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i Poor transitions Social exclusion and young adults Colin Webster, Donald Simpson, Robert MacDonald, Andrea Abbas, Mark Cieslik, Tracy Shildrick and Mark Simpson
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Page 1: Poor transitions: Social exclusion and young adults

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Poor transitionsSocial exclusion and young adults

Colin Webster, Donald Simpson, Robert MacDonald, Andrea Abbas, Mark Cieslik,Tracy Shildrick and Mark Simpson

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Poor transitions

First published in Great Britain in December 2004 by

The Policy Press

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E-mail [email protected]

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© University of Teesside 2004

Published for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation by The Policy Press

ISBN 1 86134 734 0

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this report is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this report has been requested.

Colin Webster is Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Donald Simpson is a Researcher, Robert MacDonald is Professor of

Sociology, Andrea Abbas is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Mark Cieslik is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Tracy

Shildrick is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Mark Simpson is Principal Lecturer in Criminology. All work in the

School of Social Sciences and Law, University of Teesside.

All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written

permission of the Publishers.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has supported this project as part of its programme of research and innovative

development projects, which it hopes will be of value to policy makers, practitioners and service users. The facts

presented and views expressed in this report are, however, those of the authors and not necessarily those of the

Foundation.

The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the authors and not of The

University of Bristol or The Policy Press. The University of Bristol and The Policy Press disclaim responsibility for any

injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication.

The Policy Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality.

Cover design by Qube Design Associates, Bristol

Printed in Great Britain by Hobbs the Printers Ltd, Southampton

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ContentsAcknowledgements ivExecutive summary v

1 Introduction 1‘Miserable measures’: a profile of deprived neighbourhoods 1Social exclusion and extended youth transitions 2Research aims 3Research methodology 3

2 Continuity and change in the extended transitions of socially excluded young adults 5The ‘education, training and employment’ sub-sample 5The ‘family’ sub-sample 11The ‘criminal and/or drug-using’ sub-sample 16

3 Broader experiences of extended transitions 24The persistence of poverty 24Leaving home and social housing 25Leisure careers: making the most of ‘staying in’ 28Social networks: strong bonds but weak bridges 30‘Critical moments’: the unpredictable consequences of bereavement and ill-health 32

4 Summary and conclusions 34Continuity and change in extended transitions 34Social exclusion, poverty and social networks 35De-industrialisation and the intergenerational experience of family disadvantage 36Learning from more successful transitions? 38

5 Implications for policy 40The causes and effects of social exclusion 40Principles and practice for tackling social exclusion 40Extended, holistic and ‘joined-up’ policy or ‘employability’? 41Area regeneration, social integration and the redistribution of wealth 42

6 Policy conclusions 43

References 44Appendix: Cross-sectional profile of the achieved sample 47

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank all the young adultsparticipating in this research. Appreciation is alsoextended to Fiona, Darren and Maria for theirhelp in producing interview transcripts. We alsothank the Joseph Rowntree Foundation AdvisoryGroup: Ruth Garratt, Carl Ditchburn, JohnLambert, Tony Jones, Jane Marsh, and especiallyBob Coles and Charlie Lloyd for theirconstructive and critical support.

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This study set out to explore what had becomeof young people living in the poorestneighbourhoods of the poorest town in Britain,several years after we first contacted them. Asthey moved into young adulthood, had theirlonger-term experiences of disadvantage changedor stayed the same? While individuals reportedfeeling considerable subjective change in theirlives, because of key turning points and criticalmoments (especially in respect of family andhousing, and among offenders and dependentdrug users), their objective circumstances hadremained constant and their experiences ofpoverty persisted.

Despite continued commitment to finding andgetting better work, most were still experiencingpoor, low-waged, intermittent work at the bottomof the labour market. After obtaining poor schoolqualifications, further poor quality training andeducation had not improved their employmentprospects. This lack of progression hadramifications in other aspects of their lives,resulting in social exclusion.

Among parents, and young mothers in particular,childcare responsibilities and the precariousnessof childcare arrangements continued to restrictpaid employment. Most chose to stay at homeand delay employment to care for youngchildren, in the context of lack of opportunitiesfor decent, rewarding employment. Theavailability of childcare opportunities was moreimportant than education, training andemployment opportunities, but the former was anecessary condition for longer-term opportunitiesto be realised.

Most of those who had offended and/or weredependent drug users had, in the main, stoppedoffending and using heroin. This choice was

Executive summary

facilitated through relinquishing earlier socialnetworks, replaced by the support of familymembers and partners who discouragedoffending and drug use. For some, employmentor forming families of their own had furtherdiscouraged offending and drug use, and manywere availing themselves of drug treatmentservices. Excluded from housing, employmentand other choices because of their offending anddrug-using histories, these supports offered firststeps in a long, arduous struggle back to ‘normallife’.

Most young adults had left their parental homeand were living independently, although notalways by choice. This had been helped by theplentiful supply of social housing. Those whoremained in the parental home did so as a wayof displacing and delaying the financial costs ofindependent living. Living with parents disguised– and eased – personal poverty. The quality andstability of relationships with families of originwere also an important influence on leaving orstaying. A few had left the area, usually throughforming new partnerships. There were emotionalcosts to leaving because of the physicalseparation from family and friends.

Earlier, restricted leisure patterns had continuedand had become more home-based. Poverty, theheavy demands of childcare and domestic workand, for some of those in employment, theunsociable and long hours of the jobs they did,constrained leisure choices. Few had establishedties into networks beyond their close personalassociations. Their social networks had becomesmaller in scope, more focused on immediatefamily and friends and even more embedded intheir immediate neighbourhoods. This furtherrestricted wider support and longer-term

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education, training and employmentopportunities.

Many had experienced bereavement through thedeath of people close to them. Althoughindividuals responded to bereavement, ill-healthand other serious life events in unpredictableways, the social and personal consequences wereoften long term. Given the multiple hardshipsand instances of loss suffered, it is unsurprisingthat many reported experiences of depression.

A few individuals had more successful education,training and employment outcomes. Thecombination of a variety of positive experiencesand circumstances created these more successfuloutcomes, the most important of which washaving a good employer who encouraged andsupported good quality education and training.For most however these positive experiences andcircumstances were absent, or insufficient to beable to overcome the numerous, interconnectedbarriers and hurdles faced over time.

Despite numerous welfare and training initiativesin the study area over many years, theimpoverished situations of most of ourinterviewees remained largely unchanged.Although programmes such as Child andWorking Tax Credits, New Deal for Young People(NDYP) and Sure Start did improve someindividuals’ situations in ways that wouldotherwise not have occurred, they did notchange the overall economically marginalposition of those to whom we spoke. Indeedsuch initiatives, insofar as they rely on ‘gettingpeople into work’ by making them ‘moreemployable’, in effect channel to, and then trappeople in, poor quality and precarious work,thus encouraging rather than challenging thecontinuation of poor work. This study concludesthat a fairer and more effective approach tofacilitating successful moves into youngadulthood in poor areas needs to address incomeredistribution through the tax and benefit system,and to ensure the creation of secure, decent jobslocally.

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1Introduction

This is a study of the longer-term transitions ofyoung adults in neighbourhoods beset by theproblems of social exclusion in extreme form.The research involved tracking participants fromtwo earlier studies of socially disadvantaged 15-to 25-year-olds undertaken in north east England.

The first of these earlier studies, funded by theJoseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and publishedas Snakes and Ladders (Johnston et al, 2000),explored the range of ‘mainstream’ and‘alternative’ careers that young people evolved inone small locale experiencing severesocioeconomic deprivation. A prime concern wasto understand how young people, all from theWillowdene area of Kelby (all participants’ namesand place names are pseudonyms) and sharingsimilar social class locations, developed quitedifferent youth transitions and outcomes. Thesecond study, supported by the Economic andSocial Research Council (ESRC), aimed to test thevalue of underclass theories and the concept ofsocial exclusion in explaining youth transitions(MacDonald and Marsh, 2001, 2002a, 2002b,2005). It was undertaken just a few miles fromWillowdene in the five wards of East Kelby, aplace labelled as one in which the ‘new rabbleunderclass’ might be found (Murray, 1994). Theseprevious studies examined six important ‘careers’that make up youth transitions:

• school-to-work career• family career• housing career• leisure career• drug-using career• criminal career.

The previous studies found young people’stransitions to be complex, non-linear, oftendisorderly and sometimes unpredictable. Many in

the two samples were still experiencingcomplicated transitions in which they struggledto reach the normal goals associated withadulthood (for instance, many had been unableto find lasting, rewarding employment). Bothprojects, however, interviewed young men andwomen for whom extended school-to-workcareers – and the getting of jobs – were, at thattime, of secondary importance. Here two sub-groups are of particular interest to social scientificand policy analysis: young mothers and youngmen with sustained criminal and dependentdrug-using careers.

