Young people, social exclusion

1
Young people, social exclusion bereavement

• Tracy Shildrick Robert MacDonald,
• Youth Research Group
• University of Teesside, UK
• T.Shildrick_at_tees.ac.uk

2
Aims overview

• The Teesside studies aims, site, methods
• Understanding extended youth transitions social
  exclusion brief overview
• Narratives of morbidity and mortality the
  spatial concentration of health inequalities.
• Critical moments, biography and transition the
  significance of health through two cameos (Micky
  Martin)
• Summary conclusions - the unpredictable
  consequences of ill health/bereavement on youth
  transitions

3
Three Teesside studies

• Situated in some of the poorest neighbourhoods in
  one of the poorest towns in England
• Qualitative studies of youth transitions social
  exclusion
• Biographical interviews (some repeat) with c. 200
  white, working-class, young adults aged 15-25,
  then 23-30 years
• Participant observation stake-holder
  interviews
• Critically exploring influential academic
  policy analysis of the underclass, social
  exclusion transitions

4
Three Teesside studies

• Snakes Ladders young people, transitions and
  social exclusion
• (2000, Johnston et al) (JRF)
• Disconnected Youth? Growing up in Britains poor
  neighbourhoods
• (2005, MacDonald and Marsh) (ESRC)
• 3. Poor Transitions young adults and social
  exclusion
• (2004, Webster et al) (JRF)

5
Poor Transitions (Webster et al, 2004)

• Follow-up study, 34 people drawn from the above
  studies and now aged 23-29 years, particular
  focus on what happened to those people with
• Commitment to employment, education, training but
  enduring economic marginality
• Long-term, serious criminal/ drug-using careers
• Main responsibilities for parenting (i.e. young
  mothers)
• Overall interest in where diverse but
  economically marginal earlier transitions led
  young adults in their twenties

6
Health transitions?

• Health related behaviours are rarely considered
  as key strands influencing transitions through
  education, training and employment, household
  formation or transitions to independent living.
  Whilst for decades academics have drawn attention
  to the social inequalities of health,
  comparatively little attention has been given to
  the way in which health is a factor mediating
  inequalities of opportunity in education,
  employment and patterns of leaving home.
• (Bob Coles, Joined up Youth Research, Policy and
  Practice, 2000 178)

7
Four theoretical/ research domains (in progress)

• Health inequalities by social class place
  their impacts on youth
• The apparent equalisation of health
  inequalities in youth (West et al)
• Life course transitions biographical
  disruption
• Risk, resilience and getting by in adversity

8
Narratives of Morbidity

• Strong association between class place health
  (Black 1980, Acheson 1998, etc).
• Health issues not prefigured in our research
  questions
• But narratives of personal and family ill-health
  very frequent (therefore some under-reporting by
  us here?)
• Physical psychological ill-health (of
  interviewees, their parents, wider family,
  children and friends) common but incidental
  element of biographical interviews
• e.g. for interviewees - depression, anxiety,
  injuries e.g. for parents/ others - chronic
  and acute physical and mental illnesses

9
Poor health transitions some examples

• In several cases, clear negative impact of
  ill-health on school-to-work careers (and vice
  versa)
• At the moment Im suffering from depression,
  cos Ive applied for loads of jobs and then you
  just dont get them, so you start feeling really,
  really low//your chances are getting slimmer
  and slimmer because you hear about people closing
  factories down and all them people are looking
  for work
• (Chrissie, 25)

10
Ill-health young parenthood

• I get down a lot with the kidseat a lot for
  comfort. Im on my own constantly with the kids
  and theyre just there and Ive got to struggle
  through. Ive been quite unhappy for a while now
  with me life, but as I say, its down to me to
  make the changes. Everyday just being the same.
  Its the same routine everyday now. I need to
  make the effort to change that and do more and
  learn more.
• (Val, 22)

11
Narratives of Mortality

• As well as narratives of ill-health, strikingly
  high levels of bereavement
• Over half reported the death of a significant
  person in their lives, not including grandparents
  (mainly parents, siblings, partners, children or
  friends).
• Death from various chronic and acute illnesses
  plus car accidents, suicides and drug overdoses
• Striking, note-worthy in itself but even more so
  was the unpredictability of the consequences of
  these events

12
Critical moments, biography and transition
Martin

• Across interviewees, Martin was one of the most
  successful, settled school to work careers
  despite successive experience of loss
  ill-heath.
• At 20, suicides of father and friend had
  deepened Martins commitment to employment
• Ive worked a lot harder since it happened for
  my own good
• And to his neighbourhood/ community (via youth
  work)
• to fight back and to try and put myself right

13
Martin, (continued)

• At 23, had left East Kelby and grass-roots youth
  work
• perinatal death of his first child
• wifes depression
• trouble with disruptive young neighbours
• new start in a new town
• His own response to his loss was (again) to sink
  himself
• into his job
• My way of mourning is basically to get to work
  and immerse myself in that, which is what I did
  when my Dad died. I had three days off and I was
  straight back to work. With Ben his son I had
  three weeks off, but personally if it was just
  me I would have gone back straight away. Its
  just my way of dealing with things.

