Young People, Everyday Civic Life and the Limits of Social Cohesion

Abstract

In recent times, many Western governments have shifted focus from multiculturalism to social cohesion in their efforts to address the impact of increased cultural diversity within communities. One of the many and complex triggers for this change has been concern about the marginalisation of young people of minority backgrounds from mainstream culture, in turn prompted by acts of civil unrest, violence, and even terrorism by youth. In this article I focus not so much on why the social cohesion ideal of integration is problematic for young people (although it clearly is), but on the implicit assumptions about what constitutes good participation in community that underlie any cohesiondriven emphasis on integration into civic life in the first place. In doing so, I consider how many young Australians' modes of imagining, forging, and engaging in community, which are very much a product of growing up in times of super-diversity, globalisation, and individualisation, sit uneasily with mainstream communitarian notions of civic life that are founded on twentieth-century forms of community and participation that are no longer evident or sustainable in contemporary societies. I suggest that a social cohesion agenda may not adequately account for the particular circumstances and experiences of young people because of its assumptions about community and civic engagement that take both adult and modern life as its reference points.

‘You shouldn't blame religion … but the person’ – the ethnic boundary work of young second-generation migrants in Rotterdam

“…Most of them are just normal'. This is in line with the findings of Harris (2010), who argues that in particular racism and discrimination are some of the most important factors damaging social cohesion, possibly even more so than tensions and violence between groups of young people from diverse ethnic backgrounds.…”

Re-working encounter: the role of reflexivity in managing difference

“…The experience of difference is marked by everyday grievances often centred on the breaching of expected codes of conduct. In addition, 'home' spaces of comfort and familiarity are removed in processes of demolition and displacement (Butcher & Dickens, 2016).The outcome of encounter under these conditions has been widely documented, debated and variously described as agonistic, if not antagonistic (Britton, 2011;Butler, 2003;Harris, 2010;Permezel & Duffy, 2007;Vertovec, 2015;Vieten & Valentine, 2015;Watson, 2006), marked by the micro-politics of aggression and resentment (Bacqué, Charmes, & Vermeersch, 2014;Bloch & Dreher, 2009;Crozier & Davies, 2008;Drew, 2011;Tissot, 2014), as well as tolerance, conviviality and sharing (Neal, Vincent, & Iqbal, 2016;Wessendorf, 2014;Wise, 2005).…”

“…This 'thrown-togetherness' (Massey, 2005) is marked by the labour of negotiation inflected by inequalities embedded in everyday practices and institutions (Awan, 2012;Harris, 2010;Landau & Freemantle, 2010;Muir & Wetherell, 2010;Noble, 2013;Watson, 2006). Debates on how urban encounters unfold under these conditions have been informed by theories of habit (e.g.…”

“…Young people in particular can be perceived as being 'out of sync' (Butcher, 2011), their presence contributing to an experience of the urban as disorderly and insecure (Harris, 2010;Wallace, 2014;Wilson & Grammenos, 2005). They must negotiate from an inherently unequal position within stratified encounters that include classed and racialised barriers (Clayton, 2012).…”

Minority Youth and Social Transformation in Australia: Identities, Belonging and Cultural Capital

“…This paper asks: what does the expanding presence of minority youth mean for the social transformation of Australian society? As analysts such as Anita Harris (2010) have argued, public policy is increasingly perturbed by the apparent growing marginalisation of minority youth from mainstream culture, yet the public conversation about these concerns fails to recognise either the super-globalisation that has transformed national boundaries, or the densification of diasporic communities that globalisation has thus enabled. Our research on minority youth reported and discussed in this paper, explores to what extent minority youth are indeed "marginalised", and what the implications may be of their relationship to questions of identity and belonging.…”