‘Miserable measures’: a profile ofdeprived neighbourhoods

Together the earlier projects interviewed youngpeople living in six wards of Kelby – a town inTeesside – north east England. Recent monitoringreveals that “across a range of indicators,problems of poverty and social exclusion aregenerally more prevalent in the north east than inother areas of the country” (New Policy Institute,2003). The severe socioeconomic problemsexperienced in Kelby at the time of first interviewcontinued and all but three people (from oursample of 34 participating in the current research)still lived in these wards. ‘Joblessness rates’ – thatis, those people who are of working age (16-years-old to retirement) and not in paidemployment – are an important measure of socialdisadvantage because of the high significancecurrently attached to paid employment as ameans of escaping social exclusion. Table 1shows how unfavourably our research sitescompare with the town of Kelby as a whole, TeesValley and the national situation.

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The Index of Multiple Deprivation (DETR, 2000)provides a broader estimation of the numerousproblems of socially excluded places, and givesan overall rank for all districts and smaller wardsin England. Kelby is the most multiply depriveddistrict having the highest concentration of themost deprived wards in the country. In May 2003there were 8,414 electoral wards in England. TheIndex showed that all six of the wards westudied were in the top 5% most deprivednationally and two of them (Orchard Bank andPrimrose Vale) were in the worst five of the 8,414in England (Reilly and Eynon, 2003).

Social exclusion and extended youthtransitions

The primary focus of this research was on ‘socialexclusion’ and ‘extended youth transitions’.These two terms are now widely used –sometimes together – in policy, practice andacademic debates.

Youth is a phase in the life-course betweenchildhood and adulthood. Coles (2000) seesyouth transitions as having three maindimensions: the move from full-time educationinto the labour market (the school-to-workcareer); the attainment of (relative) independencefrom family of origin (the family career); and themove away from the parental home (the housingcareer). Our own previous studies in Kelbysuggested that, in some contexts, criminalcareers, drug-using careers and leisure careerscan also become important in shaping the overallnature of youth transitions (and these terms are

explained later in the report). These six aspectsof transition became the foci of our interviewswith young adults.

In recent decades, the effects of globalisation andde-industrialisation have resulted in youthtransitions becoming extended. Alternatives tothe traditional, quick movement from school towork made by working-class young people haveevolved in which longer spells of post-16 trainingand further education play a greater part.Summarising much recent youth research, Jones(2002) stresses the hardening up of ‘the youthdivide’ and the social polarisation of youngpeople’s experiences and life-chances. Thosewho make the speediest transitions into a youthlabour market that has virtually ‘collapsed’, toparenthood and to independent living face fargreater risks of the negative outcomes associatedwith social exclusion (Catan, 2003; Furlong andCartmel, 1997). Recent longitudinal, surveyresearch (Furlong et al, 2003) has attempted todemonstrate ‘patterns of vulnerability andprocesses of social inclusion’, particularly inrespect of school-to-work careers. There remainsa need, however, for studies that can helpdevelop our understanding regarding “the natureof the links between different facets ofdisadvantage such as teenage pregnancy, druguse and continuing social exclusion” (Jones,2002). Within the existing literature, for example,there is little close analysis of exactly how – andthe extent to which – criminal careers and illicitdrug careers can become a central element inshaping exclusionary transitions.

Defining ‘social exclusion’ is difficult.Commentators use different definitions and

Table 1: Joblessness: people of working age not in employment (October 2003)

Male Female TotalNumber Rate (%) Number Rate (%) Number Rate (%)

Riverside 626 39.9 582 41.8 1,208 40.8Willowdean 687 45.7 752 49.7 1,439 47.7Brookville 782 41.3 936 46.5 1,719 44.0Primrose Vale 613 41.0 871 51.9 1,484 46.8Meadowfields 683 41.5 945 50.8 1,627 46.5Orchard Bank 822 48.7 1,030 57.4 1,852 53.2

Kelby 14,100 34.3 16,450 40.8 30,600 37.5

Tees Valley 56,000 28.7 67,400 35.7 124,000 32.1

Great Britain a 22.2 a 31.0 a 26.4

Note: a Data not available.Source: ONS/Tees Valley Joint Strategy Unit

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sometimes offer none at all. Its vagueness andelasticity has been recognised as a major problemin applying the concept in social scientificresearch (Hills et al, 2002). Ruth Levitas (1998)offers a convincing critique of the term andidentifies several, competing ways of talking andthinking about it. Government policy usuallystresses the social exclusion of people because oftheir lack of paid employment. Other approachesemphasise the importance of helping the poorthrough redistributing wealth. Finally,descriptions of the socially excluded ‘underclass’sometimes suggest that the socially excluded –and their alleged ‘cultures of poverty’ – areresponsible for their own predicament.

The most valuable recent approaches tounderstanding social exclusion stress the waythat the multiple problems and processes of socialexclusion interrelate and work over time tocreate populations and places of concentrateddisadvantage (Bryne, 1999; Hills et al, 2002). Ourstudy draws pragmatically on some of theseinsights and – through detailed, qualitative,longitudinal research – attempts to betterunderstand what ‘social exclusion’ means foryoung adults living in a place said to beexperiencing it in extreme form.

Research aims

The key research question suggested by ourprevious studies is where transitions that werevaried, but in all cases economically marginal, ledindividuals in their mid- to late-twenties? Theaims of this project, then, were to:

• chart the longer-term transitions and outcomesof young adults who had grown up in acontext of social exclusion, as they reachedtheir mid- to late-twenties;

• understand the key influences on socialinclusion and exclusion for this age group,with particular emphasis upon the factors thataffect engagement, disengagement and re-engagement with ‘mainstream’ and ‘alternative’goals, activities and lifestyles;

• examine, to this end, extended participation in‘education, training and employment careers’,‘extended family careers’, and ‘extendedcriminal and drug-using careers’;

• draw out the implications for policy andpractice interventions regarding longer-term

social inclusion and exclusion in poorneighbourhoods.

Research methodology

In order to achieve these aims, the currentproject followed up a sample of people selectedfrom a merger of the original samples of our twoprevious studies. It was decided to re-interviewthose who were now aged 23-29 years (60 of thecombined previous ESRC and JRF samples fellinto this age range). A theoretical samplingapproach sought to understand what the originalstudies suggested were particularly interestingtypes of transition, in a focused manner. Threedifferent sorts of transition were identified,generating three sub-samples that includedpeople whose identities and energies, when welast interviewed them, were chiefly invested inthese different sorts of transition. We planned tointerview 10 people in each of the followingcategories.

• The ‘education, training and employmentsub-sample’ contained individuals whodisplayed enduring commitment to education,training and employment, even if theirimmediate post-school transitions weremarked by economic marginality andinstability.

• The ‘family sub-sample’ consisted ofindividuals whose primary activity when welast interviewed them was parenting(predictably these were predominantly youngwomen, many of whom were lone parents).

• The ‘criminal/drug-using sub-sample’ wasmade up of young men and women who haddisplayed long-term criminal and/ordependent drug-using careers at the time ofthe previous studies.

These are analytic categories which are notmutually exclusive (for example, it was feasible,but in our experience unlikely in this context,that an individual might simultaneously haveextended commitment to education and todependent drug use). The study of these sub-samples does, however, help us focus on someof those processes of transition most likely tolead individuals to the wrong side of the ‘youthdivide’ (Jones, 2002). As such, they help us toaddress some of the most pressing academic andpolicy debates about extended transitions andsocial inclusion/exclusion.

Introduction

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As expected, finding and accessing the ‘new’sample was challenging. Ultimately in-depthinterviews with 34 people were completedbetween February and July 2003: 11 in the‘education, training and employment sub-sample’(a third of those eligible for this particular sub-sample from the previous studies), 11 in the‘family sub-sample’ and 12 in the ‘criminal/drug-user sub-sample’ (over half of those eligible forthese two particular sub-samples from theprevious studies). All sample members werewhite except for one of mixed British andPakistani parentage, and there were 18 femalesand 16 males (see the Appendix).

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2

In this section, discussion of each of the threesub-samples begins with an individual cameo.Although each interviewee’s story is unique,these three cases were selected because they areable to represent some of the most commonexperiences of others in each sub-group. Wepresent a shortened version of each of their ‘lifegrids’, based on our interviews with them in theprevious studies and this one. These mapcontinuities and key changes by age in respect ofthe six career lines we studied. For presentationpurposes we have conflated family and housingcareer – and drug-using and criminal career – inone column each. Following each cameo, webegin a more concerted effort to identify andunderstand similarities and differences across thethree sub-samples.

The focus in each of the following three sectionsis on the young people selected on account oftheir main commitment to education, training andemployment, or family and childcareresponsibilities, or criminality and/or dependentdrug use, at the time of their interview for theprevious studies.

