Y is for Youth Marginality
We want to start our focus on Y is for Youth Marginality by looking at a global perspective on young people and the importance of social science in unmasking inequities but also creating them, then move onto the UK context. We have identified the conditions of youth marginality in terms of being are unable to do ‘normal’ and ‘everyday’ things including the opportunity to: contribute, participate, produce, and consume (Blackman and Rogers, 2017: 10). We maintain that historically from Thomas Malthus to Charles Murray’s controversial impact on social science, young people have been labelled as a ‘redundant population’. We argue that marginality operates as a series of structural, cultural, and emotional experiences where social exclusion both preserves and intensifies discrimination, stereotypes, and prejudice. Sociologist Loic Wacquant (2008:30) at the University of California, Berkeley understands marginality in terms of the social structuring of inequalities and the dispossession of “social dignity.” According to the United Nations (2022) there are approximately 1.2 billion young people aged between 15–24 on the planet. In her report Rita Izsak-Nadiaye (2021) details how young people have been removed from human rights and subject to rubber bullets, kettling and teargas as well as torture and inhuman and degrading treatment. Jaclyn Diaz (2022) 25th May, stated that: “The U.S. has surpassed 200 mass shootings this year.” The Sandy Hook Promise (2022) website details that: “Each day 12 young people die from gun violence in America. Another 32 are shot and injured.” These recent reports focus on how youth remain marginal, underrepresented, or excluded portrayed through stigmatisation seen as without value or worth. Through political discourses and media representations we argue that youth marginality is an online weapon or form of ‘hatred’ as entertainment which severely reduces young people’s human rights.
In the UK our young people experience the antithesis of the ‘baby boomer’ generation (born between the mid-1940s and mid-1960s). They are not only disproportionately targeted in their youth, but they are also members of the generation who will continue to be affected into their old age by the cuts to the state pension, the gradual contraction of the NHS, and the increasing dominance of the market. These are the young people who have experienced a collapse in the youth labour market, in home ownership rates, the greatest levels of student debt, and fundamental changes to the education system in terms of the increase in Academies, Free Schools and the likely return of segregation that is so central to the ideology behind the Grammar School system of the current Conservative government.
British young adults have been subject to populist forms of state monitoring, including the introduction of Challenge 21 and Challenge 25, which effectively forces them to carry identification and account for themselves should they wish to buy cigarettes or alcohol, despite being legally old enough to do so. Ironically posters designed for initiative by the British Beer and Pub Association state that “if you are lucky enough to look under 21/25 you will be asked to prove that you are over 18 when you buy alcohol” (emphasis added). This makes young adults the only group of people where it is considered ‘acceptable’ to exclude because of their membership of a particular group.
‘Only two school children at a time’ — it is inconceivable to imagine an independent High Street shop being allowed to put this poster in their window if the demographic was changed to a specific ethnic minority, yet we have become desensitised to this form of prejudice against young people. Such punitive actions are reinforced by wide scale use of the Mosquito (a supposedly benign ultrasonic device) set up in public places to deter young people from ‘loitering’ and the use of so-called ‘skills boot camps’ (Department for Education) if they fail to gain employment. For decades, the UK government has also targeted young people in relation to unemployment and introduced policies specifically designed to restrict their eligibility for benefits. These include explicitly reducing their entitlement to housing benefit and allowing them access only to very limited benefits specifically created for young people, which carry with them far tougher benefit sanctions and restrictions.
Within the job market, young people are also significantly over-represented in the ‘gig economy’ and are far more likely to suffer from job insecurity. The proliferation of ‘employers’ such as fast food delivery companies has led to a significant rise in the number of casual workers and a gradual acceptance and normalisation of unfair working conditions. Roles such as these include significantly reduced rights to other benefits such as paid holiday, sick leave, minimum hour contracts. Young people also have a significantly reduced or no entitlement to a ‘living wage’, and although the minimum wage has been in place since 1998, many young people remain excluded from this. In 2016, the minimum wage was increased and called the ‘national living wage’. But this only applies to those aged 23 or over. Whilst the national living wage is set at £9.50 for those 23 or over, young people aged 18–20 are still only entitled to £6.83 and those under 18 are still only entitled to as little as £4.81.
The British tabloid media thrives on images of youth misrepresentation promoting young people’s social exile delivered through stereotypical caricatures enhanced by a narcissistic vision of young people addicted to mobile devices (Blackman and Kempson 2021). We see youth as a marketing device, an image and product sold as a brand of neo-liberalism in an attractive shape of an exciting, everlasting, and pleasurable condition, but not for young people. These are the contradiction of youth marginality: for young people it hurts.
Shane Blackman is the Professor of Cultural Studies in the School of Creative Arts & Industries. He has conducted research into sociological and ethnographic aspects of young people’s culture, undertaking funded research for the Home Office, London Health Authorities, the Kent Constabulary and local authorities in Kent. He is a consultant for the British Board of Film Classification (London) and a Research Associate at Goldsmiths, Sociology Department, University of London.
Ruth Rogers is Reader in Social Justice and Inclusion and Director of the Research Centre for Children Families and Communities. Ruth’s research explores youth and communities ‘on the margins’, including educational inequality, social exclusion, youth transitions and looked after children. She has researched the experiences of looked after children as they make the transition into becoming a ‘care leaver’. She has also explored social structures and the construction of parenting and families.
References and further reading
Blackman, S. and Rogers, R. (2017) (eds.) Youth Marginality in Britain: contemporary studies of austerity. Policy Press: Bristol.
Blackman, S. and Kempson, M. (2021) The Subcultural Imagination: Critically Negotiating the Co-Production of ‘Subcultural Subjects’ through the Lens of C. Wright Mills, Sociological Research Online, https://doi.org/10.1177/13607804211006112
Diaz, J. (2022) 27 school shootings have taken place so far this year, https://www.npr.org/2022/05/24/1101050970/2022-school-shootings-so-far
Izsak-Nadiaye, R. (2021) If I disappear. https://www.un.org/youthenvoy/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Global-Report-on-Protecting.-Young-People-in-Civic-Space.pdf
Sandy Hooks (2022) 16 Facts About Gun Violence and School Shootings
https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/blog/gun-violence/16-facts-about-gun-violence-and-school-shootings/
Wacquant, L. (2008) Urban Outcasts. Cambridge. Polity Press.
