4 results
10 - Learning to pay: the financialisation of childhood
- Edited by John Horton, University of Northampton, Helena Pimlott-Wilson, Loughborough University, Sarah Marie Hall, The University of Manchester
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- Book:
- Growing Up and Getting By
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 18 December 2021
- Print publication:
- 28 April 2021, pp 193-210
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Summary
Introduction
In the UK in 2020, there appears to be a broad consensus in academic, media and policy discourses on the value of financial education. Youth financial education in particular, remains a strong focus of policymakers, scholars and researchers, with the general agreement being that financial education for youth is of vital importance to the long-term fiscal wellbeing of individuals, families and indeed the UK as a whole (Fox et al, 2005; Sherraden et al, 2011). As Totenhagen at al (2015) state, ‘Reaching youth before poor financial habits are established is essential for long-term financial well-being’ (p.180). As evidenced by the work of the OECD over the last 20 years, the importance of financial education for financial stability and inclusive development is globally acknowledged (Atkinson and Messy, 2013; Maman and Rosenhek, 2020).
How best to deliver financial education, what materials to include and who should be charged with this responsibility are all areas for debate in the ethical drive to optimally influence young people's financial capability. However, the real fly in the ointment of the international financial education movement is the growing body of research which suggest that it doesn't actually work. Gudmunson and Dames (2011) note that the uncomfortable conundrum in this field was how often financial knowledge actually proved ineffective as a predictor of financial behaviour or indeed change in behaviour.
This chapter draws on an analysis of recent UK financial education tools and practices produced by for-profit financial institutions. We seek to reflect on what we consider to be some of the more questionable practices involved in youth financial education in the UK. We locate these practices in broader debates about the financialisation of childhood and suggest that, while financial education is a seductive imaginary for the neoliberal age, a range of fundamental misunderstandings about financial strain and its precursors, potentially toxic constructions of childhood and an increasingly questionable commercial shaping of youth fatally wound the promise of financial education.
Financialising childhood: shaping children's subjectivities
The OECD recently stated that financial education is ‘the process by which financial consumers/investors improve their understanding of financial products, concepts and risks and, through information, instruction and/or objective advice, develop skills and confidence to become more aware of financial risks and opportunities, to make informed choices, to know where to go for help, and to take other effective actions to improve their financial wellbeing’ (Arrondel, 2018: 246).
two - Broken society, anti-social contracts, failing state?Rethinking youth marginality
- Edited by Shane Blackman, Canterbury Christ Church University, Ruth Rogers, Canterbury Christ Church University
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- Book:
- Youth Marginality in Britain
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 05 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 28 June 2017, pp 23-42
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Summary
Introduction
Central to our analysis is a critical reinterpretation of the pervasive conservative ‘common sense’ regarding inequality and the social exclusion of substantial sections of contemporary working-class youth, and concerning crime and disorder. We begin by engaging with three core components structuring and sustaining this social exclusion of youth: the ideology of the ‘broken society’; the variety of anti-social ‘contracts’ and compliance processes to which many marginalised young people have become subject; and the failing state with which they frequently have to deal. We question each of these components of neo-liberal political ideology and the way in which they combine to blame the victims of failing neo-liberal governance for a wide range of social problems, utilising their ascribed culpability to justify tougher compliance measures, sanctions, disciplines and punishments. In contrast, we argue that it has been the pursuit of neo-liberal free market policies that has exacerbated contemporary inequalities, while fostering a powerful ideology of individualism that has generated the precarious situation of marginalised youth as collateral harm.
Our argument presents the claim that, as neo-liberalism fails youth, so too it fails as governance. Yet states do not fail, overnight, or even all at once; a failing state can still be strong and dangerous. But the more that states fail to achieve certain minima of human rights and social provisions, and the more they slip down the ‘quality of life’ league tables, then the less they reflect a collective public interest, the less legitimacy they possess and the more broken the social and cultural contract upon which they depend.
The broken society?