Continuity and change in theextended transitions of sociallyexcluded young adults

The ‘education, training andemployment’ sub-sample

The persistence of economic marginality

Simon was first interviewed when he was 19, aspart of the previous ESRC study. He had “hated”school, regularly truanted in order to escape severebullying and left school – “the happiest time of mylife” – with five GCSEs at low grades. At this timehe had few friends and kept himself apart fromoffending peer groups who hung around thestreets. His post-school career was typical of many:various low-paid, casual, service sector jobs wereinterspersed with spates of unemployment. Despitehis early negative experiences of school, hereturned to college on a part-time basis toimprove his GCSE grades. At 19 he wasunemployed for a year and was offered a 12-weekwork placement at the Nissan motor companythrough the NDYP programme. Despite his hopeshe was not kept on, but soon after found a job asa factory operative with which he was “quitehappy”. He was then sacked from this factory jobfor reasons he considered “unfair dismissal” (anincident with the manager), became unemployedagain and “absolutely sick of it”. He abandoned aplan hatched with his friend to move toNorthampton, to work in a supermarket, becausethe promised accommodation had fallen through.Although he had a girlfriend, he saw his future atthe time of the first interview as being without awife and children.

When we met him for this study, Simon was 23years old. He continued to live with his closefamily – of parents, sister and grandparents – butnow in “a better area” of Kelby (he had had his carstolen at the previous address and often stayed in

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to guard the house against burglary). Heappreciated the financial and emotional supporthis family offered: “Basically, I love them, I can’tfault them. If I’m having any trouble with money,then I can always ask ’em for a loan and all andstuff like that”. He also now had a seriousgirlfriend, a relationship which he says has madehim feel “a bit wiser”. He hopes to move in withher and would like children “when financiallysecure”. His social networks have become evenmore narrow than in his teenage years, restrictedto his family, girlfriend and one or two bestfriends.

The education, training and employment careerdescribed in the first study was much the samethree years later. Following various temporary jobshe got a permanent one, paying £185 per week, ata food-processing factory. He worked there for 12months but resigned, saying “I’d been onpermanent nights for a year. I was run down and Iwas drained out and thought I can’t do it anymore. So I put my notice in”. Soon after he starteda three-month, temporary job on the assembly lineof a local electronics company. Again, a shortperiod of unemployment led to his current, full-time job as a machine operative in a factory forwhich he received £150 per week. His plan,though, was to apply for a bus driver job: “£5.50per hour is decent money”. (See Table 2.)

Labour market precariousness

Virtually all our whole sample of 34 intervieweesexpressed strong commitments and aspirations towork, even if sustained engagement with thelabour market had, for young mothers, been puton hold by the demands of parenthood or, forothers, been overwritten by the attractions ofcriminality and drug use. One might haveexpected, however, that those who at firstinterview seemed closest to the labour market –‘the education, training and employment sub-sample’ – might have had more ‘success’ insecuring decent employment in the longer term.

Those in this sub-sample, however – and,indeed, all our interviewees – had difficult,extended transitions to paid employment. Thosewho had accessed jobs often described them asbeing poor quality, temporary and exploitative.Employment was usually intermittent and low-waged. One of our most striking findings is thedurability of these informants’ strong attachment

to work, and the persistence of their search for it,in contexts where their aspirations were rarelymet. While several individuals talked aboutenjoying particular jobs or work placements,most recognised that their experiences had beenof ‘dead-end’ jobs that did not lead to careerprogression.

Simon’s cameo (Table 2) contains many featuresthat resonate with the experiences of the majoritywithin the ‘education, training and employment’sub-sample. Similar patterns of constraint,opportunity and continuity could be found inmost of these cases. Poor school performancefollowed by various attempts to enter andestablish oneself in decent, secure employmentwas met with frustration and anxiety.

For instance, Adam (now aged 25) had visitedthe Careers Service every week between the agesof 16 and 18 to no avail. Unable to find a job, heparticipated in youth training (YT) schemes.However, these were followed only byintermittent employment of low quality. Likeothers, he was frustrated by the lack ofopportunity to prove his worth. Rejection letterscited his youth and lack of work experience: “It’sjust what’s on that piece of paper [the applicationform] and they [employers] look at it and they say‘Do we want him or don’t we want him?’ Thatpiece of paper holds me back”. Of course, alengthening record of marginal employment andintermittent unemployment is likely to mean anindividual becomes even less attractive toemployers as the years pass (Furlong et al, 2003).Adam started to feel disillusioned and began toworry that “there’s no decent work out there”.Eventually, at the age of 21, he started a NewDeal retail placement and associated NationalVocational Qualification (NVQ), which he“loved”. At this time, and later, his hopes ofsecuring relatively permanent jobs in musicshops in the town were dashed because of newmanagement and cost cutting. Looking back overhis post-school labour market experiences, Adamdescribed a ‘cyclical’ educational, training andemployment career comprised of frequentmovements between government trainingprogrammes, short-term retail jobs and longspells of unemployment, which he “despised”.He was now once again unemployed but“desperately” looking for a new job.

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Continuity and change in the extended transitions of socially excluded young adults

Table 2: School-to-work sub-sample; Name: Simon; Age: 23

Education, training Leisure andAge and employment Family and housing social networks Crime and drug use

<13 “Hated” school Living in parental home “Kept myself to myself”. No crimewith mother, father One best friend.and sister.

14-16 Severely bullied, Ditto No ‘street corner’ Dittofrequent truant. socialising – “daft”.five GCSEs (E and F grades):leaving was “happiest dayof my life”.

17-19 PT FE course in motor Ditto New friend gets him Dittomechanics, NVQs 1 and 2 Sister marries and moves interested in mechanics.but left after 12+ months, out of family home. Friend tells him of Starts occasionaldisagreement with tutor. Sees future ‘on own’, cleaning job. drinking.Unemployed (two weeks). without wife or kids – Friend encourages himPT cleaning job (eight getting fed up with to apply to Butlins. Some recreationalmonths). girlfriend. Weekday evenings – cannabis use, for a fewPT fast food job at Would like ‘peace and watches TV. months – discontinues.Butlins (one week). quiet’ of countryside. Weekends – babysitsUnemployed (12 months). Promised flat ‘falls with friend.

through’ – returns toEast Kelby.

20-21 Unemployed. Ditto Previous best friend No crime – odd speedingVarious courses (eg Health Still living with parents moves to S. England. convictions only.and Safety) … ‘passing the in East Kelby. Happy to be more distant No drug consumption,time’. Moves to different part from ex-school peers. beyond occasionalInformal learning of East Kelby – better; Networks of friends even drinking.(eg, computer skills). “no trouble”. tighter than teenage Crime “doesn’t appealBegins accessing jobs via Met girlfriend at work years … social/leisure life to me”; ‘respectable’employment agencies. (“a big influence on my conducted ‘at home’ working-class attitude.FT job food processing life now … grown up a with one or two ‘best No holidays – “left atfactory (12 months); bit, a little bit wiser friends’, girlfriend and home to watch theresigned. now”). family. house”.

Continuing strong Internet chat rooms/ Aware of local drugrelationships with creative writing. outlets.parents, sister andgrandfather.

22-23 Temp job on Samsung Continued dependence Ditto Victim of car crime.production line (three on family; no ‘board’ Occasional carpet bowlsmonths). paid. and snooker outings. Stopped attemptedTemp job at Niffco Would like kids “when burglary at neighbours.(few weeks). financially secure”, Bus driver job tip-offFT job at Crest Hills not yet. via best friend’s dad.(machine operative, three Future: “own house theweeks to date; £150 pw). next step, getting too oldGoal: applying for bus to live with mum anddriver job; “£5.50 ph is dad” – possibly movedecent money”. in with girlfriend.

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Poor work

Poor work conditions and often exploitative andpunitive employers accompanied low-wagedwork (Brown and Scase, 1991). Alex, 25,resigned from her job as a sales assistant in abudget shop because:

“The Supervisor wasn’t doing her jobproperly and leaving me to do it all, sowhen I said something to the Manageressabout it, she started being funny with meand nasty and things like that.”

She subsequently worked as a care assistant in aresidential home for older people. Alex describedthe unsociable shift systems this entailed:

“I only have a Monday off and then I’vegotta do everything on a Monday … getthings paid and go to the town if I needanything.... I start at seven most mornings.Then I come back home, after I’ve been tosee people with my job [visiting olderpeople as a carer]. I come back home abouthalf past eleven, go back out, come back inabout two o’clock and then go back out forabout three. And I come back home andthen I go back on a night.”

