Space, place and social exclusion: young people outside education and employment

Lisa Russell, Robin Simmons and Ron Thompson

Corresponding author: Lisa Russell School of Education and Professional Development University of Huddersfield Queensgate Huddersfield HD1 3DH UK

Email: [email protected]

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Space, place and social exclusion: young people outside education and employment

ABSTRACT This paper reports on the first eighteen months of a three-year ethnographic study of young people in northern England who have been officially classified as not in education, employment or training (NEET). Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's conceptualisation of perceived, conceived and lived space, the paper analyses how young people experience and negotiate spatial structures relating to family, work, learning and welfare. It discusses how young people comprehend, use and encounter the places and spaces they inhabit, and the role of spatialities in reproducing or interrupting their marginalisation. The paper outlines the policy background to concerns about educational participation rates in the UK, relating this to wider discourses of social exclusion. We introduce Lefebvre's triadic framework and outline the methodology of our research project relating the two in our approach to the spatial analysis of the data, which is organised around three spheres of experience: residence, education or training, and work. A number of key themes emerging from the data are discussed, including the dialectical interaction of conceived, perceived and lived space in young people's experiences, the importance of agency and biography in shaping how different lived spaces emerge from this interaction, and the possibility of critical incidents causing shifts in lived space that intensify the difficulties young people face in finding appropriate education or employment. A particularly significant finding is that participants often feel isolated and lack control over their lives, resulting in alienation from authority and community that tends to further marginalise these young people, distancing them from meaningful contexts of education, training and work.

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Introduction This paper is concerned with the experiences of young people on the margins of education and employment. It presents findings from the first eighteen months of a three-year ethnographic study whose participants, aged between fifteen and twenty when fieldwork began, have spent time outside education, training and employment. We focus particularly on case studies of four young people, exploring their experiences of education, employment and everyday life by drawing on the spatial theorisations of Henri Lefebvre. Using Lefebvre’s conceptual triad of conceived, perceived and lived space, we discuss how discourses and practices within different spheres interact, exposing tensions that shape a young person’s experiences, pathways to progression and possibilities for social mobility. The paper begins by outlining the policy background to concerns about the non-participation in education, training and employment of a significant minority of young people in the UK, relating this to wider discourses of social exclusion and explaining why social spatialisation is of particular significance in this context. We then briefly review the recent growth of interest in the application of spatial theorisations to educational research, which Gulson and Symes (2007) identify with the belated arrival in education of a more general spatial turn in social theory. Lefebvre's triadic framework is introduced, illustrated by examples drawn from policy discourse on social exclusion and from our ethnographic data. There follows an outline of the methodology of our research project and our approach to the spatial analysis of the data, which is organised around three spheres of experience: residence, education or training, and work. The conceived, perceived and lived spaces pertaining to these spheres are analysed with reference to fieldwork data, and a number of key themes discussed, including the dialectical interaction of conceived, perceived and lived space in young people's experiences, the importance of agency and biography in shaping how different lived spaces emerge from this interaction, and the possibility of critical incidents causing shifts in lived space that intensify the difficulties young people face in finding appropriate education or employment. A particularly significant finding is that participants often feel isolated and lack control over their lives, resulting in alienation from authority and community that tends to further marginalise these young people, distancing them from meaningful contexts of education, training and work.

Educational participation and social exclusion Participation rates in upper secondary education have been a concern of UK governments for the last three decades. Over this period, numerous policy initiatives have been deployed 3

in response to the decline of youth labour markets associated with de-industrialisation, and to perceived deficits in the qualifications and skills of young people. Continued participation in education and improved attainment is seen as essential, both to the employability of those whose lack of qualifications and skills place them at risk of social exclusion and to national economic competitiveness more generally. Although the resulting 'competitiveness settlement' in education has been extensively critiqued (see, for example, Avis, 2007), and the UK economy is still largely mired in the ‘low-skills equilibrium’ first described by Finegold and Soskice (1988), early departure from education continues to be seen as problematic, and considerable effort has been expended to retain young people in education or training to the age of eighteen and beyond. In spite of these efforts, UK participation rates remain below those of many other countries, in particular France, Germany and the Scandinavian nations (OECD, 2011). To some extent, this is a consequence of the age at which education ceases to be compulsory in the UK (sixteen, compared with seventeen in the USA and eighteen in Germany). In England, although 88 per cent of young people completing compulsory schooling in summer 2010 were in full-time education at the end of that year (DfE, 2011), post-compulsory participation can be short-lived and many young people leave education before the age of eighteen1. By 2015, some form of participation in education or training will be compulsory in England up to the age of eighteen; however, this change will have limited impact (Simmons, 2008). The factors influencing participation are complex and related not simply to the length of compulsory schooling but to educational systems and opportunity structures, and to socioeconomic factors affecting people of all ages (Roberts, 2009; Furlong 2009). Indeed, some countries with very high participation rates have school-leaving ages of sixteen or lower (OECD, 2011: 303); without broader changes in education, work and society the proportion of young people in the UK whose engagement in education is fragile is likely to remain comparatively high. A particular focus of UK government policy has been to create targets for reducing the number of people aged 16-18 who are classified as not in education, employment or training (NEET). Although this is a potentially effective strategy for increasing participation rates, it suffers from several defects. Firstly, the definition of NEET is not straightforward; young

