No Space of Their Own: Young People and Social Control in Australia

• NCJ Number: 138961
• Author(s): R White
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 248 pages
• Sale Source: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: Australia

Annotation

This book examines the impact of contemporary social and economic trends and policies on young people in Australia and explores the experiences of different categories of young people in the context of greater economic hardship and increasing controls on their behavior and activities.

Abstract

The theme of the book is that current attempts to regulate and control the lives of young people, particularly those who have been most disadvantaged by the economic crisis, are ill-conceived. In Australia and other societies, where wages represent a central measure of social value and a key means of social participation, young working class people are systematically being excluded from meaningful paid work. Excluded from employment, many youth are forced into a new dependency on the parental home or into the streets to join the growing ranks of the homeless. Young people's lives are increasingly marked by new forms of social control imposed on them with changes in both economic and political arenas. Developments in the areas of welfare, employment, education, training, policing, and community work are examined in order to show tensions and problems experienced by young people in an era characterized by a collapse of the teenage job market and a further decline in the adult job market. Contemporary literature and policy documents, recent case studies, and newspaper accounts are used to illustrate the economic, social, and political constraints on young people. The first part of the book critically reviews the development of youth policy in the Australian context, while the second part examines the response of young people to their restricted social and physical space and the government's response in countering youth attempts to cope with the economic crisis. The focus of the second part is on youth crime, moral panics, and public order. The author concludes with a discussion of individual and collective reactions of young people to their circumstances. References, tables, and figure