As in our previous studies, the workingconditions of care assistants seemed particularlymiserable. Elizabeth, for instance, was soshocked by the conditions of employment in onecare home – for example, on arriving for her firstnight shift she found herself the only member ofstaff present – that she quit this job, despite herlong-held ambitions to be a care worker. Latershe found alternative, stop-gap employment as amachine operative in a knitwear factory, workingnine-hour shifts on £3.17 per hour. By the timeof her most recent interview she had given upher plan to apply for nurse training because shehad become accustomed to the wages factorywork brought and enjoyed the company of herwork-mates:

“[When] I went to the factory, I thought,‘Right, I’m gonna get a job I’m gonna hate’.Like in a factory, I thought I’d hate that andI’m gonna stay there until I start nursing. Ithought if I hate the job, I’m gonna wannaleave to do nursing, but I got used to themoney and the people and I didn’t wanna

leave once I was in there. So nursing wentdown the drain.”

These and other cases were typical of labourmarket experiences characterised by poortraining, low-income jobs and periods ofunemployment. Unsuccessful efforts to breakinto more secure or rewarding employment, as inElizabeth’s encounters with care work, couldeventually lead to the further ‘cooling down’ ofprevious, modest ambitions. Interviewees’common experiences of these sorts of cyclicaleducation, training and employment careerssometimes had an impact upon their willingnessto think about forward planning in other spheresof their lives. In Adam’s case, he wonderedwhether there was any point in thinking throughlong-term goals to the extent of his not wantingto settle into a long-term relationship, norwanting children.

Improving employment prospects?

Earlier disaffection and disengagement fromschool did not wholly predict long-term refusalto re-engage in learning. The majority of thesample, as a whole, had had some furtherinvolvement with education or training coursessince we last interviewed them. While three hadaccessed undergraduate university degrees (ofwhich more later), the majority experience was ofrelatively short-term, basic courses that led tocertificates in, for instance, first aid, introductoryword processing, and health and safety and/orvocational training courses leading to NVQs.Many enjoyed vocational learning and theseexperiences may have brought other personalbenefits. Overall, though, there was littleevidence that participation in training schemes,further education courses and work preparationprogrammes – and the qualifications they gained– helped their chances of getting and staying inrewarding, secure jobs (Furlong, 1992).

Thus, the ‘education, training and employment’sub-sample remained recurrently engaged withcourses designed to help them into work. Manyhad repeated episodes of training. Several hadexperienced YT schemes, double doses of theNDYP and/or gained further qualifications(usually NVQs) post-school, but were nowunemployed again. In general, informants spokein negative terms about those interventionsmeant to improve their transitions into and

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through the labour market. Roy said of theNDYP: “They can’t put me on a job that I don’twanna do. I wanna job that I like and I wannado.” Our previous studies showed that evenwhere individuals had a more committed attitudeto New Deal, and enjoyed the actual experienceof it, little labour market benefit was observable(MacDonald and Marsh, 2005), as in Simon’sencounters with his Nissan New Deal placement.After participating in the NDYP twice, Chrissieobserved that “At the moment I’m suffering fromdepression because I’ve applied for jobs and thenyou just don’t get them and so you just startfeeling down.”

The apparent ineffectiveness of schemes,programmes, courses and qualifications inhelping our interviewees to get jobs did notresult in their becoming wholly detached fromthe labour market. On the contrary, whileunemployment was a common, recurrent featureof the sample’s lives, so was employment (albeitin the form of poor work). Our earlier finding,that those who got jobs typically got themthrough tip-offs and informal recommendationsfrom members of their social networks, wasborne out again in this study. This experience ofwhat was valuable in searching for jobs (that is,‘who you know, not what you know’) served, insome cases, to confirm earlier, dismissiveattitudes towards the relevance of qualificationsin particular and education in general. As wedescribe later, Martin was one of the ‘success’stories but he said “I’ve got a relaxed attitude toqualifications which I shouldn’t really have”. Roywas unemployed but mentioned some cash-in-hand, ‘fiddly’ work he had completed and howhis friends:

“… try and help me get work ... someonephoned one of my friends and said ‘Is thereany chance you can get someone to comeand work for us with you?’ He come roundto ask me straight away, ’cos he knew I wasout of work.”

This reliance on informal methods for seekingwork through local social networks has importantramifications for the longer-term employmentpossibilities of the sample, which we discusslater, in Chapter 4.

More ‘successful’ employment experiences

The notion of a ‘successful’ transition toemployment is problematic. For example, thosewhom we might classify as successful in thiscontext might not be classified as such in morebuoyant labour markets, or in comparison withmore affluent cohorts of young people.Nevertheless, three of the 11 cases in our‘education, training and employment’ sub-samplehad experiences of more secure employmentand/or of more advanced education that set themapart from the rest of the sample. While we needto be wary about taking these cases as in anyway typical (they were unusually successful evencompared with the larger samples studied in ouroriginal projects), they do allow us to scrutinisethose factors that seem to generate moresuccessful experiences of employment andeducation. We describe two of these casesbelow, before returning to the third in theconcluding sections of this report, to assess theirsignificance in understanding extended processesof social inclusion/exclusion.

Our first example of a more ‘successful’ transitionto employment involves an agency that helpssocially excluded young people. Martin had apatchy start. His school performance was poor,partly due to health problems. He then studiedfor NVQs in Business Administration and got an18-month, temporary job at British Telecom (heunsuccessfully attempted to be madepermanent). Martin eventually, however, got ajob as a ‘Business Support Officer’ in an agencythat helped NDYP participants set up in business.Now aged 23, he had worked for the sameemployer for four years and had graduallyworked his way up the internal career ladder. Hevery much enjoyed this job and regarded hisemployer as supportive (for example, after thedeath of his first child; see Chapter 3).

Our second ‘successful’ case, Annie, showedhow some individuals, despite unpromisingearlier experiences, still managed to accesshigher education. She was the only one in thestudy to have gained a university degree (Marje,see Chapter 5, was still studying part-time andSarah, whom we discuss in more detail when weturn to the ‘family’ sub-sample, had dropped outof university). Annie’s earlier life experiencesreplicated those of others in the research and didnot suggest that she would reach highereducation. These were experiences of childhood

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bereavement (the death of her brother), long-term parental unemployment, frequent schooltruancy, leaving at 16 with no GCSEs and movingon to low-waged, temporary employment in carehomes. While working in one of these sheoverheard a colleague talking about universityAccess courses and immediately enquired aboutjoining one.

At the time of the first interview, aged 24, shehad completed the Access course and started adegree course, but she reported that “I’mstruggling like mad with money … I canunderstand why people pack in for financialreasons”. If perhaps the main, this was not theonly pressure Annie faced. Her boyfriend wantedto start a family and had turned violent towardsher, her family felt the debt ‘wasn’t worth it’, shewas ill-prepared for academic study, her fellowstudents were unsupportive and she juggled part-time care work with her studies. At 27, when weinterviewed her again, she had graduated with anhonours degree: “I was, like, ‘Oh I’m never goingto do it’ but I stuck at it and I done it”. She wascurrently not working because she was expectingthe birth of her first child, after an unplannedpregnancy. She was confident about findingemployment after her ‘maternity leave’, perhapswith one of the care homes where she hadworked while studying for her degree. She hadalso thought about applying for a job in thepolice service. Given the relative scarcity ofgraduate employment in Kelby and theincreasing numbers of people who possessdegrees, we are unsure about predicting thelikely labour market dividend provided by auniversity education, especially for ‘non-traditional’ students like Annie, who are likely toremain living in this locality. As Jones (2002)notes, “… the earnings and status value of adegree is likely to continue to reduce, andstudent debt increase, as more young people stayon”. We return to this question in Chapter 4.

Summary: the ‘education, training andemployment’ sub-sample

One might have predicted that those in the‘education, training and employment’ sub-samplewould be those most likely to have shownpersonal advancement in the labour market.While three were relatively successful, mostcontinued to experience a cyclical pattern ofprecarious engagement with poor work,

unemployment, and various schemes andprogrammes. This is a pattern similar to thatrevealed in recent research on poorly qualifiedand socially disadvantaged young adults inScotland (Furlong et al, 2003) and in other partsof north east England (Dolton et al, 2002). Youngmen and women whose consistent aspirationwas to acquire decent work continued tocirculate around the bottom of the labour market,moving in and out of poor work andunemployment. Although there was considerablefurther engagement with training schemes andcollege courses, these continued to beexperienced as short-term, often unfinished and– in most cases – seemingly ineffective inprogressing work careers.

Most of the education, training and employmentcareers that were described to us, across thesample, were redolent of economic marginality.This lack of progression to more secure,rewarding and remunerative employment hadramifications in other aspects of people’s lives(for instance, as we will describe in Chapter 3,interviewees had to rely on state welfare andsocial housing in the movement to independentliving and had notably impoverished leisureexperiences). Although all informants had similarlevels of educational qualifications, and struggledto make progress in the same labour market, afew fared better than the rest. An important keyto relatively ‘successful’ transitions was having agood employer, as Martin’s case shows.