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The 15-19 participation rate in the UK in 2009 was 73.7%, compared with the OECD average of 82.1% and the EU21 average of 86.2%. In Belgium, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands the 15-19 participation rate was in excess of 85%. The average age for the end of compulsory education is 16 across both OECD and EU21 countries (OECD, 2011: 303). 4

people are not fixed in this category, but move between different forms of education, training or employment, interspersed with periods of non-participation (Furlong, 2006). The size of the NEET population therefore fluctuates in relation to the academic year and seasonal employment patterns. Secondly, defining young people by what they are not, rather than who they are, conflates disparate circumstances, with very different prospects for participation (Yates and Payne, 2006; Spielhofer et al. 2009; Finlay et al. 2010). Effective interventions often require disaggregating the NEET category to support young people with specific needs (Furlong 2006). Thirdly, framing policy through targets can lead to those who are easiest to place in education or training receiving most attention, whilst those in greatest need might be neglected (Yates and Payne, 2006). Nevertheless, the NEET category provides a valuable focus on the risk factors and consequences of non-participation; being outside education and employment at an early age is often both a consequence of poverty and educational disadvantage, and a predictor of future experiences of social exclusion (Simmons and Thompson, 2011). Social exclusion is, of course, as problematic to define as being NEET: although it can refer to structural processes, it can become part of an essentialising discourse which describes a condition people are in - largely through their own deficiencies - rather than something that is done to them (Fairclough, 2000). As Levitas (2005) has shown, social exclusion evokes a complex mixture of overlapping discourses with prominent moralistic overtones. However, this is not to say that social exclusion is merely a discursive construct - it has a hard material edge. Burchardt et al. (1999: 230) express social exclusion in terms of inequalities in five dimensions: material consumption; material accumulation; productive activity, including education or training, paid employment, and care-giving; political activity; and social engagement. Although these dimensions require some modification in relation to young people, our data indicates that many participants exhibit significant exclusion from such activities, and their future trajectories are unlikely to produce change. The outcomes of social exclusion are often expressed in terms of multiple deprivations affecting particular localities. However, the spatialities of exclusion are also to be found at a deeper level, and social space is powerfully shaped by the nature of post-industrial development in Western capitalist societies. Byrne (2005: 12) explains why examining social exclusion through space is important: firstly, because the concrete expression of exclusion in urban societies is largely through spatial segregation; and secondly, because the spatial restructuring of everyday life reflects the erosion of collective possibilities which facilitates social closure against certain sections of the working class. Wacquant (1999; 2008) has 5

written persuasively on the emergence of advanced marginality in the richest societies (1999: 1640). This is driven, not by economic backwardness or decline, but by structural logics connected with neo-liberalism and globalisation: the resurgence of social inequality; the degradation and fragmentation of wage labour; the reconstruction of welfare states; and the concentration of marginality within clearly identified and stigmatised geographical areas (Wacquant, 1999: 1641-44).

Space and education: the spatial dialectic of Henri Lefebvre Recent years have seen a growing interest in space and place as fundamental components of education studies, and the reassertion of space in social theory which occurred in the latter parts of the twentieth century (Soja, 1989) has begun to have an impact. Gulson and Symes (2007a) argue that space and place should be integral to our understanding of educational processes, a view shared by a number of authors in this area (see, for example, Gulson and Symes, 2007b; Lupton, 2010; Thomson et al. 2010). Theorisations of space in educational research generally assume that space - or more accurately, space-time - is neither just a metaphor for educational processes, nor a neutral backdrop against which they take place, but produced by and productive of lives, relations and actions (Thomson et al. 2010). The idea that space is both a product of the material and social relations of production in capitalist societies and integral to shaping these relations is particularly associated with Henri Lefebvre’s La Production de l'Espace (1974; English translation, 1991). Lefebvre postulates a conceptual triad whereby spatial production is understood in terms of the following three analytic dimensions: (1) Spatial practice designates the material aspects of social activity and interaction. Spatial practice refers to what can be done, and is done, within the physical space perceived by the senses. Lefebvre notes that spatial practice 'embodies the close association, within perceived space, between daily reality and urban reality (the routes and networks which link up the places set aside for work, "private" life and leisure)' (Lefebvre, 1991: 38). (2) Representations of space provide the abstractions, theories and models used by policymakers, planners, geographers and so on. Lefebvre (1991) considers this aspect of space to be the dominant space in any society, the official space discursively constructed in policy and through the exercise of power. This is space as 6