14
Martin (continued)

• I think its made me a bit more successfulin
  trying to succeed a bit more. You know, I was
  doing exactly the same job, but Ive worked a lot
  harder since it happened fathers death. I done
  it for me own good, because Ive worked a lot
  harder. I wanna succeed more//I wanted to prove
  that other people in the family can do things,
  not only to myself but also to others.

15
Critical moments, biography and transition
Micky

• Classic extended, drug-crime career
• At first interview, described whole-sale
  disengagement from education and employment,
  escalating offending, recurrent imprisonment and
  chronic relapse to heroin
• At 21, most recent return to heroin had been in
  part triggered/ explained by death of sister
  two friends in car accident

16
Micky (continued)

• Cos of everything that was going on around us
  at the time. When I got out of prison in 1999,
  we lost our sister as well in the accident. I
  lost two of me best friends...the car turned
  over, hit the tree and burst into flames. Me
  sister and me best mates were in that. Since I
  lost them, I just went off it. I just started
  committing crime again and all that againI went
  off it, because of it. Because I didnt think it
  was fair and all that crap.

17
Self-reliance coping Max

• General opposition to seeking psychiatric help/
  counselling amongst young men
• Max, 28, lost friends in the same car crash
• Oh it was fuckin bad. Im glad that Im working
  and that now, cos me head would be up me arse if
  I wasnt working likeAll the shit Ive had in me
  life, its my mates that have got me through it.
  Theres a lot of people who say, have you seen a
  counsellor? You know with the crash. Im like, no
  I dont fuckin need counselling, you know what I
  mean?.
• At first interview, Max had commented you have
  to be a stone-faced fucker to survive round here

18
Back to Micky

• Ive got out this time from prison and when I
  was in custody this time, we found out me Mam had
  cancer. Ive got out, she passed away and theres
  another funeral//Its affected me in loads of
  ways. Its kept me off the drugs anyway. Cos I
  was a heroin addict. I was messing about with
  the heroin for the past four year and since this
  has happened, Ive straightened meself out.

19
Micky (continued)

• Reflecting on changes in his life since we first
  met him, Micky went on
• Well, yeah, theres been a lot of loss in the
  family. Thats a big change. And the biggest
  change of all, this time Im determined to stay
  clean and I know for a fact I will. In the past
  I might have said yeah Im staying clean and as
  soon as Im released Im back on it straight
  away//its had a massive impact, totally
  massive. I mean youve only got one mother and
  once shes gone, its like loosing a leg isnt
  it, or loosing an arm? Devastated. Ill never go
  back on it. No, I mean it. I know it anyway.

20
Conclusions

• Ill-health bereavement significant elements of
  multiple social problems that affect young people
  in poor neighbourhoods and their transitions to
  adulthood.
• Much said about structured, spatial health
  inequalitieslittle said in youth transitions
  research
• Our studies highlight the influence on youth
  transitions of critical moments (Thomson et al,
  2002) (e.g. parental separation, intervention of
  professionals, as well as health episodes)
• Helps explain differentiation of individual
  transitions in context of shared locality,
  ethnicity, class, economic marginality and poverty

21
Conclusions (continued)

• Occurrence of health critical moments not so
  unpredictable in Thomson et als study young
  peoples narratives were much more likely to be
  marked by descriptions of chronic illness and
  death in the poorest of the five localities
  studied
• Consequences are much less predictable (different
  responses to similar events across biographies
  and within same biography).
• Critical health moments and longer experience
  of ill-health - influence transitions, but one
  influence amongst many (e.g. Mickys return to
  and turn away from heroin enmeshed in multiple,
  simultaneous, other factors and processes)

22
Some Questions?

• How might we begin to explain the variability in
  personal response (between and within individual
  cases) to apparently similar critical moments?
• Do you think we would have found similar or
  different things if we had researched affluent
  neighbourhoods?
• What youth policy and practice challenges are
  suggested by this research?