Changes in other aspects of people’s lives couldalso have ramifications for their education,training and employment careers. Three peoplein this sub-sample had or were about to becomemothers since their first interview. For Carol-Anne and Annie, their new family careers meantengagement with the labour market was put onhold. Marje was the exception. She continuedwith her job and part-time study, alongsidemanaging the demands of parenthood. She notedthe challenge this entailed: “It’s a balance withme home life, work, studying. It’s not that I findthe work hard, I find the juggling quite hard.”

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The ‘family’ sub-sample

The continuing priority of parenting

Nicky’s early transition was straightforward. Shespent her childhood in what she describes as arelatively comfortable situation compared withothers around her ... this she put down to hermother meeting her step-father because “he had agood job and ... we got things like a TV in ourroom”. Claiming to have “loved” school, Nicky andher friends were mischievous but she noted how“we still worked but we had a bit of a laugh in-between.” Having gained eight GCSEs, Nicky wentto college to do a childcare course before “goingfrom job to job really”. If she had not becomepregnant at 19 it seems likely that she would havecontinued to follow a cyclical pattern of low-income jobs into her twenties. When firstinterviewed, she had a two-year-old boy and wasunemployed but working four hours a week in ashoe shop “so I don’t lose any [benefit] money andI get an extra £60 a month”. She split with thefather of her first child who already had twochildren from another relationship: “It got on mynerves him coming in and out all the time, so inthe end I just shut the door”.

At the time of first interview Nicky “definitely”wanted to get back to work full-time, aspiring tobecome a deputy manager in a shoe shop. She wasinterested in doing NVQ levels 3 and 4 in retailing.She also claimed “I don’t want no more kids”. Bythe time she was interviewed a second time,however, Nicky had a second child and wasconsidering having a third. She was living in thesame house – “close to our Mam” – with her newpartner (the father of her second child) andwanted to marry him. Since meeting him Nickyclaimed to have “experienced something I’ve neverhad before … the closeness with another person”and her attitudes to family life had changed. Sheenjoyed being part of a “family unit”. Her secondchild was not planned but she was clear that “I’drather [he] gets the benefit of me, rather than megoing back to work. I’d rather be out of pocket …than him [son] suffer.” But Nicky eventuallywanted to return to employment once heryoungest child started nursery and settled in – “…because I think I’d crack up … I don’t think I likethe housewife thing. I like my house to be cleanand tidy and stuff, but you do get sick of doingthe same thing every day.”

Nicky enjoyed the status of parenthood but beinga parent was “hard”. She felt more practicalsupport could have been given, especially in thearea of Kelby where she lived: “There’s no crèches,or there’s no mothers and toddlers [groups]”. Hersocial networks became tighter and leisure timerevolved around her children and her closestfriends who were also mothers. Financialrestrictions continued to shape her leisure time: “Imiss it all but it’s having the money … if we’regonna spend £40 or £50 on a night out … then Ipanic and think, ‘what if a bill comes the nextday?’” Despite moving around with her motherearlier in her life, Nicky had lived in the samehouse for several years. She was thinking ofbuying it last year but uncertainty regarding her,and her partner’s, income meant that the riskinvolved was off-putting: “The fact of losing thehouse would be devastating”. (See Table 3.)

Extended family careers: growing families,decision making and changing family roles

At the time of their most recent interviews all the11 women in this sub-sample continued to placea primacy on their family career. Despite theoverall pattern of continuity, however, it waspossible to map some changes in respect of thesize and constitution of family units (for example,new children, separations, new partners) and inthe way that day-to-day family life was perceivedand organised. As we will show, the fact thattheir children were now older has meant that, forsome, other dimensions of transition havebecome more important.

Ten of the 11 women in this sub-sample hadtheir first child as a teenager. The majority(seven) had one further child between first andsecond interview and one other had twins(ironically she learnt that this was going tohappen when she went to be sterilised).Decisions to have more children or not werenever reported as being easy ones. Complicated,angst-ridden balancing of difficult options wasnot uncommon. The financial costs ofparenthood were often to the fore in thesecalculations and were a main factor, along withchanging relations with partners, in explainingthe abortions that some women had had sincewe first met them.

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Table 3: Family sub-sample; Name: Nicky; Age: 25

Education, training Leisure andAge and employment Family and housing social networks Crime and drug use

<13 “Loved” school – latter run Lives with mother and Does not make many Knows children whoby nuns and very strict. older brother until step- friends when moving to sniffed lighter gasNicky is systematically father joins them when Willowdene – makes one resulting in one fatality.bullied until confronts Nicky is aged 9. who gets leukaemia whotormenter when returning Natural father left moves away. Nicky still Everything burgledfrom school. mother when Nicky was feels a sense of loss from house.

3 years old – no further years later.contact.Mother has further childto new husband – half-brother for Nicky.

14-16 Plays tricks on teachers Mother goes to school Ditto Caught smoking atand finds it funny. when Nicky is in trouble school.Obtains 8 GCSEs – various and gives her “a clip” Others in her yearlow grades. when she comes out. expelled for drug use.

Moves to Willowfields Home in Willowfieldswith family. burgled three times.

17-19 Left school and did Brother goes to On hearing that Nicky No crime or drug usechildcare course. university. is pregnant her olderBunked off college and got Aged 18 – moves into brother stops speaking“smacked in the face” by own house in to her for a while.mother. Willowfields – rentsWorks in photo shop, then from the council. However, offers a greatnewsagents, then shoe shop. Mother “five minutes deal of support onceLeaves after criticism about away”. the child is born.her work. At 19 becomes pregnantNVQ Retail levels 1 and 2 to a man of 30 she hasand then started at been dating for 18another shoe shop. months. Separates from

this man following birthof first child.

20-23 Childcare costs and Meets new partner and Friends from secondary Dittodemands prevent her gets engaged. school remain important.from working full-time – Tighter network builtcontinues to work one day Aged 22 – birth of around partner anda week in shoe shop. second child. childcare – not muchAged 21 – becomes contact with five/sixpregnant again and leaves friends mentioned at firstpart-time work in shoe shop. interview.

24-25 Unemployed – receives Improved relations with Restricted leisure DittoChild Tax Credit and parents – less “inter- pursuits – “It’s havingWorking Tax Credit ference” in her rearing the money and then it’s(partner works in a of the children. Strong getting the kidspizza shop). attachment to older minded”.

brother (now married)– “he sort of acted like afather figure”. Wantsanother child but partner“is not sure yet”. No plansto move house – “knowseverybody”.

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For instance, Sarah terminated a pregnancy aftergetting together with a new boyfriend who hadstarted to take responsibility for her two olderchildren. She said “[He] didn’t want a baby. He’djust, like, had them two to look after and he was‘Ooh!’ So we just thought it was the best thing todo.” Despite recognising the “astronomical”childcare costs of having a third child, Taradecided to continue with her pregnancy. Thiswas despite the fact that her husband hadinsisted she have an abortion (he attributed hisown parents’ divorce to the strain of lookingafter three children). Tara now felt the birth ofher third child persuaded her partner of thewisdom of her decision.

Taking steps to prevent pregnancies was alsoevident. Charlotte and her partner did not wantany more children and he had a vasectomybecause, as Charlotte explained, “They’re toomuch to look after and to give them a decentupbringing on the money that we have, becausewe haven’t got no money”. After a series ofmiscarriages Linda was sterilised:

“I could’ve miscarried. I could’ve had babiesand if I’d have carried on to have kids, I’dhave wanted a girl and every time I’d havehad a boy, it’d have been heartbreaking. SoI wouldn’t have carried on because it wouldbe more tears than happiness.”

Over the period since we last interviewed them,the women in the ‘family’ sub-sample continuedto take the main responsibility for childcare,family management and domestic work(regardless of whether they were living with apartner or whether they were employed orunemployed). Beliefs about what the 11 mothersfelt their role should be within a household werevaried. Some held more traditional views whileothers held more egalitarian ones. Some heldviews that clashed with those of their partner andin one case this resulted in the relationshipending:

“He [her partner] wouldn’t help me with thekids. Like, he’d come home from work andthat was it. Where I was still washing ateight, nine o’clock on a night, and ironingand doing pots. And he thought he didn’thave to help me do any of that, and Ithought that he did.... If the kids ever wentanywhere, it was always me that took ’em,

all of ’em. He just wouldn’t take the kidsout.” (Sally)

The importance of childcare

Many of the parents, especially the mothers inthe sample as a whole, talked about theconstraints that having a child had placed onother aspects of their lives. Childcare networkswere central to achieving a life balance for all themothers in this sub-sample. This was not simplya work–life balance for those in paidemployment, although this was important. Thoseparents who were not in paid employment alsohad similar problems in establishing a balancebetween childcare and other activities. In fact,the most negative comments about parenthoodcame from non-employed mothers who felt theyneeded more support but, because of familycircumstances and present state childcare fundingarrangements, were not in a position to receiveit. Many mothers in the study describedopportunities for childcare as being moreimportant than employment opportunities. Giventheir lack of employment, income and theirpersonal preferences, most used childcare thatwas informal and delivered through personal,localised networks of kin.

