Space, Work and the 'New Urban Economies'

Abstract

This paper is based on two ESRC research studies involving longitudinal engagement with a small cohort of young people from 1995-99. The studies 'followed' these young people from their last year in secondary school through three years of post-compulsory education, training and (un)employment. Each of the young people was interviewed several times about their 'career' and life 'choices' and family and social lives. The paper presents the 'time-space biographies' of three of the young people - Michael, Wayne and Rachel - and discusses their participation in the 'new' urban economies, their spatial horizons and their different experiences of post-adolescence. We argue that the 'new' urban economies generate new and compound old inequalities and present new risks and possibilities as young people 'struggle for subjectivity' (McDonald, 1999). A number of interpretational possibilities are 'tried out for size'.