White working-class youth,rural disadvantage,sense of belonging and bonded social capital

Introduction

Previous research on young people has revealed the ways in which their lives have been impacted and reshaped by neo-liberal informed socio-economic, cultural and political processes (Cuervo, 2014; Cuervo and Wyn, 2012; Wenham, 2020). This reformulation of welfare systems and more individualised responsibility for social support and survival (Asenova et al., 2015), alongside economic insecurity, has increased notions of precarity in terms of employment, income, health and prosperity (Standing, 2011). In evidencing these changes and their impact on communities in the UK, urban studies rather, those undertaken in rural areas have tended to dominate (Bernard et al., 2019).

As Beach and Ohrn (2019: 1) observe, the implication of this so-termed metro-centricity is that the ‘knowledge of young people’s marginalisation and participation in education and wider society is based on observations of life in limited geographical/social contexts'. Moreover, this dearth of ethnographic knowledge and understanding, is occurring at a time when global and national economic changes have created regional and place-based inequalities which potentially have significant implications for young people living in disadvantaged rural areas (Farrugia, 2014); discursively and literally positioning them as left behind (Wuthnow, 2018). As Black et al. (2019) observe, in contrast with both rural studies in North America (Sherman, 2009; Tickamyer et al., 2017) and Europe (Gkartzios, 2013; Murphy and Scott, 2013), there have been very few UK-based studies investigating the impact of the economic changes and austerity on rural communities and young people.

Consequently, there is need for in-depth ethnographic research, able to illuminate and explore young peoples’ relationship to place, sense of identity and construction of social relations. In particular, how their experiences of rural disadvantage are made sense of, managed and negotiated at a time of global austerity (Canterbery, 2014). In an attempt to provide a greater qualitative understanding, the data presented in the paper, are derived from prolonged periods of ethnographic study in an economically disadvantaged white working-class rural community in the North East of England. A central aim of the study was to understand the culture of the village and to capture and penetrate the social relationships and meanings within that culture as understood by its inhabitants; in this case, white working class young people aged 16–21, who were in neither education, employment, nor training.

In line with Black et al. (2019), the contention as presented, is a need for greater recognition of ‘place’ and ‘belonging’ in understanding the social relations of young people and the ‘interconnections between biography and social context’ (Black et al., 2019: 265). As such, the paper draws theoretically on the relational metaphor of belonging (Cuervo and Wyn, 2014), and Putnam’s (1995) notion of Social Capital, to situate and explain the research findings.

Research method

As Bourdieu (1993: 271) observes, ‘One cannot grasp the most profound logic of the social world unless one becomes immersed in the specificity of an empirical reality’. The immersive ethnographic approach taken in the research was one of viewing phenomena in everyday context requiring the direct involvement and long-term engagement of the researcher, giving high status to the accounts of participants’ perspectives and understandings’ (Walford, 2009: 26). The research process, guided by symbolic interactionism (Atkinson and Housley, 2003), was formative and creative with a focus on the motivations, interpretations and meanings of the actors involved (Hammersley, 1989).

Initially, the research site had been the focus of a three-year investigation into the interrelationship between the local rural school and its community (see Bagley and Hillyard, 2013, 2015, 2019; Hillyard and Bagley, 2013, 2015). This was followed by a further one-year period of fieldwork in the same locality focusing exclusively on the experiences and perspectives of young people in the village who had all attended the village school but who were now neither in education, employment or training. The research continued to employ participant observation inside the village in a host of informal settings including social clubs, bars, community centres, sports centres and shops, as well as on the street. As the following extract from my research diary helps illuminate:

