Community Safety, Housing Precariousness and Processes of Exclusion: An Institutional Ethnography from the Standpoints of Youth in an ‘Unsafe’ Urban Neighbourhood

Abstract

Using the alternative sociological approach, institutional ethnography, this article reveals how experiences growing up in social housing (re)produce conditions of oppression that exacerbate housing precariousness and other forms of exclusion. Data were generated through participant observation, textual analysis and in-depth qualitative interviews with Young People of Colour living in vulnerable urban neighbourhoods, designated as Neighbourhood Improvement Areas in Toronto, Canada. Findings reveal how discourse, policy and practice related to community safety comprise an institutional nexus, connecting policing with social housing. These intersectional institutional relations create conditions of continuous housing precarity; youth street involvement and homelessness; increased involvement in the youth criminal justice system; and a belief among economically marginalized Young People of Colour that the state does not care about their safety and inclusion.

Institutional Ethnography as a Method of Inquiry for Criminal Justice and Socio-Legal Studies

“…For example, Nichols (2018) shows how the bureaucratic mechanisms involved in the regulation and criminalisation of youth actually create less safe spaces for them, in turn. This research reveals the disconnect between what regulatory and justice agencies think they are doing and what actually ends up happening for the people governed by these practices (Nichols and Braimoh 2018). Yet, the commitment is to representing 'a world in which individuals are located as knowers of that world' (Waters 2015: 146).…”

Preventing Indigenous youth homelessness in Canada: A qualitative study on structural challenges and upstream prevention in education

“…In the context of this paper, we are referencing issues related to housing precarity which include the diverse range of situations Indigenous young people find themselves in relation to housing. While housing precarity has been conceptualized in a number of different ways, and across a number of disciplinary contexts including economics, anthropology, sociology, and health (Cairns, 2011; Greenop, 2017; Groot et al, 2017; Nichols & Braimoh, 2018; Power, 2021), our study takes an inclusive approach to precarity which includes in this definition ideas such as substandard housing, over‐crowded housing, unaffordable housing, economic insecurity, inaccessible housing, to having no housing at all—all of which are deeply implicated in structural systems.…”

Doing Public Criminology with the Criminal Justice Voluntary Sector: Methodological Reflections and Considerations

“…As institutional ethnography has yet to be applied more widely in criminological projects (Doll and Walby ), work from other sociologists studying education, homelessness, health care, and social work (Bisaillon and Rankin ; Mykhalovskiy and McCoy ; Nichols ; Nichols and Braimoh ) has been instrumental in my own work on the CJVS in Canada.…”