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Young people arriving alone in the UK due to forced migration face significant hardships including, but not limited to, their history of experiences, current and future uncertainties, and cultural differences. This paper took a critical perspective of current dominant theories of refugee youth through in-depth exploration of lived experiences of coping. Following the authors' involvement in a community youth project and consultation, five young people took part in individual interviews. The participants were living in semi-independent accommodation in or near London, and were all male, while four identified as Muslim and one as Christian. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), a culturally relative understanding of coping was developed. These young people were found to be taking active roles in managing their lives in the context of extensive loss, and gaining independence through connection to others. Religious practices were important, with young people making sense of their experiences through worldviews shaped by religious beliefs. While religion was described predominantly in a positive and beneficial light, an area for further investigation is the experience of religious struggle, and how this may impact experiences and coping. Implications for support for young people both from services and in communities are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With analysis occurring during a heightened concern with the Black Lives Matter movement and knife crime in the U.K., this paper aims to delineate the characteristics of a street code, constituting a specific dominant and often hegemonic form of 'street masculinity' found on an inner-city housing estate in London called Maxwell. The fieldwork ran over nine months in 2019, involving 48 Black, Asian, and minority ethnic men aged 18–22. Using an ethnographic methodology, the principal methods of data generation were observations, interviews and informal conversations. The main theories this study draws on to understand 'street masculinity' were Connell's and Messerschmidt's dominant, hegemonic, subordinate and complicit masculinity forms. Findings centre on data from two young men who exemplify different patterns of masculinity performing the street code. Findings are presented under a series of characteristics that make up the game of the 'on-road' street masculinity and include (1) authenticity, 'swagger' and not being 'pussy'; (2) a preparedness for violence; (3) knife-carrying; (4) a presence on the digital street. Although this way of living drove a desire for respect and group status, there was also an underlying and pervasive sense of vulnerability derived from risk-taking and anticipation of danger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the work of Rein and Schon (1993. "Reframing Policy Discourse." In The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning, edited by F. Fischer, and J. Forester, 145–166. London: UCL Press., 1996. "Frame-Critical Policy Analysis and Frame-Reflective Policy Practice." Knowledge and Policy: the International Journal of Knowledge Transfer and Utilization 9 (1): 85–104), we explore the ways in which 'young people', 'vulnerability', 'risk', 'prevention' and 'prevention practice' were defined and framed by practitioners engaged in the design, delivery and commissioning of drug prevention interventions for young people in contact with the criminal justice system. We argue that practitioners describe their work in terms of both a preventative frame – based on a 'deficit' model – and a transformative praxis frame, more in line with an increasing shift towards 'positive youth justice' where practitioners aspire to actively involve the young person in a process of change. The implications of those, often competing, frames are discussed in relation to the development of prevention approaches and the challenges in designing drugs prevention for this group of young people. The paper is based on interviews and focus groups with thirty-one practitioners in England and is part of the EU funded EPPIC project (Exchanging Prevention Practices on Polydrug Use among Youth in Criminal Justice Systems 2017–2020). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While entitlements are often expressed as universal and linked to the rights citizens should have, young people's access to them is shaped by their social positioning, meaning that whether, and in what sense, they are citizens is pertinent. If citizens have access to universal entitlements, does this position certain young people who do not have such access as 'lesser youth' because their entitlements are reduced and citizenship diminished or non-existent? This paper examines whether and how young, separated migrants wanting refuge may be positioned as 'lesser youth'. It draws on a sample of them and multisector professionals examining qualitative data on accessing health care, sexual exploitation and rebuilding lives. The data suggest that the legislative and institutional framework they face militates against their enjoying the 'universal' entitlements of citizens. This reflects their positioning as 'lesser youth' excluded from the full rights citizens are entitled to. Such a positioning is in large part underpinned by contested notions of nationhood, belonging and entitlement central to communitarian citizenship but which exclude them. We argue that a meaningful citizenship for these youth requires a contestation of restrictive communitarian ideas and practices in ways forwarding a more inclusive and socially just multicultural UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first section of the paper addresses criticisms of the 'developmental psychological model' as it applies to youth studies and addresses and clarifies these by introducing the concept of developmentality. The concepts of 'independence' and 'maturity' are identified as crucial aspects of developmentality and as increasingly problematic both for researchers and for young people. The second section addresses this problem empirically by presenting findings from a 'Q methodological' study into understandings of independence and maturity amongst young people aged between 16 and 18 years attending Further Education colleges in East London. Five interpretable 'Q' factors are explicated as 'individual independence', 'maturity as adherence to religious moral codes', 'all you need is love', 'resolute, authentic individualism', and 'material and practical maturity'. The final section discusses the implications for research and policy of these various distinct understandings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]