On a day-to-day basis and over time, familyresources and support – when provided –appeared essential when living in disadvantage.Indeed, belonging to families on low incomesand constantly juggling a small weekly income,often with debts and rent being repaid weekly,makes such support indispensable and highlyvalued. This is reflected in housing careers wherea major factor in decision making was the abilityto remain close to families of origin (see Chapter3). Thus, families are especially important indisadvantaged areas as they offer an importantelement in people’s ability to cope with thesocioeconomic disadvantage of theirneighbourhoods. Family networks provided themeans through which financial, social andemotional support could be transferred betweengenerations (even if the money lent onlyamounted to modest sums). These familynetworks are also vital in terms of the flow ofinformation that shapes individual opportunitiesin respect of childcare and employment:

“I rely on our Mam babysitting and stufflike that and me sister. I don’t know what

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I’d do without ’em and borrowing all thetime off them. They’re only round thecorner so it’s dead easy … most of the jobsI’ve had I’ve got through people I know.”(Sophie)

The mothers in the ‘family’ sub-sample continuedto access close personal ties with family andfriends, helping them to initiate self-help andmutual aid strategies with others and as a form ofsocial security, socialising and support. Given thecurrent ‘childcare gap’ here as elsewhere(Daycare Trust, 2003) – and the prohibitive costof childcare – it is not surprising that all themothers we interviewed put together complexarrangements for their children’s care involvinginformal provision through family and friends.Informal childcare was central to these parentsfinding a balance in their lives betweenparenting, work and socialising. Even amongthose in jobs, informal arrangements wereneeded because these parents often hademployment outside normal working hours whenlittle formal childcare was available.

These arrangements could be precarious and theavailability of informal childcare networks couldnot be taken for granted. Our interviews withyoung mothers suggested that familyrelationships change, involve continual re-negotiation and can sometimes be fragile. Whileeach interviewee could give examples of supportfrom their original families or those that they hadformed (particularly from their mothers andpartners), this was not predictable and could beintermittent; such ties can also be contested andconstraining. Sarah commented that: “When I hadthe eldest [daughter], it was, like, ‘It’s your child.You look after it. You do this. You do that. You’llhave to find somewhere else to live. We’ve hadour kids, dah dah dah.’”

Several women were especially critical about theamount of support they received on becoming aparent. Tara summed up these concerns:

“I think if you’re on your own, or … a firsttime parent, it can be a nightmare. I think,because I’ve had the other two, I’m muchmore relaxed with [the youngest son] now.I know more … more or less what I’mdoing.… Whereas, I mean, especially with[the first born child], the first year … I wasjust sort of ‘what am I doing?’ But there was

nowhere to, like, turn, other than my family… which, if someone hasn’t got that…”

Sure Start

It is parents like these that Sure Start wasdesigned to help. It is targeted at the poorestareas of the country and three programmescurrently cover the neighbourhoods wherevirtually all this sub-sample lived. Those motherswho attended Sure Start programmes were, onthe whole, positive about them. Alice recalledhow on becoming a parent she “felt like I hadlost everything. I couldn’t go nowhere. I couldn’tdo anything.... But I’m getting out all the timenow. I’ll go to Sure Start and I’ve got more thingsto do.” Sally gave the most glowing report:

“… we just went to a fun day – that was lastyear. Me and me cousins and a friend upthe road, we’ve been going to everything –about four times a week – they dotraining.... They’re brilliant. There’s alwayssomething on nearly every day so if you’refed up sitting in at home – I mean it’s justup the road, we’ve got a brand newbuilding ... we basically get what we want,as long as it’s got something to do witheducation and your children’s needs ...we’re making, well it’s going be better forthe kids, innit? They’re getting a better startin life.”

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has called SureStart ‘the country’s best kept secret’ (Brown,2003). Certainly several of the mothers weinterviewed were unaware of the existence ofSure Start programmes in their locality or did notknow what services they offered (note Nicky’scomments in her cameo (p 11) about the lack ofcrèches in her area). Tara had pre-school agechildren but struggled to explain how Sure Startmight help her: “It’s one of those things, I’veheard the name of it but I’ve never been able tofind out exactly what it is … it’s a bit lost onme.” Val lived close to a Sure Start scheme buthad not heard of it. Yet it was clear from herinterview that she might have appreciated somehelp with childcare: “Just to have somebody totake ’em and give me a little bit of time tomyself”.

These experiences seem to suggest someproblems in the promotion and perception of

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Sure Start programmes in these neighbourhoods.As we will discuss in Chapter 5, there are alsoconcerns about the increasing emphasis that SureStart is placing on the employability of youngparents.

Relationships between parenting andeducation, training and employment

The previous studies found that many of theyoung mothers in the ‘family’ sub-sample werelargely detached from employment. At the timeof their most recent interview, this pattern wascontinuing for many. Only three of the elevenmothers were currently employed: one full-time(Tara as a hairdresser) and two part-time (Mary asa cleaner and Sophie as a chambermaid).Another, Sarah was participating in a workplacement at a hospital under the NDYPprogramme. Two had not been employed at allsince the first interview and the remaining fivehad only undertaken very short-lived jobs, lastinga week at most, as cleaners and shop assistants.

Because all the mothers had taken on the mainrole of bringing up their children, they hadbecome separated from employment. Amy, forexample, did only two days ‘fiddly’ work in apizza shop between first and second interview.She had applied for several cleaning jobs but feltthat employers “did not want to know” whenthey found out she had two children: “They getthe impression that I’d rather be at home withthem; perhaps I give them that impression”.Those mothers who were not currently in paidemployment all viewed this status as temporaryand explained their decision in terms of theinterests of their children. They regarded stayingat home during their early upbringing as ofcentral importance. For example, Nicky(presented in Table 3) felt that employment wasnot currently an option, despite the fact that herprevious job, in a shoe shop, was apparently stillopen to her. Since the birth of her first child shehad not been employed, nor had she completedany training (despite her earlier interest intraining as a paediatric nurse). In short, Nicky feltthat motherhood involved taking on full-timeresponsibility for childcare: “I wouldn’t leave thekids with anybody”. Linda had not had a jobsince her first interview, for the same reasons asNicky: “I look after me kids; apart from me andme Mam and me Dad, nobody else has them.... Ithink it’s my responsibility.”

Mary and Sophie (both lone mothers) took paidemployment once their children were older andsuitable childcare arrangements were in place.Often the nature of this childcare restrictedpeople’s labour market options. Those who hadfree, part-time nursery provision limited theirsearch for employment to part-time jobs. As Maryobserved:

“… it’s convenient. It’s not what I wannado. It’s not a great job, but it’sconvenient.… It’s not, obviously, what Iwanna do, but it’s just across the road from[her son’s] school and he starts at nineo’clock, finishes at half twelve, so … it wasperfect for what I needed at the time.…Especially to get [my son] used to meworking. He just needed something to easehim in.”

The one mother in this sub-sample whocontinued to work full-time after having children,Tara, said “I love going to work. I feel sanityaway from baby talk.” However, Tara qualifiedthis statement by noting “If I ever had to give upwork due to something with the kids, or with[my husband], then I’d have no qualms”. Shedescribed her job as a hairdresser as a “break”from the demands of motherhood.

Only two of the mothers (Sarah and Sally) hadreceived any formal education and training sincetheir first interviews. At first interview, Sarah wasdoing a full-time degree course. She successfullycompleted two years – resitting one – beforebeing forced to withdraw due to “financial”pressures. In comparison with Annie (from the‘education, training and employment’ sub-samplewho had successfully completed her degree butworked part-time while completing it), Sarah hadtwo children. Friends and family cared for Sarah’schildren while she attended college, but she wasunable to take on part-time jobs to help ease herfinancial burden of studying full-time. She wascurrently on NDYP placement in a hospital andquestioned the value of education: “Unlessyou’re going into a profession like teaching, Idon’t think it gets you any further. I don’t thinkpeople look at things like that.” Sally hadcompleted several beauty therapy courses at alocal further education college and through SureStart, and was planning to become a self-employed beautician once her younger childrenwere older. She spoke very positively about SureStart: “I think Sure Start’s been the biggest

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impact. I’ve got loads of confidence. I wanted togo back to college and everyone was always,‘next time, next time’. And just by going to SureStart … and I thought, ‘Yeah, I can go to college,and I can do it.’”

