Friday, February 27, 2009

Disaffected youth


Every city seems to have its floating population of disaffected youth -- school dropouts, occasional workers, drug users, skateboarders, hooligans, street people. How much of a problem is this? What are its dimensions? What are the social causes that influence the size and nature of this population in Detroit, Manchester, Cologne, or Novosibirsk? And are there social programs that can significantly diminish the number of young people who wind up in this category?

As for the importance of the problem, there are at least two aspects. In some times and places this population becomes a source of violence -- youth gangs, football hooliganism, shop window breakage, and skinhead attacks on racial minorities, gays, or other targets. But second, whether violent or passive, the precipitation of a sub-class of young people with no skills, no jobs, and no futures is a huge social cost for the societies that produce them.

Here I'm mostly interested in the processes of neglect and social-economic disadvantage that play into the mentality of some young people, leading to the formation of an individual social psychology that brings about the low-level anti-social behavior that is observed. Basically -- why do some young people drop out of the process of gaining an education, building a career, forming a family, and looking forward to the future, and instead spend their time hanging out in the streets? The skinhead phenomenon adds another element that is also worth understanding but is not the primary interest here -- a degree of organizational effort by political entrepreneurs who work towards mobilizing disaffected youth around racist and nationalist agendas. This falls under the category of social mobilization studied by people such as Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, or Charles Tilly. But here I'm more interested here in the process of socialization at the individual level that leads to the phenomenon of disaffection. (Several earlier posts have addressed the mobilization part of the story -- for example, here.)

Here is a very interesting academic study by Robert MacDonald of the making of a "youth underclass" in the UK. Here is how MacDonald frames his problem of research:
Most young people in the UK make relatively ‘successful’, unproblematic transitions from school to work and adulthood. What do we call those that do not? Labels imply explanation, not just description. Terms with academic and policy currency tend to define such young people by something they are not or by their presumed social and economic distance and dislocation from ‘the rest’. How we might best describe, explain and label the experience and problem of so-called ‘socially excluded’, ‘disconnected youth’ is the focus of the paper.
To use the term "disaffected" is to bring a Durkheimian mindset to the table; it is to offer the beginnings of a diagnosis of the problem as well as a description. The phrase "disaffected" (or its cognate, "demoralized") presents the problem as one of disconnection from prevailing social values and alienation from a set of moral ideas about how to behave. The "disaffected" no longer believe in the old chestnuts about working hard, listening to one's parents, showing respect to others, obeying the law, and conforming to society's expectations. So on this line of thought, the anti-social behavior of young people in this category derives from their "demoralization" -- their failure, or society's failure, to absorb a compelling set of normative standards about personal and social conduct.

But here is a slightly different tack we might take here. Perhaps disadvantaged youth disbelieve because they have lost all confidence in the underlying promise: conform to these norms and you will have a decent life. In other words, maybe the psychological cause of these forms of youth behavior is economic rather than moral; they are deeply discouraged about the possibility of a pathway to a better future than the world they seem around themselves at the moment. "Hopeless and angry" is a different state of mind than "disaffected."

And what about the factor of motivation and personal ambition? To what extent is normal youth development propelled by internal factors of motivation and aspiration? And how much of a role does a social context that "demotivates" young people play in this picture?

Another line of thought has emerged out of research on youth gangs -- the idea of the positive forms of solidarity and community that are provided by the gang as a welcoming social group. Young people who have lost the social support of their families and other traditional organizations may find that the street gang is the closest thing to "home" that they are able to locate. These are social groups with their own codes of behavior -- even though their largest effects are profoundly anti-social.

A common recourse when it comes to trying to explain these kinds of outcomes is to refer to various "breakdowns" -- breakdowns of the traditional family, of schools, of religion, of community organizations, or of public values. These are the institutions through which young people form their social psychologies, their identities, and their basic values. But if the young person lacks an emotionally meaningful connection to adults through some of these institutions, where will those positive social values come from?