conceived through forms of knowledge that are ideologically charged and ‘tied to the relations of production' (p.33, 41). (3) Spaces of representation are spaces as directly lived - the world as experienced by human beings through the practice of their everyday lives. These lived spaces are 'linked to the clandestine and underground side of social life’ (p.33); they are spaces as experienced by inhabitants and other users rather than as conceived by external observers. To understand how Lefebvre's framework may be applied to marginalised youth it is helpful to begin with representations of space: with space as conceived, by policymakers and others in power. As Thomson et al. (2010) point out, policy is rarely homogeneous, coherent and clearly articulated; nevertheless, within the kaleidoscope of ideology, rhetoric and initiatives it is possible to identify certain discursive moves, which operate in conceived space to position young people in particular ways. Thus we see descriptions of the socially excluded that use spatial language to position them as socially as well as geographically other: As I travelled to many of Britain’s poorest communities I concluded that tackling poverty had to be about much more than handing out money. It was bigger than that. I could see we were dealing with a part of society that had become detached from the rest of us. (Duncan Smith, 2010, emphasis added) Such descriptions are reflected in how provision for disengaged young people is spatially conceived, as requiring either specialised spaces within mainstream schools and colleges or separate institutions, such as pupil referral units or work-based learning providers. It is important to remember that marginal places are not necessarily on geographical peripheries; rather, they are placed on the margins of hierarchically organised cultural systems of space (Shields, 1991: 3). Furthermore, the classification of spaces as marginal - as deprived areas, unemployment blackspots or 'failing' schools - can have significant impact on spatial practice, possibly generating increased resources but also greater levels of surveillance, social control and stigmatisation. The spatial practice of re-engagement occurs in the diverse locations and networks constituting the perceived space of post-compulsory education - colleges, training providers, advice and guidance centres, and numerous programmes which combine leisure activities and life skills with the aim of re-integrating young people into more formal learning. Within these spaces, young people and practitioners negotiate and construct everyday meanings, mediating and enacting the conceived space of policy and professional practice and 7

embedding it within everyday routines. In addition to discursive acts - young people's descriptions of courses as ‘repetitive’ or ‘boring’, and tutors' talk about young people ‘not wanting to be here’ or coming from 'sink estates' - relations between practitioners and young people may be expressed in non-discursive form: what specialised spaces (offices, classrooms, lifts and toilets) are accessible, how time is allocated and bounded, and the nature of pedagogy. Ethnography provides unique insight into the everyday lives of young people. However, it does not provide direct access to lived experience; this can only be inferred from the expressions and practices of young people - constructed and re-constructed as unfolding events throw light on familiar routines, or new routines emerge in response to changing circumstances. To explore the lived space of young people is to attempt to recognise the meanings underlying routines of spatial practice, to interpret their accommodations and resistances, and understand the symbolisms, affordances and cultures embedded within the spaces they occupy at various times. In lived space, we find what lies beneath a young person's sporadic attendance at a work-based learning programme - perhaps to retain some connection with the status of student, or to improve their maths and English qualifications, or simply as a place to go. In lived space we may also find the counter-cultural, the attempts to re-impose individuality and control within the interstices of the formal spaces of everyday life - here we may find the 'thirdspace' of Soja (1996) or, as Lefebvre puts it 'the dominated ... space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate' (1991: 39).

The research project This three-year longitudinal ethnographic study investigates the experiences, understandings and aspirations of young people in two local authorities in the north of England: Middlebridge and Greenford. It follows these young people as they move between various forms of education, employment and training, exploring their daily routines, their use of space and time, the support structures they access, and the barriers to participation they face. At the time of writing, twenty young people remain actively involved2 with the project, all of whom have been NEET for significant periods. Twelve are female and eight male; when fieldwork began their ages ranged from fifteen to twenty. Four of the females and one male are parents; each of these has a child aged two or under. Two females are Asian and 2

In total, twenty-six young people have participated in the project but six have been out of contact for two months or more.