The ‘broken society’ discourse played a key role in the re-working of Conservative Party strategies for welfare reform, family policy, youth ‘disaffection’ and crime control (Cameron, 2008a; Driver, 2009). According to Mooney (2009), the notion of a ‘broken society’ – echoing the moralistic tone of the ‘broken windows’ analysis on crime and community decline (Wilson and Kelling, 1982) that came to dominate crime prevention thinking in the final decades of the 20th century – appeared to suggest a different way of understanding social problems in contemporary Britain.
twelve - Cameras, cops and contracts: what anti-social behaviour management feels like to young people
- Edited by Peter Squires
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- Book:
- ASBO Nation
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 21 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 June 2008, pp 231-246
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Summary
Introduction
The Hillside Estate is a geographically isolated area of social housing in the south of England. Like many similar areas throughout the country, it has been subject to the combination of situational and social crime prevention measures used to tackle crime and ‘anti-social behaviour’ since long before 1998. Yet how these various strategies, designed to penetrate neighbourhoods in order to establish ‘safer communities’, have impacted upon young people in particular has been the key question facing the three-year ethnographic project on which this chapter is based.
What follows will be an introduction to some of the tensions and contradictions between the management of anti-social behaviour (ASB) in Hillside and the experiences of children and young people who live there. Concerns are raised about how the broad definition of ‘anti-social behaviour’ is central for practitioners but often leaves children and young people exposed to intervention for a range of behaviours not necessarily identified by them as ‘anti-social’. In addition, the use of surveillance cameras, targeted policing initiatives, curfews and Dispersal Orders, and a range of ‘contractual’ agreements established to detect and prevent ASB perpetrated by young people has resulted in those who participated in the research feeling vulnerable, angry and frustrated at their perceived inability to influence these developments, or defend themselves and their families. A particular consequence for young people of being targeted for management of ASB is their increasing spatial marginalisation within their own neighbourhood. The data suggest that this shift has been precipitated by feeling unable to control being drawn into the intervention process itself, combined with targeted ASB prevention and detection strategies, including closed-circuit television (CCTV) and policing.
Methods
All of the data for this research was generated over a 14-month period using a multi-method qualitative approach. Voluntary work was conducted at two sites regularly used by young people on the Hillside Estate: a local youth club open five nights a week and during the school holidays, and a small group for young mums between the ages of 14 and 19 that met once a week. In addition to this, the Hillside Crime Prevention Forum, a monthly partnership meeting used to discuss, monitor and take action against local crime and disorder issues, was attended for nine months.
two - ‘You just know you’re being watched everywhere’: young people, custodial experiences and community safety
- Edited by Peter Squires
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- Book:
- Community Safety
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 05 July 2006, pp 13-34
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Summary
Introduction
This chapter is based on a small-scale qualitative research project carried out in 2005 with young people who had spent time in Young Offenders Institutions. The research had three aims:
• to investigate the participants’ psychosocial well-being prior to imprisonment, during their time in custody and after their release;
• to assess how safe they felt while in custody and subsequently;
• to explore how they felt that imprisonment had impacted on their aspirations for the future.
In April 2005, the total prison population in Britain was 73,228 and of that number 10,581 were aged under 21 (www.howardleague.org.uk). Britain has the largest number of young people in prison in Western Europe, a figure that has been rising steadily since the 1990s despite continuing questions surrounding the effectiveness of imprisonment in reducing recidivism. Reconviction rates for young offenders are high. In 1999, 71% of young people released from custody were reconvicted within two years (Solomon, 2004).
Many of the young people who go to prison have been excluded from school, have spent time in care, have mental health issues, are unemployed at the time of their arrest or have drug or alcohol problems (Campbell and Harrington, 2000).
All of the research participants live in an area traditionally associated with economic deprivation and problems of crime and disorder. For the past seven years, the area has been subject to regeneration attempts by a New Deal for Communities initiative that has placed community safety and, in particular, tackling antisocial behaviour high on its list of priorities. The area, although predominantly a residential housing neighbourhood, had seen CCTV crime prevention cameras installed in 1998.
Methodology
The primary data were collected using a series of semi-structured interviews and one self-completed transcript. All the research participants were between 17 and 21 at the time of their incarceration (Home Office, 2003). Snowball sampling was used as a means to contact potential research participants. Ethical considerations were a key issue in the research. All the participants had experienced a significant amount of upheaval in their lives and only one had completed full-time education. As such, all of the interviewees could be described as vulnerable.