So across the ‘family’ sub-sample the roles andresponsibilities associated with family careersclearly had a curtailing effect on labour marketparticipation. One might interpret this as choice:in most cases the mothers in our study attachedmore personal importance to the rewards ofstaying at home to care for children than they didto employment. One also needs to consider thecontext in which such a choice is made. Likevirtually all the other men and women in thisstudy, these young parents were firmly located ina secondary segment of the labour market(Loveridge and Mok, 1975) marked by pervasiveunder-employment and unemployment,insecurity and poor work (see Chapter 4). Insuch contexts, pursuing the ‘mothering option’(Craine, 1997) is, at least in part, reflective of thelack of opportunities for decent, rewardingemployment for such women.

Summary: the ‘family’ sub-sample

In many respects the direction and nature of thetransitions that these young mothers had beenmaking when we first met them did much toinfluence their later biographies and life-chancesas they moved through their mid-twenties.Longer-term patterns and degrees of socialexclusion/inclusion were partly related to theseearly experiences. In particular, the ramificationsof having children at an early age could be great(particularly in respect of detachment from thelabour market). Across the ‘family’ sub-sample,parenthood brought a ‘fast track’ to adult statusbut attached to it were several roles andresponsibilities that were very muchcharacterised by gender inequality. Theseinequalities meant that the young women tookon the greatest responsibility for domestic labour,household management and childcare duties intheir households.

Opportunities for childcare were a preoccupationof all the mothers we interviewed regardless ofwhether or not they returned to paidemployment after having children. Informalchildcare was preferred and was important interms of life balance, again regardless of whether

or not one was in employment. Informalchildcare arrangements and networks wereessential and, until they were ensured, womencould not compete in the local labour market.Consequently, we conclude that local structuresof opportunity in respect of education, trainingand employment do not on their own help usunderstand processes of transition and inclusion/exclusion for young parents, especially mothers.The availability of childcare arrangements thatwere durable, affordable and matched theirpersonal preferences was crucial inunderstanding the broader and longer-termtransitions of all the mothers we interviewed.

The ‘criminal and/or drug-using’sub-sample

The evolution – and termination? – of criminaland drug-using careers

Micky had lived outside the law – literally an‘outlaw’ – and had no significant contact with anyformal institutions after leaving school aged 11,until he collided with the youth justice system at14 and received his first custodial sentence at 15.His transition was marked by no or littleengagement with education, training or the labourmarket, with social services or drug treatmentservices, with ‘normal’ leisure and consumption,with finance, banking or credit or with thehousing market. His sole, enduring ‘engagement’had been with the police, criminal justice systemand prisons. All his experiences, apart from these,had been informal and within his immediate socialnetworks. For these reasons it is difficult to tellMicky’s story in the same way as we did with thecameos of Simon and Nicky earlier. His drug useand crime were, in a sense, the whole story.

At first interview, aged 21, Micky described apattern that included early persistent truancy;anti-school and disruptive behaviour; activeattempts to get school suspension; earlyassociation with a similarly disruptive but olderfriendship group; the ineffectiveness of family orschool to control his behaviour; earlyabandonment of school; involvement withrecreational but heavy use of alcohol and drugs(financed through increasingly persistent andserious acquisitive crime); further embeddedness

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in a drug-using, criminal social network; andeventual heroin use at the age of 18. Offendingescalated to fund a £100 a day heroin habit,graduating from what had been a £40 a dayalcohol and cannabis habit.

The defining feature of his transition was a drug-fuelled criminality based on chronic heroindependency interspersed with prison and thenchronic relapse. Yet he positioned himself as aheroin user in particular ways. He describedhimself as a smoker not an intravenous user – a“drug user” not a “bag ’ead” – thus activelyavoiding a certain heroin-using self-identity.Avoiding any drug treatment, even in prison, wascited as a counterpoint to a ‘smackhead’ identity.His ‘enforced’ detoxifications were self-managedwithout medication or counselling. It is difficult toenvisage how formal controls or interventionsmight have relevance in the lives of careercriminals and drug users like Micky, other than inthe containment provided by prison.

Micky’s account of his life spoke of the influenceof loss and grief and bereavement as touchstonesof personal experience: the tragic loss of his sisterand friends in a car crash, his mother throughillness and his care for an ailing father. At the timeof his recent interview, Micky was attempting tokeep away from crime and heroin use and haddone so over the four months since he had beenreleased from prison on bail. Since his firstinterview a number of key turning points hadoccurred in Micky’s life. He regarded the deaths ofhis sister and friends, in 1999, as responsible forhis return to heroin addiction. As a result of thisreturn to crime and prisons he had reluctantlyfinished with a long-standing partner. In theprevious four years his family had abandoned himat certain times because of his heroin use. Heincreasingly regretted this. In addition, his socialnetwork had diffused because of the heroin useand serial imprisonment of its members.Accompanying the decline of his social network,he was committed to a new ‘clean’ partner and herfamily. Before his mother died of cancer, hepromised her that he would never use heroinagain. Promises to his mother and partner to ‘stayclean’ seemed defining moments in Micky’sstruggle to avoid chronic relapse. (See Table 4.)

Understanding criminal and drug-using careers:different processes and outcomes

Our previous studies noted how a cheap andplentiful local heroin market had becomeembedded in Kelby in the mid-1990s. Beforethen the town had little appreciable history ofheroin use (Parker et al, 1988). Once a marketwas established, informal knowledge about usewas passed from experienced users to novices(Parker et al, 2001, p 6) and a complex networkof dealers and users was created. This localiseddrug market had affected most, if not all, of theyoung people living in our research sites in someway. Virtually every interviewee held strong,negative views about the prevalence of heroinand drug-related crime within the estates wherethey lived.

Except for those in this sub-sample, no otherinterviewees displayed – currently or previously– drug or offending behaviour that wouldnormally be regarded as problematic or whichhad longer-term influences on their transitions.Several interviewees across the whole samplehad, for instance, used cannabis recreationally inthe past. Some continued to do so but there wasalso evidence that this recreational use wasdeclining with age. Some of the young mothers,for instance, described how they had stoppedusing recreational drugs with the onset of theresponsibilities of parenthood.

This section outlines – at an individual, case-by-case level – the processes of decision makingthat constitute more committed criminal and/ordrug-using careers and their implications.Particular attention is devoted to how suchcareers are influenced by local neighbourhoodsocial structures made up of particular kinds ofsocial, cultural and economic capital and definedby economic marginality and social exclusion(Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Sampson and Laub, 1993;Jones Finer and Nellis, 1998).

There were differences in respect of the criminaland drug involvement of the 12 individuals inthis sub-sample and the following discussionattempts to identify these in order to betterunderstand patterns of continuity and change.

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Table 4: Criminal and/or drug-using sub-sample; Name: Micky; Age: 25

Education, training Leisure andAge and employment Family and housing social networks Crime and drug use

<13 “Hated” school and teachers Persistent but failed Started hanging around Chronic alcohol abuse– stopped attending school attempts by mother and with and beingaltogether at 11 years old. Education Welfare influenced by older

Officers to enforce peers.school attendance. All night socialising.Lives in family homewith six sisters and twobrothers.

14-16 No aspirations to gain Ditto “Hanging around with Chronic cannabis andemployment. the wrong people”, alcohol use, glueNo engagement with ie, friendship group of sniffing.training or the job market. six all sharing the same A lot of low-level

activities. acquisitive crime(shoplifting) and‘twocking’ (takingvehicle withoutconsent).Probation order andcustodial sentence for‘twocking’.

17-19 Never signed on. Mother and father Friends begin serving Heroin use begins –continue attempts to prison sentences. custodial sentence fordissuade from crime and After prison returns aggravated ‘twocking’,drugs and threaten to to friendships – etc.end contact with Micky. same group. Offending escalates in‘Respectable’ and Heroin use begins frequency fromcriminal brothers. among whole group. shoplifting to shedUnemployed parents. burglary then houseFather suffers chronic and shop burglaryill-health. then robbery.

Curfew Order followedby custodial sentence forburglary

20-23 States a belief in the work Steady girlfriend of Prison sentence forethic and meritocracy, and three years then split. burglary, theft andaspires to live in a “decent” Returned to family home. handling.place… unemployed. No Sister and two best Released from prison.help in finding employment. friends killed in car Returned to heroin

accident. use and burglary, carRelationship to family crime etc, to fund drug-deteriorates due to use.drug use.

24-25 About to enter New Deal Thrown out of family Seems to have Custodial sentence.depending on outcome of home several times. abandoned primary peer Returned to offending –trial. Visit while in prison by group – one died in same custodial sentence for

family friend who car “accident” as his burglary – on bail.becomes partner. sister. Desisted from heroin useMother died while he since mother died.was in prison. Promise made to her andHas bail address but lives girlfriend to stay clean.with brother’s girlfriend. Continues chronicFamily relations return to alcohol and cannabis usebeing strongly supportive. funded through dole and

family loans.Never received drugtreatment except drugcounselling in prison.

