by discussing their implications. In particular, it demonstrates how the use of symbol based interviews can inform policy makers about how these young people can be included in research and that listening to them can inform our understanding of decision-making processes.     

Constructing the sick child: the cultural politics of children's hospitals

Drawing on an ESRC funded study of children's experiences of hospital space this article explores the cultural politics of contemporary English childhood. Using the words and commentaries provided by both children and young people, the article argues that although, as patients, children and young people share the same hospital spaces, their experiences of them are quite different. Through mundane material and symbolic practices, a number of experiential continuities are created for the youngest children between life in hospital and life at home, continuities that work to downplay their identities as children who are sick. For young people, however, these practices are more problematic since the discourses of childhood that are recreated have little resonance with young people's own experiences and sense of self and identity. Thus this article provides evidence of the need for a more nuanced understanding of not only young people's needs in relation to hospital services, but also of the significance of understanding the ways in which particular constructions of ‘the child’ and ‘childhood’ are threaded through public discourses and come to be realized in institutional settings.     

Young people,emotional suspicion and the emergence of paediatric selfhood in Palestine

This paper explores young people's relationships to emotions and mental health care in Ramallah, Palestine. Palestinian young people—via public anger, sadness, or even joy—are often marked as emotionally other in familial, institutional and other public spaces as part of NGO-driven constructions of emerging paediatric selfhood. In response, they reproduce and/or reframe notions of emotional suspicion that underwrite these marginalizing processes. Thinking along such axes as possibility and impossibility; mobility and immobility; and the local and international, they simultaneously integrate and resist representational subjection, which is an important part of understanding broader post-Oslo Palestinian identity and community formation.     

Availability and accessibility of public health services for adolescents and young people in South Africa

Against the background of increasing international calls for the development and implementation of age-appropriate programmes that address both quality and access issues to improve adolescent and youth health, this paper explores the extent to which public health facilities are available and accessible to adolescents and youth in South Africa. The impetus for the study was the current evidence that there was generally poor utilisation of services offered at public health facilities by young people in the country. The overall findings are that despite the country's comprehensive legal and policy framework and commitment to improve the health of young people, there continues to be some structural and systemic factors that hamper effective provision and programming of adolescent and youth friendly services. The paper concludes with recommendations for policy and practice.     

Children of adult consumers of mental health services: Towards principles of practice

Abstract

This paper discusses the development of a peer support and advocacy Network, Young Mothers for Young Women. The Network evolved through a participatory action research project into young mothers experiences of violence. Through the Network, young women participate in a community development approach to violence reduction. As part of the Network, young women offer peer support to other young women. Network members also engage in ongoing community education and advocacy about issues, such as poverty, isolation and sexism which increase young womens vulnerability to violence. An important aim of this paper is to make visible the dialogue between social workers and young women on which the Network relies. This paper is motivated by the concern that as social work enters an era of increasing accountability it is critical that workers articulate the often invisible role they play in facilitating participatory processes.