Waiting to speak to Brandon and Connor, my eyes drawn two old guys that look about 70 but could in reality only be 50, sitting on a bench with pealing green paint and a missing wooden slat, talking to each other and smoking roll ups. A girl possibly no more than 17, walks passed with a baby in a push chair. She nods to them, they nod back and she walks in to the fish and chip shop to get some lunch or more accurately dinner as the call it here. The delicious smell of fish and chips in the air, is one of which I never get tired, although it always seems to smell even better at the seaside. Unfortunately, the nearest beach is about 25 miles away. Just as I am wondering if I should treat myself, Brandon and Connor come round the corner both wearing identical Nike track suits, both smoking. Connor with his black Staffordshire bull terrier cross breed called Tyson. As they approach, we also nod to each other, not in the same way as the old man to the girl, but in a way which means they know who I am and even though I am not from the village I am alright. Alright, not in any friendly sense, but as in we know who you are and you’re not a threat to us. After four years here, that’s important, as I know outsiders aren’t the most welcome and I take it as a sign that my presence outside the very ‘local’ fish and chip shop, is understood and at least tolerated. ² Brandon and Connor continue towards me, passing a bordered-up house ironically showing the graffiti bearing their tags, and missing the dog dirt on the street by inches in their pristine white trainers.

In a very strong echo of the young people, featured in the research of Bright, G (2016), undertaken in a similar de-industrialised coal-mining community in the North of England. All 25 of the participants interviewed were from families that at some time had formerly made their living in the coal-mining industry. Again, in line with Bright (2016), all the young people interviewed had had a difficult relation with education having at one time permanently or temporarily excluded from school. Equally, their personal and family lives had all been touched in one way or another by a range of experiences including unemployment, drug use and overdose related deaths, arrest, custodial sentences, anti-social behaviour orders, housing eviction and physical assault.

The study draws on unstructured interviews with this group of white working class young people. The overall aim was to help produce an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the culture in the village and to capture and penetrate the social relationships and meanings within that culture as understood by a section of its inhabitants; young people aged 16–21 who were in neither education, employment nor training.

To enable a rigorous analytical engagement with the research findings and to iteratively develop theoretical ideas (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1983), the research employed a thematic analysis of the data generated (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Data segments, instances and fragments were brought together to create categories defined as having common properties or elements (Coffey and Atkinson, 1996). Iterative cycles of data collection and data analysis were deployed as individual codes were analytically narrowed into conceptual categories and meaningfully organized at a theoretically abstract level of meaning. Subsequently, in seeking to provide a deeper sociological understanding, the data are situated within a theoretical framework of the relational metaphor of belonging (Cuervo and Wyn, 2014), and Putnam’s (1995) notion of Social Capital, both presented in the next section, before moving to the study’s findings and conclusion.

Theoretical framing

Research findings

In terms of the relational metaphor of belonging and feelings of rootedness and attachment to place (Cuervo and Wyn 2012), the self-descriptor of being ‘from the village’ was found to be used universally with a high degree of pride by the young people, to identify themselves emotionally, socially and historically. As Ryan and Courtney commented:

Yes, I am from the village born and bred here, same as me Mam and Dad, Nana and Grandad. We’ve always lived here, proud of it, it’s where I know, went to school, play football for the village team, drink, everything.

Rosvall and Rönnlund (2019), in presenting the ethnographic findings from their study on young people in a Swedish rural community, similarly identified strong attachments of individuals to the place where they live aligned with notions of the rural idyll. But they go on to refer to what they term ‘cracks in the idyll’ (p. 23). The notion refers to the fact that young people recognize they will have to leave the community to find work (Corbett, 2013; Paulgaard, 2017; Sørensen and Pless, 2017), while nurturing the hope of one day returning, not least because the village is associated with their family history (Rosvall and Rönnlund, 2019). This significance of family history in relation to attachment to place and a sense of belonging has also featured strongly in other rural research (Johansson, 2017; Hargreaves et al., 2009; Sorensen and Pless, 2017).

The concept of mobility has been posited a critical to ‘understand the relationship between rural communities, schooling and young people’s lives’ (Cuervo, 2014, p.651). The degree to which young people have or do not have access to resources to enable mobility in a more liquid global world (Bauman, 1998) claimed to act as an indicator of social difference (Urry, 2007) and a catalyst for increasing existing social inequalities and social exclusion (Dolby and Rizvi, 2008; McLeod, 2009). Nonetheless, while studies might suggest that for those with the necessary ‘capital’, spacial mobility has become ‘a normative requirement of youth in rural places’ (Cuervo, 2014, p651). It remains crucial to appreciate young people’s specific cultural, economic and social circumstances (McLeod, 2009). As Sherman (2009, p189) comments, in relation to the urban poor, the establishment of close social ties utilised as safety net for survival ‘can often act as disincentives to geographic mobility’.

