Risk and Resilience: The Ordinary and Extraordinary Everyday Lives of Young People Living in a High Crime Area

Abstract

The article draws on research carried out with groups of young people living in one of the highest crime areas in the United Kingdom, Urbanfields, as they made videos reflecting aspects of their lives. One of the main aims of the research was to add an alternative voice to existing work on risk and resilience by focusing on the social processes involved in their construction of risk. Their work revealed the substantial role of strongly held local cultural beliefs or myths in their perception of Urbanfields and the relevance of emotions as they negotiated risk in their daily lives. Through an analytical framework using mythcourse rather than discourse and one that acknowledges the importance of locality and local social relationships, the article examines the contradictions presented to the participants in their ordinary and extraordinary lives. In doing so, it presents a fuller account of their agency to critique current risk factor models.

Keywords

ethnography locality mythcourse

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