Dealing With Disadvantage

Abstract

This article analyzes how peer and extended networks provide young people with support and resources for dealing with disadvantage. Centering girls' accounts of growing up in the Glebe public housing estate, the difficulties they face, their critiques and aspirations are interpreted as resilience, supported by the social capital of their networks. However, the girls' accounts also explicate youth resistances to school and inevitable trouble through participation in the broader local youth network, raising questions for conceptualizations of social capital. Conflicting orientations of the networks are analyzed in terms of bonding and bridging forms of social capital. However, in specific contexts of school and community, the interrelations of social and cultural capital suggest the significance of recognition as a mechanism for differentiation of young people and for effecting marginalization and privilege.