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one male is Mixed-Race; the others are White. Ten have been in care and fifteen live 'independently'. This paper draws on the first eighteen months of fieldwork, which commenced in October 2010. The main corpus of data includes 248 hours of participant observation in various spaces: young people’s homes, training providers, work placements, colleges, café’s, benefit offices and Connexions offices. Fifty-seven interviews have been conducted and transcribed: including sixteen with professionals, three with employers and 36 with young people. Interviews vary in length from fifteen minutes to 90 minutes; they include young people’s experiences of residential, education/training and work transitions; how and with whom they spend their time; feelings about their current status, aspirations and plans to reach their future aims. Photographs taken by the researcher document places and activities connected with residence, work, training and education; photographs taken by the young people focus on their day-to-day activities and special events such as holidays and residential trips. Documentary evidence includes participants' CVs and qualifications or certificates of achievements; minutes of local NEET strategy meetings; national and local NEET statistics; advertisements for education and training; and information booklets. Carspecken’s (1996) five-stage critical ethnography is used to connect micro and macro levels of analysis, revealing how the experiences of young people are influenced by local structures and also by wider social and cultural factors. This enables an exploration of the complex experiences of participants whilst connecting NEET young people to the discourses, practices and material circumstances in which they are located. For this paper, data on how each young person uses and understands space and time in different spheres was analysed according to a two-dimensional matrix, the first dimension containing Lefebvre’s triad of conceived, perceived and lived space, whilst the second contains spheres of residence, education/training, and work. The resulting participant matrices were then cross-analysed, triangulating data where possible. These different spheres were not chosen arbitrarily. Lefebvre (1987: 10) emphasises the everyday - 'the uniform aspect of the major sectors of social life: work, family, private life, leisure' - as a way of understanding the impact of ideology and power on lived space, connecting systems that might otherwise appear to be distinct and thereby revealing 'the extraordinary in the ordinary' (p.9). The overlapping spheres of residence, education and work emerged from the data as analysis progressed as the key aspects of everydayness for our participants, providing the fundamental routines and rhythms of their daily spatial practice.

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In this paper, each sphere will be discussed in relation to conceived, perceived and lived space, indicating how the complex interaction of all three shapes a young person’s feelings of inclusion and exclusion. We base our discussions of these spheres around three individual case studies, which illustrate well the complexities involved and the emergence of a young person's lived space as a dialectical product of discourses, ideologies and material practices. However, we begin with a fourth case study that introduces and draws together the different spheres Although every NEET young person has an individual history that shapes their experiences of education and work, these case studies contain elements that we have also encountered when analysing data from other participants. Their stories thus have a resonance beyond individual cases, and raise significant issues of policy and practice in work with marginalised young people.

A life on benefits? Although much of the policy jargon is unfamiliar to many of our participants, they have a clear awareness of the broad outlines of political and media discourse on benefits, unemployment and the economy. Conceived space shapes their perceived and lived space in a number of ways, such as public perceptions of them as benefit claimants, the stigma attached to early parenthood, successful and unsuccessful job seeking, and welfare-to-work programmes which threaten reduced benefits if training is refused. Many young people voiced a lack of control over their lives, feeling pushed into certain places, such as training providers or work placements. Poverty leaves them acutely exposed to manipulation through benefits, and for some participants this was more than a threat, with reductions being imposed during the fieldwork. All participants expressed the view that finding employment is difficult, and whilst many expressed a preference for work, they believed that obtaining decent secure jobs was unlikely. As Finlay et al. (2010) put it, they had low expectations rather than low aspirations. Lack of qualifications and experience (linked with age) acted as significant barriers to gaining paid work. Most had experienced disrupted school careers and, although officially they had completed compulsory education, many had left with few or no GCSEs. For some participants, particularly those who had been in care, frequent changes of residence led not only to changes of school, but to being placed in schools in particularly challenging circumstances - often those with places available due to lack of popularity and/or high midyear turnover of pupils. 10

Vernon’ story Vernon was twenty when fieldwork commenced. His father left when he was a baby, and at the age of nine he was taken into care. He attended primary school until Year 6, but then moved to live with his father in another northern town. After sixteen months with his father, Vernon was again taken into care. These events, and movements between care homes, disrupted his schooling: Vernon was unable to complete primary school, and although he attended a residential school between 2001 and 2006 this was interrupted by a period at another secondary school. After leaving school without GCSEs, Vernon attended a foundation course in English, maths and animal care at a local college - he completed twelve weeks of this one-year course before being excluded for fighting. Vernon met his partner (Jenna) at college and describes her as his ‘first love’. They now live together in a council house with their two-year-old daughter. Vernon describes Jenna as struggling to cope with motherhood and consequently feels responsible for childcare, although their daily routines appear partly to contradict this view. They are expecting another child in summer 2012. Whilst expecting the first child, Vernon began a Level 2 Diploma in Administration but left when the baby arrived. He has been NEET since then, apart from attending an anger management course and a Learn Direct programme in maths and English. Vernon stated in December 2011 that he had no real desire to find work until his children were pre-school age as he felt that Jenna would not cope alone with two babies, and could not envisage obtaining sufficiently secure and well-paid employment to justify coming off Income Support. This resistance to finding work derives in part from previous attempts to gain paid work alongside his domestic and financial obligations. Vernon has applied online to several supermarkets but received no response to these applications. He claims that he would do virtually any type of work (he draws the line at cleaning) and strongly contests the view that he is on benefits by choice: All I get told is that I’m lazy and all I ever do is sit on my arse … It’s not that I’m lazy because I’m not lazy. I do everything I can ... but there are no jobs around here. A lot of people don’t understand that. Those people that are out earning think that people are on benefits for no reason. For Vernon and Jenna, poverty is a significant issue. Children's clothes and baby equipment consume most of their cash, limiting their ability to engage in social or leisure activities. Apart from childcare and signing on at the JobCentre, there is little structure to Vernon's week, and he sees himself as 'stuck in this house all day'. 11

