‘They’re still children and entitled to be children': problematising the institutionalised mistrust of marginalised youth in Britain

Abstract

Developing Kelly's perspicacious deliberations on mistrust, surveillance and regulation in this journal (Journal of Youth Studies vol. 6, no. 2 (2003), pp. 165-180), this paper illustrates the pernicious consequences of the British Government's 'Community Safety' discourses, as effected through the imposition of Acceptable Behaviour Contracts, upon marginalised young people and their families. By drawing upon and presenting extracts from our recent qualitative research with a sample of young people and their families subject to these contracts, the vacuous nature of contemporary constructs of marginalised youth as 'dangerous Other' is laid bare as unintelligible and deleterious to fostering any sense of inclusion and social justice in their lives.