Hence, and in contrast to the findings of Rosvall and Rönnlund (2019), for the young people in Minbury, there was very little consideration by the young people interviewed, of the future need to leave the village to find work. This was not because of good local employment opportunities, rather a lack of optimism and belief that things were better anywhere else. As Jack observed:

One of two of my mates did leave to take up jobs somewhere else but they were only gone 6 months before those jobs folded and they came back to village. I mean there’s no point in being stuck in some place down South where you don’t know anybody and no one can help you out. I know now, me and my mates just think might as well be unemployed here than down there, in fact we are much better off being unemployed here because we have family and friends who can help us out.

The recurrent theme of family and friends able to ‘help them out’ at times of economic hardship resonates with the metaphor of belonging in terms of their relationship with people who are meaningful and important to them (Cuervo and Wyn, 2014). A sense of attachment for the young people was linked to close social relationships, integration and interdependency between family and close community members and their support networks. All key aspects of the young people’s lives associated with the existence of the strong ties of bonded social capital; an aspect of rural life (discussed further below), juxtaposed in previous research, to life in urban settings (Rye, 2006; Leyshon, 2008; Stenbacka, 2016; Rosvall and Rönnlund, 2019). Rosvall and Rönnlund (2019) speak of close social relationships in the village, where everyone knows everyone else, with cross-generational socializing a common occurrence. They found at one level this degree of social intimacy to be perceived by young people as a positive aspect of living in the village. On another level, however, it meant that nothing was ever private with everyone knowing everyone else’s business! Interestingly, despite the extremely close social relationships identified in Minbury, this negative aspect was not identified from the data. One possible explanation, similar and underpinned by the difference to the findings of Rosvall and Rönnlund (2019) in relation to economic migration above, is their understanding and response to the impact on their community and lives of severe economic deprivation and disadvantage and the need to survive.

Such experiences manifested in a strengthening of both their sense of belonging but also an overwhelmingly positive appreciation of the networks associated with the strong ties of bonded social capital. In terms of this form of capital, the ability to trust and draw on the close network of family and friends, was both valued and seen as a critical mechanism by which young people in the study found themselves, quite literally, able to survive in an economically deprived and disadvantaged community.

Feelings expressed explicitly in the comments of Brandon and Connor below:

The shops are boarded up, the works gone, there is nowt for us here and nobody gives a shit. I mean you see the politicians saying this and that but what do they know about me and my life. Do they have to struggle just to live, to get enough money to feed and clothe the kids? Without my mam and dad and friends we would go fucking under!

In accordance with previous research undertaken by Black, et al. (2019), the findings from the Minbury study, reveal the enormous social and economic challenges facing young people in rural England and their dependence on family and friends for survival. In contrast however to findings from American studies in poverty-stricken rural communities (Sherman, 2013), the use and dependency by young people in Minbury on ‘informal self-provisioning activities and social networks’ wasn’t to the ‘avoid shame and stigma’ of taking government benefits (Sherman, 2013: 414), it was out of necessity. They expressed only anger and resentment over their social and economic predicament, enforcing on them a need to rely on family and friends to supplement any income or support they received from the State.

I claim all the benefits and allowances I can get, I know from my mates and family, who are claiming what I can get, it’s a fucking pittance! Why should it be like that, I can work, I want to work, but there’s nothing for me!

As with the research findings of Wenham (2020), young people in the study possessed a clear understanding of the impact of economic decline on both the village and their opportunity for finding work locally. A sense of belonging aligned with a ‘social generational approach’ (Cuervo and Wyn, 2014 p.907) and the harsh economic times in which young people in the village found themselves living and which made the reliance on bonded social capital networks all the more significant and important. Certainly, their sense of belonging far from being removed or devalued and undermined as a consequence of the strong macro-economic neo-liberal forces, as reported by Rosvall and Ronnlund, (2019), it was in contrast, if anything, reinforced and strengthened.

