Pete Sanderson

Unwilling Citizens? Muslim Young People and National Identity

Muslim youth ‘identities’ are at the forefront of recent policy concern in the UK. The 2001 riots in northern English towns apparently revealed alienated Muslim communities living ‘parallel lives’ and failing to share British identity. Whilst highly contested, the resulting new priority of Community Cohesion and debates around ‘Britishness’ have moved forward. The 7/7 bombings and subsequent terror plots arguably confirmed the picture of Muslim youth as oppositional to British values, prompting the blaming of multiculturalism and attempts to ‘prevent violent extremism’. Such policies have offered little evidence on how Muslim young people actually view their identity. This article draws on research in Oldham and Rochdale to explore how Muslim young people understand their identifications and how this relates to understandings of national identity. In doing so, it explores the role of multiculturalism and community cohesion in the identities of young British Muslims and the implications for policy.

Crossing the line? White young people and community cohesion

The emergence of community cohesion as a British policy priority has represented a discursive shift in approaches to race relations, the emphasis on ethnic diversity downplayed in favour of commonality, shared values and the promotion of national identity. Central to community cohesion has been a focus on ‘contact’ as a way of overcoming ‘parallel lives’, and the need for communities to take responsibility within processes of contact and dialogue. The political focus, echoing past assimilationist discourses, has been on an alleged lack of integration on the part of Muslims; by contrast little attention is paid to how white working class young people view the contact central to cohesion strategies. This paper draws on case study evidence from Oldham and Rochdale, Greater Manchester to interpret the limited support the young white respondents have for cross-ethnic contact, and the relevance of class experience to these views.

Troubling identities: race, place and positionality among young people in two towns in Northern England

Central to the post-2001 British policy shift from multiculturalism to community cohesion is the assumption that the disturbances were the product of youth identities that were shaped by ‘parallel lives’ and that there is a need for increased contact between communities. There is evidence to support the notion that many young British people, particularly in areas of significant ethnic physical segregation, favour distinct and racialised identifications, although the positional and situational nature of youth identification is sometimes understated. This paper draws on research techniques based on word association, carried out in Oldham and Rochdale, two towns in Greater Manchester often portrayed as epitomising ethnic segregation. The research provides some evidence regarding ways in which young people view the ‘other’ in relation to their self-identification, and also how they perceive their town and area. The research suggests that the factors structuring the development of identifications and categorisations are complex and multilayered, but that, although there is evidence of negative views of ‘out-groups’ held by both White and Muslim young people, the latter group have more positive place attachments and attitudes towards multiculturalism. The findings suggest that the context in which contact between groups takes place may be important for the success of enhanced contact as a strategy.

Social justice on the margins: the future of the not for profit sector as providers of legal advice in England and Wales

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) has been described by many commentators as a dramatic curtailment of access to justice which is likely to impact disproportionately on marginalised groups and individuals. This paper seeks to set LASPO in its historical context; it is viewed as a radical development, but nevertheless one that is consistent with the policy discourses of responsibilisation and consumerism dominant since at least the 1990s. The paper uses research into the experience of the not for profit sectors involvement in legally aided welfare advice to frame this perspective. Key findings include the extent to which respondents (both managers and front line workers) felt that while Legal Services Commission funding had transformed organisational practices and ethos, the implementation of LASPO and the austerity programme represented a critical watershed for the sector and its capacity to fulfil what front line workers in particular felt was their ‘mission’.

Marginalized, Misunderstood, and Relatively Unseen: Using Institutional Ethnography to Explore the Everyday Work of Learning Mentors in an English State Secondary School

Abstract This chapter reports an institutional ethnography (IE) which seeks to explicate the everyday experiences of learning mentors (LMs), introduced into English secondary schools 15 years ago. Within the context of the New Labour (NL) policy agenda characterized by an analysis of the relationship between “risk” and “social exclusion” as the root cause of many social problems, LMs were part of a transformative agenda which elevated ‘low level’ workers to paraprofessional status across a range of public services. The official narrative embedded in policy documents talked of LMs “raising achievement” by “removing barriers to learning,” but this tells us little about the way in which such texts are mediated in the sites where they were enacted. The starting point of the IE was to establish how the work of learning mentors was practiced, viewed, and understood within the school by all parties. The enquiry did not start with pre-existing conceptualizations of “pastoral care” or “disaffected youth” but tracing the genealogy of LM practice became more significant as the research developed, thus attention was paid to the legacy of the US tradition of mentoring and how that was re-imagined in the ruling texts of NL policy. The problematic of the study that emerged was that although warmly received by pupils, LM practices were marginalized, misunderstood, and relatively unseen, casting doubt on the influence suggested in formal prescriptions and giving rise to wider questions regarding the increasingly liminal nature of work undertaken by people working in similar roles in other institutions.