Lack of control None of our participants wanted a life on benefits but many felt trapped, fearing that if they took a job they would soon find themselves out of work through no fault of their own (for example, through redundancy). However, as with Vernon, some participants with children were content to remain on benefits for long periods, ranging from six months to eighteen months, rather than juggle work and childcare. The more Vernon tried and failed to find work, the more he was unsuccessful in completing training programmes, the less inclined he became to place himself in the ‘work sphere’, to disrupt his family responsibilities and put his stable, if limited, income in jeopardy. As a care leaver, Vernon received extended support to the age of twenty-one from the Looked After Care Team (LAC), and his Connexions Personal Advisor (PA) had a remit to help him find work and live independently. Vernon was asked to engage with various training programmes and told this would help his employment prospects. Once he reached twentyone, his support structures changed; Vernon no longer received support from LAC and was now the responsibility of JobCentre Plus, who told him that he must find paid work congruent with his existing qualifications level. For Vernon, this felt like a sudden shift: his movement from one region of conceived space(-time) to another had produced an abrupt change in spatial practice. LR

So at the Job Centre you’re saying that now you’d like to go to college and do your GCSEs but they say your priority is to get a job.

Vernon

Yeah. What the Job Centre said to me was that I shouldn’t be looking for a job that I wasn’t qualified for and so they’d put down on their system that I’ve not been searching for work.

Crossing an arbitrary age-boundary placed Vernon in contact with a different set of professionals, with different priorities, targets and practices. As a result, he was trying to come to terms with what - if any - options were available to him. However, some PAs will continue to work with a young person if they deem it useful, even once they no longer formally qualify for support. Although the conceived space of government policy and funding priorities powerfully shapes training and support for marginalised young people, its norms and abstractions may be contested and manipulated in spatial practice, resulting in lived spaces which, for both young people and professionals, reflect and resist in differing degrees the ideologies of conceived space. 12

Conceived, perceived and lived spaces interact and shift with time. Conceived space usually alters relatively slowly and tends to be reactive to government agendas, targets and economic circumstances. Perceived space and lived space change more quickly, and we now turn to spheres of residence, education/training and work to see how young people use space and time within these spheres.

Residence/Home In the great majority of cases, our participants have lived for most of their lives in areas of significant deprivation3. Although in part this is an issue of affordability, young people living independently can expect to be allocated a place to live; inevitably, these are in the least sought after locations. Many participants, especially those supervised by LAC, have moved residence several times during our fieldwork, often having little choice over where or what type of accommodation they are given. Such participants often view the area in which they live as dangerous. Some male participants talk about needing to avoid particular areas at certain times, whilst perceiving other situations as 'unavoidable'; these must be confronted in order to survive. Participants who have moved to be near parents or other family members often feel safer and more familiar with their surroundings and neighbours. However, even those with family support may feel excluded from their local community. Hailey, a young parent who lives with her own mother - who works full-time as a care assistant in the NHS lives in a predominantly Asian area and is uncomfortable visiting the local Sure Start centre, feeling that she is seen as a ‘white trash teenage mum'. Many participants spend large amounts of time at their place of residence but some, especially those living alone, do not necessarily regard it as their home. For those still in contact with parents, the parental home is often where the young people feel 'at home’ – a lived space in which they feel comfortable and familiar. However this varies between individuals and can shift with time or circumstances, particularly when critical incidents precipitate a re-orientation of lived space. Danny’s Story Danny is seventeen and is enrolled on a Level One IT course at a further education college. He completed his schooling and gained three GCSE s (D-G). Danny's mother 'threw him out' 3

The areas referred to are Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOA): homogenous small areas containing around 1,500 people (DCLG, 2011). Most of our participants currently live in LSOAs amongst the 10% most deprived in England and typically have lived in such areas throughout their lives.