Finally, it is worth noting that poverty and socio-economic disadvantage are not the only settings where youth disaffection occurs. Many observers in the United States have written about the use of drugs by affluent suburban high school students and other forms of involvement in anti-social activities. Wayne Wooden's Renegade Kids, Suburban Outlaws: From Youth Culture to Delinquency documents some of this behavior.

Why is this an important problem for "understanding society"? Because the social processes through which the next generation of citizens -- children, teenagers, and youth -- is shaped are deeply influential on the nature of the society that will develop in twenty to forty years. If "disaffection," "anger," "demoralization," and a propensity for anti-social behavior are inculcated in a large minority of the youth cohort, then society is likely to go through some very hard times in the coming decades.

It's relatively easy to find some dimensions of these issues on the web. Here is an interesting report on "football hooliganism" prepared by Dr. Geoff Pearson of the Football Industry Group. Here is a blog posting from the UK on youth gangs and terrorist organizations. Here is a quick report on skinheads.

13 comments:

Stephan said...

Skateboarders?

What's your problem with youth who enjoys skateboarding? My son and his friends do it here in Cologne and I would not place them into your "disaffected youth" listing:
school dropouts, occasional workers, drug users, skateboarders, hooligans, street people. This is ridiculous.

Dan Little said...

Stephan, fair enough. I stand corrected.

Stephan said...

Daniel: many thanks for your correction in regard to skateboarders ;-)

Your post raises a lot of important questions but I miss an explanation what might be the cause of the problems? So may I add my 2 cent from a pragmatic non-academic liberal (= really liberal != not GOP liberal ;-) view:

We've simply abandoned the idea of meritocracy! Instead we're about to refeudalize society. I can shower time and money on my son and he can do sports, get classes beside government sponsored schooling and whatever deems necessary. Unfortunately my Turkish grocer is not in this position.

Life chances are a function of options and ligatures according to Ralf Dahrendorf. We don't provide chances because society does not fund options and people don't want to hear about ligatures. "Ligatures without options are oppressive, whereas options without bonds are meaningless".

The problem is: if we stick to close to the liberal ideal of non-interference in people's matters we ironically create a class-based society of people who can support their children and who can not. The alternative is to strike a deal to provide everybody with the Dahrendorf "life chance".

Dan Little said...

Stephan,

The mechanism you mention surely does work to continue existing inequalities into the next generation. But how does that contribute to an explanation of the "disaffected", exactly? Is it the simple logic mentioned in the posting that "reduced hopes for the future lead to disaffection"? Certainly some of the grocer's sons and daughters wind up with engaged and accomplished lives; so what explains the difference in outcome? (That's the point of the Macdonald article cited here.) I suppose we might hypothesize or discover a set of positive and negative risk factors for being disaffected and the try to explain the population outcome based on the distribution of those factors at a time. This would me a mechanisms explanation cpnjoined with epidemiological reasoning.

Jared Johnston said...

Skateboarders are often criminalized(trespassing/no skate areas)and do represent a unique teen subculture.
Isn't this topic really about youth searching identity and an extended family network. Some research has suggested one of the most popular reasons for joining military service is identity through extended family. As we move toward a "choose your own Truth" liberalism in our ultra-mobile society, we lose cultural roots and face unknown challenges in the face of unknown freedom.

Simon - Action on Education said...

Interesting article. For a response to the educational problem - or perhaps "those extraordinary societal failings expressed through our schools" - visit Action on Education at actiononeducation.org.

..The future of education in this and every other nation.

Anonymous said...

For a response to the educational problem - or perhaps "those extraordinary societal failings expressed through our schools" - visit Action on Education at actiononeducation.org.

..The future of education in this and all other nations.

Helen said...

I think there is an assumption here that poverty = crime, as though nobody middle-class or upwards could ever dream of criminal behaviour because of all the benefits they have had in life.

However, if I remember rightly, a lot of the hooliganism in 70's football was caused by respectable, middle-class, reasonably educated, hardworking men. So what was their "problem"?