On the negative side, and in keeping with the findings of Johansson (2019), the dense social bonded capital networks and very close relationships between the young people was found to be exclusionary and engendering social closure. To this end, young people had an extremely strong communal sense of identity as being ‘from the village’; determined by birth right. The notion of being ‘from the village’ used discursively to position the ‘other’ as ‘from’ or ‘not from’ the village. In interviews, individuals described as ‘not from the village’ category included anyone who lived outside the village, as well the ‘middle class’ newcomers living in the village, on the periphery, but with no family association to it. As Michael and Shannon commented:

You see those lads over there. They went to my School but they are not from the village, weren’t born here, they live a couple of miles away in the next village. My Dad told me that when he was my age there were regular street fights at the weekends between gangs from Minbury and the other villages. You know organised. That doesn’t still happen, but if anything kicks off in a pub or anything and they are one of us from the village then we will all get stuck in!

As Black et al. (2019) similarly observed, from their rural study in England, young people drew attention to how the place was changing through in-migration of older middle-class residents, less attuned and engaged with the village. Newcomers with a diminished sense of social belonging and utilising bridging capital to network and preferentially engage more widely beyond the local community. In relation to the newcomers and their apparent lack of social engagement with the village, young people tended to identify the village as ‘ours’ and not ‘theirs’, arguably setting the ground for a form of xenophobia. On a similar point, Beach and Öhrn (2019) considered the conception of place as a signifier of certain negative and prejudicial social and material relations that presented differently in rural communities than urban settings. Namely, whereas in urban areas it was found to be related to ethnicity and class (Beach and Sernhede, 2011; Gitz-Johansen, 2003), in rural communities it had a geographical settlement related element. As in the Minbury study, for Beach and Öhrn (2019), this was presented as a prejudicial tension between those living in the centre of the village and those more middle-class newcomers living on the outskirts.

For the young people in Minbury, however there was also a strong racist discourse, not towards the newcomers who were all white, but towards immigrants more immigration generally, used to express their feelings of anger and frustration regards their predicament. As the following two comments from Luke and Paige reveal:

You explain to me how it is that my family can live around here for generations and find themselves without work and yet you see more and more foreigners coming in taking what little work there is or getting money from the state when we have nothing ourselves. I mean we don’t have many immigrants round here but it’s not right that they can come over and take our jobs. Shouldn’t we be looking after our own people. I mean I know families whose kids barely have shoes on their feet.

In the harsh economic environment encountered by the young people interviewed, there was a strong tendency in the almost totally White community, to blame immigration and immigrants. This was fuelled by a real sense of anger and frustration with established politicians and political parties precipitating a sense of social abandonment. As Jade and Ryan emotionally state:

I’m angry that they sit down there in London and they haven’t got a clue what it is like round here, have you seen the state of things? Nothing to do, drink and drugs. People think the cities are bad but they should come and visit some of the villages, like ours around here. You are walking thru dog crap, broken glass, used needles and what is the government doing. I’ll tell you, absolutely fucking nothing!

In essence, the research found young people in this White working-class rural community to feel dispossessed, disenfranchised and disadvantaged by a ‘distant’ ‘out of touch’ central government. Consequently, their metaphorical sense of belonging was hardened as they became increasingly reliant on strong bonded social capital ties for mutual socio-economic and cultural survival. Arguably, this bonded social capital increasingly operating in a negative and exclusionary way, resulting in individuals and groups who are not members of a particular social network being perceived antagonistically as outsiders, who alongside a ‘distant’ government and ‘out of touch’ politicians, are to blame for their problems.

Conclusion

Farrugia (2014) observes how in much of the literature around theories of modernity the notion of place only features ‘in order to assert that it is no longer relevant’ (ibid p. 295). Such theories reduce in apparent importance geographical and locational variation and ‘posit a universal subject of modernity that is implicitly urban’ (ibid: 295). The findings presented in this paper emphasise and reassert the importance and need for research into specific localities outside of the metropolis, especially disadvantaged rural communities and the meanings, feelings and experiences of young people living within them. In the case of Minbury, the overriding and dominant findings from the data suggest an everyday existence steeped in poverty, with little perceived hope for the future, fuelling anger and blame.