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for stealing in January 2011, and he moved in with his aunt. He was asked to leave by his aunt the following April when he was arrested for handling an offensive weapon. Danny moved into bed-and-breakfast accommodation for a few weeks before moving twice as an independent liver. He now lives alone in a local authority flat in a high-rise block. He says that he has often lived in ‘rough areas’ and has become accustomed to it. Danny describes feeling most at home at his mother and step-father’s house - although he also enjoys the freedom of living on his own, and likes to have a place where he can avoid family conflict and socialise with friends. Danny’s mother does not visit the flat; he goes to see her at her house and still thinks of it as 'home'. There is a history of tension between Danny and his stepfather, connected with Danny's record of youth offending and his desire to come and go as he pleases; asked why he does not live with his mother and stepfather, Danny replies that I can't be trusted ... [my Mum] wants me but I don’t want to be there. My stepdad is a bit edgy about me ... he’s been there since I was about four but it’s just that I’ve done some stuff in my time and he’s just on edge with me. For a time, Danny’s living, work and leisure spaces overlapped: he used his flat to socialise with friends and ‘do business’ (dealing cannabis). However, Danny experienced a shift in his lived space when his flat was broken into twice in a few days by someone living in the Seane block of flats: I’d just finished one business and I was going to another one and my mate was here for about fifteen minutes and someone knocked on the door and he’s opened the door ... and someone bashed through and beat the crap out of him ... The guys came in …I’ve run upstairs but I dropped the knife and went into shock and they grabbed me up against the wall and put his knife to me and the rest of them just searched. It lasted about a minute ... I think it’s the guy downstairs but I can’t be certain. Critical incidents like this change the way lived space is experienced. For Danny, it transformed his flat from a place where he did business, partied, slept, ate and ‘got stoned’ into a place he actively avoided. He described how the authorities would not provide alternative accommodation unless the police agreed that his life was in danger: only then would he be moved. In May 2012, Danny remains in the flat. His interview also reveals how other aspects of perceived space, and the spatial practice taking place within it, help form lived space – Danny didn’t really know his neighbours; he knew some by sight, others by 14

their behaviours, whereas other residents kept themselves to themselves. For Danny, spatial movement and location had come to represent his fellow residents in lieu of social interaction: The guy over there is pretty old but I don’t know his name. Come out of the elevator and turn to the left there’s a piss head. I know that guy but I don’t know his name. And there’s a guy downstairs called Connor and he’s twenty-one. Danny's own behaviour mirrored and reproduced social behaviours within the high-rise block; he would keep his head down and not look neighbours in the eye - he understood that this was the normal way to behave (and arguably survive) in this environment. Other participants, especially those who are parents, described being trapped within their place of residence. They spent long periods of time alone, or being alone with children, which many described as an isolating existence. Asked about her feelings as a new mother, Hailey replies: It has its upside and its downside. Just being with Lucy and everything I don’t mind. I don’t have owt against being a mum; it’s just doing it alone because my partner’s crap. I’ve not got the right support from him. I’ve got the support from my mum and I do enjoy being a mum. It’s just the fact of being all alone with no one else to talk to. Most participants with children described experiences like this. Poverty constrained their use of time, often limiting it to the home. For those young people still living with parent(s), lack of finance and space were key themes. Many were expected to contribute to household income and/or conduct domestic and childcare responsibilities, which can present barriers for young people moving into or even retaining their position within further education or training.

Education/Training All of our participants have experienced the ‘churning’ typical of education and training on the margins. Moving in and out of short-term provision, often returning to the Seane providers for similar (or even the Seane) courses, few reach Level 2; they often describe their training as ‘boring’, ‘repetitive’ and ‘pointless’. Again, lack of control is a recurring theme: what Lefebvre (1987) refers to as an organised passivity, the imposition of conceived space on the patterns of daily life, yet distributed unequally to weigh more heavily on those in dominated positions. Such experiences were reflected by our older participants (18 years 15

onwards), many of whom believed they were never going to be able to reach the next level of education needed to move on. They felt de-motivated by the prospect of gaining another meaningless certificate without the possibility of progression. Local provision managers recognised that many NEET young people struggled to progress from Level 1 to Level 2, which was usually attributed to poor numeracy and literacy. Local NEET strategy group discussions acknowledged the tensions involved in embedding literacy and numeracy, whilst ‘not turning young people off learning’. Connexion PAs and tutors working with young people talked about them requiring more practical ‘hands-on’ work. They used a discourse that differentiated their provision from school - the practices enacted within the perceived space of training providers were, they believed, more tailored to the needs of NEET young people. Indeed, such training programmes are often ‘sold’ to young people (and their parents) in these terms. For our younger participants (aged 16-17) such training initially appeared attractive and offered an alternative to what they may have rejected within mainstream schooling. However, feelings of disenchantment begin to arise as participants start to realise the difficulties involved in moving through the education system when competition is so intense. Some participants describe training as a ‘waste of time’. Others see it instrumentally, a way of reaching the next level of qualification which will enable them to get closer to their ultimate aim. Others view it as something to pass the time when other options are unavailable. Some felt forced onto certain courses for fear of benefits being removed, or that the courses they really wanted to take were unobtainable as entry was too competitive or provision was full. Hailey’s story Hailey was sixteen when fieldwork began. She was born in the south of England and moved north at the age of seven with her mother. She completed her schooling, gaining nine GCSEs (A*-C). She says she didn’t really like school as she lacked confidence and felt ‘the teachers were not very good’. Following school, she went to sixth-form college in September 2010 to study A-Levels. She became pregnant and left in November 2010 but her tutor promised to keep her place open until 2013. Hailey was then directed by Connexions onto a young parents’ course; she finished this ten week course, then took a Moving On programme in February 2011, incorporating employability and personal development. Some fellow students were also improving their maths and English but Hailey already had good GCSEs in these subjects. She completed this course in March 2011, began claiming Income Support and gave birth to her daughter. Hailey lives at home with her mother and the baby and (in April 2012) has begun to think about obtaining work or resuming her studies. She re16