The Roman Emperors Nero and Caligula used to regularly go out at night with "friends" to rough people up: and they were the most powerful men of their times, with more wealth, power and resources that even Bill Gates could imagine. So why did they do it?

The crusades were a convenient way to dispose of dangerous aristocratic youths. I am assuming you've heard of the phrase "robber baron"? It stems from pre-crusade times when wealthy, well-born men robbed any persons they could lay their hands on. So why did they do it?

The answer is very simple: they did it because they could.

And why do these "disaffected" youths do it today? Because they can.

And when they've grown older (as I doubt they'll grow up) their places will be taken by more supposedly "disaffected" youths whom the middle-classes will automatically assume cannot possibly be like them.

Anonymous said...

I think I am a disaffected youth. I am nearly twenty five and have never moved out of my parents house. I graduated highschool an A (80.00% average), did sports in highschool, had a fulltime job in highschool. After graduating that, I went to university and maintained fulltime work (40-60h /week). I've never been a people person, do to a combination of me disliking other people, and them disliking me. After that, I started working less, and going to school less.
My position is that everything is undermined in every sense. In elementarty school teachers tell you it doesn't matter what your learning, your learnin how to learn for highschool, in highschool they say the same thing but in regards to university, in university they say they the same thing, but that its' for a job. Everything we learn is guaranteed to be hopelessly outdated by the time we have a degree. And if robots aren't also doing the work (yes robots, thats coming it isn't silly) the information is available on our phone, from the rules of grammar, to physics equations.
Existentially life became objectively meaningless a long time ago.
So, now I live in my parents basement and read books I download or buy at the goodwill store. Occasionally I go to a mental hospital, but there isn't anything 'wrong,' in that way.
I am absolutely a drain on society. I am comfortable with being euthanized for that reason, I would really like to be euthanized actually.
I'm not violent, I don't vandalize, I've never been in a gang.
Finaly, because I'm not ready to kill myself, and I feel shameful about living at home, I'm trying to find a job, and I'm not getting any responses. There is no government training offered (I'm in Canada). I've applied at the lowest labour jobs imaginable with no reply, so now, after a few weeks of looking for work again, I'm giving up, again. I don't like work, I don't value it, I have no skills. I'm intelligent and capable, but I don't care, and there is absolutely no reason that I should.

Dan Little said...

Dear anonymous,

Thanks for your note. Something you might find more rewarding is to find a service organization where you can volunteer your time to help others. Think of a tutoring organization where you can help children stay on track on school or a food pantry where you can help hungry people get s new start. Every city has organizations like that and they do a lot of good.

Anonymous said...

I am the same as anonymous. Young, capable, I used to be a straight A student. Now on JSA and on the scrapheap, excluded from society. I gave up caring a long time ago. The UK is a cesspit and once you fall off the track it is very hard to get back on. I tried to better my education recently and there was no help for me whatsoever, i had to pay hundreds of pounds of my own savings. There is no real excuse for the riots but at the same time I hope there are more in the future. I hope this country gets what is coming to it.

Anonymous said...

It truly saddens me to hear these personal accounts from our young people. I can only say although times are really hard they could be worse. You must not lose hope and give up. Get out there and get involved even if it is on a voluntary basis. It will put you ahead of the rest and say so much about you and you might even enjoy it. Withdrawing into non participation is the worst thing anyone can do. Put yourself about, get involved, there's loads of voluntary work and training opportunities out there, visit your local volunteer bureau to find out more.

Anonymous said...

there will be more riots, more disaffected youth. this civilization has collapsed. human social connections, deep and rich, are now a memory; meaning is administered to us by brands; the total corporate takeover of personhood is complete. Individuals don't matter anymore, only abstractions matter. We aren't people we are phones, the computer won, humanity is gone.
corporations are the only people left, we're just shadows now.
intelligent kids drop out because they can see through the plastic sham and know it's pointless.
we are ghosts from the abyss