In terms of theoretical framing, it was found that notions of social capital and the relational metaphor of a sense of belonging provided useful ways in which to engage and make analytical sense of the data and the importance of place and social relationships for the young people living in a disadvantaged rural community. Significantly, and in line with Billet (2012), it was the importance of the strong ties of bonded social capital networks which were found to be particularly salient (see Figure 1. Note: bonded capital segment deliberately enlarged).OPEN IN VIEWER

In relation to other forms of social capital the research found no evidence of bridging or linking capital (Putnam, 1995). Rather, what operated was a very high degree of bonded social capital, to the extent that it could be perceived as separated, even moving away from the creation of other forms of capital, which are arguably seen as irrelevant and socially antithetical (see Figure 1); youth from the same background and village trusting and engaging with each other for economic survival. For these young people, living with a sense of economic and political abandonment, any external ‘not from the village’ factors, associated with bridging and linking capital, were counterintuitively perceived as emblematic and symptomatic of the problem rather than providing any solution. The bonded cultural entrenchment of these views posing a potential obstacle for those advocating a policy of rural networked development (Shucksmith, 2012, 2019) to address disadvantage and promote rural economic growth. That is not to say local control and capacity building isn’t achievable. Rather it is to acknowledge the possible degree of endogenous work required, to achieve its goal, especially in former rural mining communities like Minbury. A community, whose young people and their families, having experienced generations of economic decline and social neglect (Beatty, et al., 2019; Foden, et al., 2014), no longer trust those outside of their immediate networks.

As evidenced, a sense of belonging and strong bonded social ties were harnessed by Minbury’s young people to ground and safeguard themselves against the worst excesses of rural disadvantage and social deprivation, to negotiate a response to the social challenges they were experiencing (Butler and Muir, 2017; Cuervo and Wyn, 2014; Farrugia, 2014). In this case, it took the form of a social exclusionary position reinforced by their close intimate connections and relationships.

As previous research has signalled, the entrenchment and application of bonded social capital is not necessarily a positive occurrence and can be a networked environment capable of reinforcing negative and exclusionary aspects (Morrow, 1999; Bassani, 2007; Bottrell, 2007; Butler and Muir, 2017). For example, related to their strong sense of belonging, working-class young people in Minbury were seemingly found to be locked-in to their locality. As such, they had become discursively and emotionally isolated from the outside world, their networks arguably over embedded in their own social context (Martínez-Fernández, 2009). Consequently, those not born in the village and not members of their close socially bonded networks were perceived and positioned antagonistically as outsiders (Portes, 1998). Further, in terms of the presence of racialized discourse, their predicament was blamed on immigration and immigrants alongside a sense of political neglect on behalf of the national government. The pervasiveness of these views was evidenced in the data, indicative of bonded social capital whereby a process of like-mindedness seemingly fails to consider views outside of those predominant within a network (Granovetter, 1985).

The key point here, however, is not to simply dismiss certain views of the White working-class young people featured in the study as xenophobic and racist (which indeed they are), but rather to also understand and see them in context. It is to appreciate the ways in which rural mining communities in England, such as Minbury, have over the last 50 years, faced the worst excesses of disadvantage and deprivation (Beatty, et al., 2019; Foden, et al., 2014). An economic decline witnessed alongside a policy failure on behalf of repeated UK governments to comprehend and address those inequalities (Beatty, et al., 2019; Foden, et al., 2014) and in turn marginalise rural communities (Shucksmith, 2019). In effect, a neo-liberal policy trajectory based on the ‘individualisation of risk and responsibility’ which embeds ‘uneven development and a perpetuation of spatial inequality between rural and urban as well as within the rural itself’ (Shucksmith, 2019: 317).

In such a policy context, the central question to be answered and which is critical, is how these White working-class young people are to be socially and culturally empowered; to help them address the disadvantages they experience and to engender a more informed understanding of the material reasons why those social inequalities exist and persist.