applied for the A-Levels she left during her pregnancy but was not offered a place as the entry grades had become more competitive: she now needed a B in GCSE maths rather than a C. The college offered alternative A Levels and Hailey has reluctantly agreed to take them from September 2012, but talks about really wanting an apprenticeship in finance or accounting. Hailey was directed onto a parenting course due to her pregnancy: Connexions felt this was the ‘right’ place for her. This outcome was influenced by a perceived space no doubt structured by concerns for school ethos and what was 'appropriate', but presented as a health and safety issue (within college) and an opportunity to develop transferable skills (within Connexions): Hailey was pregnant and so had to leave the sixth-form college. Although Hailey enjoyed the parenting course and Moving On, she would probably have continued her A-Level studies had she not become pregnant. The reality for Hailey - her lived space - is that she is now experiencing a more competitive education market demanding higher grades, whilst also managing childcare and feeling isolated at home. Hailey has a volatile relationship with her daughter’s father. He is not employed although he has had several short-lived, low-paid jobs. Although he still sees Hailey and his daughter, he hopes to find secure work and so will not commit to childcare responsibilities. Hailey feels she needs to be able to manage independently - something her mother echoes. She will return to college if she cannot find a suitable apprenticeship before September, but would prefer to occupy her time earning and training rather than simply gaining more qualifications. Hailey talks about ‘people’ thinking negatively of her as she is on benefits and she has a desire to become financially and physically independent - within two years, she hopes to be in employment and living independently.

Work Most of our participants would like paid work but cannot find it. For those in work, lived space consists of insecure and exploitative environments. Many experience tensions between their education/training responsibilities and work spheres. Some would accept cash-in-hand work (at little notice) instead of attending college, but could not inform college for fear of jeopardising their education grant. Such work was often insecure and infrequent, but offered short-term financial gain. These predicaments illustrate some of the difficulties young people face when trying to get training, earn money and gain employment. Many juggle work and training, which impacts on attendance. Some of our participants are employed without contracts, and are expected to work excessive hours; eager for money, they are a ready 17

source of cheap labour for certain employers. Young people are aware that they are easily replaceable – a discourse prevalent amongst practitioners, parents and employers. Sean’s Story Sean was sixteen when fieldwork began and was born in Greenford. He lives with his girlfriend and her mother, as space and money are limited at his own house. His step-father is a head chef and his mother is currently at home looking after children - although she has worked as a nursery nurse. Sean has three siblings aged from one to eight who live in the family home, and three brothers aged fifteen to eighteen who live elsewhere. His parents separated when he was about three years old. He attended primary school and began secondary school in Middlebridge. In 2009, Sean moved with his family as they needed a larger home, and he finished his schooling in Greenford. Whilst Sean failed English Literature (‘I revised but it didn’t make any sense to me’), he obtained nine good GCSEs, including maths and English language, and two BTEC qualifications in drama at grade B. After school Sean began an apprenticeship at Middlebridge College doing a Level 2 course in professional cooking and catering. He started the work placement in May 2011 but left two months later. He was working sixteen-hour days, six days a week for £2.50 an hour at Rick's Bar in Greenford. He began on 40 hours a week - this soon increased, which Sean accepted as he knew placements were scarce. However, long hours of food preparation, cooking, laying tables and cleaning proved exhausting. Sean described going into ‘robot mode' and how he couldn’t cope with college work alongside his placement. He had two hours travelling either side of his working day, which lasted from 7am until 10-11 pm with a fifteen-minute break at 3pm. On some nights, Sean was getting only six hours sleep. Sean then applied to an NVQ Level 2 catering course at Middlebridge College (he had originally turned down a place on this course to do the apprenticeship, believing he’d be better suited to more practical work) but found there were no places available. He was NEET from July 2011 and felt ‘annoyed’ at his situation as he believed he had worked hard. He talked about struggling to get another work placement as he couldn’t get a reference from his apprenticeship. However, Sean gained work as an assistant chef in a national restaurant chain in May 2012. Sean’s story reveals how home life, education and training interact – their different perceived spaces create tensions and contradictions that can disrupt a young person's ability to complete a training programme. It shows how young people desperate to progress are 18

vulnerable to exploitative conditions that differ greatly in their spatial practice from official discourse on providing young people with economically valuable skills. More accurately, perhaps, Sean's story suggests that young people are an important economic resource for some employers, providing a ready source of cheap and compliant labour - a modern 'reserve army' in which young trainees are endlessly interchangeable.

Conclusion Throughout our discussion, three spaces - or, more accurately, three aspects of space have remained co-present in the different spheres encountered by our participants. In space as conceived, we have seen the discourses, abstractions and generalisations employed by policymakers and others in positions of power to describe the situation of young people outside education and employment, and to prescribe solutions. In space as perceived by the senses, we have seen the material practices through which abstract description and prescription are enacted and contested - here we have seen the impact of policy conceptions on the daily routines and experiences of our participants, and the shifts in practice consequent on changing conceptions. Together, these two aspects enrich our understanding of space as directly lived by our participants - not just as a set of behaviours, statements and feelings, but connected to wider systems and practices serving interests and meanings not necessarily congruent with those of NEET young people. It is not possible to understand the spatial practice of our participants just as practice: a young person sitting alone all day in a high-rise block, pushing trolleys in a supermarket, or taking a literacy course at a training provider, needs to be seen not only in the context of their own lived experience, but in relation to conceived space, and to the spatial practice of other occupants. As Lefebvre argues, 'Empty space in the sense of a mental and social void ... is actually merely a representation of space' (1991: 190). Although our participants constitute a diverse group, and each individual experiences space in different ways, our analysis indicates several commonalities. Firstly, although lived space exists in dialectical tension with both conceived and perceived space, it is space as perceived - often through the practice of professionals - that has the most direct and immediate impact on lived experience. As we saw in Vernon's experience of dealing with JobCentre staff once he had turned twenty-one, some professionals are able to mediate what for others are rigid policies, enabling perceived space to change more gradually and allowing time for young people to adjust. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that

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austerity measures, as well as increased use of welfare-to-work programmes, are likely to constrain professional practice ever more closely. Secondly, spatial practice, agency and lived experience interact in complex ways for participants, so that different young people experience spaces in contingent and timedependent ways. Thus both Hailey and Vernon avoided their local parks, but for different reasons - Hailey because, after the birth of her baby, she felt that other residents 'looked down on her', and Vernon because the park was always 'full of idiots kicking a ball around' which might injure his daughter. Other participants showed similar contingencies in their attitudes to training provision, increasingly finding ways to avoid what they saw as repetitive courses as disillusion set in. As we have seen, lived space can shift very suddenly with time when critical incidents occur - such as Danny's avoidance of his flat after being burgled, a reminder that Soja's (1996) thirdspace is not necessarily a benign carnival of counter-cultural experience. Finally, we have found that many participants experience feelings of isolation and lack of control in all three spheres of residence, education and work. In terms of the dimensions of social exclusion proposed by Burchardt et al. (1999), these young people appear to be significantly disadvantaged. More generally, it does not seem to be stretching the point too much to apply the classical Marxist conception of alienation (Ollman, 1971) to much of their experience: often lacking control over whether, when or where to work and study, often isolated from other people, and with little prospect of self-actualisation, it is not surprising that they sometimes engage in nihilistic (in)activity. More prosaically, agency/resistance finds expression in avoidance and self-exclusion, as many of our participants take refuge from external pressures in familiar surroundings where they have some degree of autonomy. Lefebvre's conceptualisation of space is a useful framework for analysing these forms of exclusion: how NEET young people respond to certain places, how they resist some and manage relations in others, drawing on different ways of managing their feelings of exclusion, is captured richly by the threefold dialectics of the conceived, perceived and lived. In applying Lefebvre's triadic conception of space, we have found it particularly useful to focus on everydayness, in the sense of analysing the ordinary, daily routines engaged in by our participants. An area for future research is suggested by our findings so far, which indicate that the everyday exists in terms of formal and informal structures, which overlap and often interfere. By formal everydayness, we mean the public and officially sanctioned rhythms of work, leisure, schooling and commercial consumption. These tend to utilise 20

specialised spaces, times and networks, and are designed to fit with each other, making it possible to combine different elements without creating excessive tensions. By contrast, we see informal everydayness as private, sometimes furtive, and associated with activities either illicit or disapproved of. These rhythms tend to appropriate spaces and networks designed for other purposes, either by ousting legitimate users (as with Vernon's 'idiots' in the park) or by moving in at other times. Places of residence may also offer the privacy needed for such activities, as in the case of Danny's cannabis dealing. In a number of cases, we found that excessive involvement in this informal everydayness could severely disrupt a young person's ability to engage in more formal structures, leading to further marginalisation.

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