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Intravenous users versus heroin smokers

The seriousness and persistence of repeatoffending crosscut with drug-using careers (ofthe 12, eight had been or were heroin users)varied within the sub-sample. Danny’s career ofpersistent criminality was similar to that ofMicky’s, whom we presented in Table 4. Itcontinued from the pattern observed in our firststudy; a pattern of early teenage truancy, schoolexclusion, children’s homes, continuousunemployment and some ‘fiddly’ work. Both hisand Micky’s cases suggest that smoking, incontrast to intravenous heroin use, may helpavoid the more debilitating effects ofdependency, especially when use is interruptedby long spells in prison. Although not inhibitingcriminality, smoking had meant that criminalitywas more independent of drug use, comparedwith the heroin-driven offending of some of theintravenous users.

Danny started smoking heroin in 1997 “justbecause it was there”. All his friends were fromhis estate and were in and out of prison. Many ofthem quickly moved from smoking to injectingbut he kept his distance from intravenous users,ending a relationship with a girlfriend becauseshe was injecting heroin. He said, “That’s no lifefor me, that”. Interviewed for a second time atthe age of 24, he was still unemployed and livingin a town nearby to Kelby with his partner. Theyhad a child and were about to marry. Havingstopped using and offending at age 23, he citedas reasons for his desistance the birth of hisdaughter, childcare responsibilities, thediscouragement of his partner, reconciliation withhis family of origin, maturity, drug counsellingand ‘blockers’ (that is, medication that blocks theeffects of heroin). Comparing his life now withwhen he was first interviewed he said it was“totally different”:

“’Cos I was all over. I was never in oneplace before. I was always just … alwayslike out in a car [usually stolen] and takingdrugs and committing crime 24 hours a day.Where now I’m just in the house all thetime, or going up [his partner’s] Mam’s andhelping out and that.”

In terms of the future, Danny’s problem was thathe had a substantial criminal record so the onlyoption, albeit a risky one, seemed some kind ofself-employment. Earlier rejection by parents

because of his drug use, in part, served to furtherisolate him in a drug-based world. In severalcases like Danny’s, later re-engagement withparents, siblings, partners and children seemed akey factor in enabling desistance. For Danny,enforced detoxification in prison, his release anda subsequent move to a different town to join hislong-standing partner (thus facilitating hisavoidance of previous, local criminal and drug-using social networks) also seemed necessaryconditions for his rehabilitation.

Desisters

These processes and conditions, which werepresent in various and contrasting ways amongthe others, we describe as desisters. For instance,Richard’s offending seemed wholly heroin-driven. A reluctant, intermittent, intravenous userfrom early stages of his drug career, he hadmaintained fuller engagement with employmentand training than Danny or Micky, at least untilheroin use caught up with him at the age of 20.He did not reveal his criminal record whenapplying for jobs and, post-16, he had obtained aseries of labouring jobs and placements ongovernment schemes as a fitter, butcher andscaffolder. His frequent school truancy, heavycannabis use and brief spell of petty shopliftingin his early teens gave no indication, however, ofwhat was to follow.

This included more concerted shoplifting andcommercial burglary to fund his heroin addictionfor which he was sentenced to a period in aYoung Offender Institution (YOI). Ejected fromhis mother’s home, he was intermittentlyhomeless. After desisting from heroin use atvarious points while employed, he returned toheroin use again aged 19 when living at ahomeless hostel where he again encounteredother heroin users. Short periods of intensive andaddictive heroin use brought on a spate ofoffending to fund it, followed again by custodialsentences, self-detoxification and chronic relapse.A year prior to the second interview he wasreleased from a custodial sentence with aprobation order for drug rehabilitation and hadsought and been receiving a methadonemaintenance programme at a local, specialist GPpractice (which he described as “excellent”).While on the programme he was not using,avoided other users and lived with his partner.He also joined another scaffolding training

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scheme but was absent a great deal due to thedemands of his methadone programme.

Like others, Richard cited the “vicious circle” ofheroin use, offending, prison, and relapse toheroin use. His case also highlights the problemsof attempting to escape a drug-using career thatinduced an ‘every man for himself’ situation.More often than not, the ‘solution’ appeared tobe the influence of significant relationships withwomen counterposed to a life of criminality anddrug use. Richard gave the reason he wanted tostay off heroin and succeed in his methadonetreatment as “just to make me Mam happy at meand then having a normal life with me girlfriend,isn’t it? Like everyone else does”. He went on:

“It’s [heroin use and crime] like a viciouscircle, I see it as. It’s like one big magnetic,magnetic circle ... and when you get out ofjail it starts, you’re slowly getting drawnback in all the time ... slowly you end backon the circle again, moving round andround back in the same direction all thetime.”

Some of those who had not been heroin usersbut who, by the time of this study, wereattempting to desist from criminal careers, hadobtained jobs. Given the labour market fortunesof others in the sample, their ‘success’ in gettingany sort of employment is surprising. Despite atroubled childhood, criminal father, hatred ofschool, alcohol abuse, persistent offending and acustodial sentence for serious assault at firstinterview, Broderick was now employed full-timeas a scaffolder, earning £250 per week. Broderickhad never been wholly detached from the labourmarket and, at first interview, had described theimportance of informal local networks in gettingthe legitimate and ‘fiddly’ manual work he haddone since school. He was now living with hispartner and their young child, close to his familyof origin. He said that many of his previoussocial network had “settled down” and he sawthem less often than before, usually only on aweekend: “… ’cos a few of us are working and acouple of them have kids, so like Friday is whenwe meet up. If you see ’em during the week, youdo ‘Are you going out Friday?’, ‘Yeah’, ‘See youin the club.’”

Harry was another informant who had not usedheroin but who was attempting to desist fromcrime. Like Broderick he was now attempting to

settle into legitimate employment but hisinterview illustrated the economic logic of crime.Acquisitive offending can appear more attractivewhen the financial gains to be had seem muchgreater than those available from local, legitimateemployment, especially when offending itselfcompounds exclusion from such opportunities.Harry had not offended since release fromprison, six months prior to his second interview.He had stopped offending because his girlfriendbecame pregnant. Despite his partner wanting achild, they felt that they could not afford thecosts and she had had an abortion. Harryregarded this as a turning point in his life.Although having been sacked previously from afactory job for the non-disclosure of his criminalrecord, he was currently employed at a callcentre, on a probationary basis, and took home£900 per month. At the height of his criminalcareer, Harry estimated that he had been ‘earning’around £30,000 per annum, several times that ofhis current salary and approximately double thatof the highest, legitimate earner in our study. Hesaid that: “... when you get caught you go intojail and you don’t have to pay lodge, you don’thave to work. Just sit on your arse and donowt.... We had less worries when I wascommitting crimes.”

When read alongside the others in this sub-sample, Harry’s biographical account suggests anumber of things. Having served 10 custodialsentences (excluding remands) between 1995and 2002, prison does not appear to rehabilitateoffenders (at least in Harry’s case). Probationcould only offer minimal support. A criminalrecord, if admitted, can in effect debar ex-offenders from legitimate employment, as can aprobation hostel or bedsit address. Renting ortaking out a mortgage on a house is difficult andborrowing is unlikely because of the lack of acredit history. The ability to move away fromTeesside for employment or other reasons is thuscurtailed. As Harry’s comments below testify, thishas serious ramifications for education, trainingand employment careers:

“I started the job. I wasn’t late once, Iwasn’t sick once … erm, hadn’t missed ashift.... And basically, when they found outI did have a [criminal] record, he shot usout the door without even anexplanation.... I was more reliable thansome of the people he had in there.... So,that’s what bugs me.”

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For housing careers:

“I went for a house, a couple of monthback. I was in full-time employment, erm …I hadn’t committed a criminal offence since2000, since my release. So that was, like,three year without an offence.... Basically,they said ‘No, because of your list ofoffences’. I mean, I told them I had acriminal record. I volunteered all theinformation.... They just kept turning medown for a house. It’s basically, no onewants to give you a chance. That’s what I’vecome across.”

And in respect of family careers:

“I mean, her [his partner’s] Mam and Dadused to hate me. The first words I got outof her Mam’s mouth were, when I seen her,were ‘stay away from my daughter and mydoorstep’. So, when we have a drink Ialways take the piss out of her with that....They’re all right now.”

The cases we have discussed in this sub-sectionillustrate the important role played by processesof (re)engagement with family (with parents,siblings and new partners) in the attempts ofindividuals to desist from long-term criminal anddrug-using careers. In some cases, employmentalso emerged as an important factor in attemptsto establish more firmly complete cessation ofoffending.

Persisters

Some of our interviewees persisted in repeatedoffending into their mid-twenties and showedlittle signs of changing at the time of our currentstudy. The cases of David and Jason demonstratethis point. An important finding, illustrated bysome of our earlier examples, is that those whodesisted from and those who persisted in crimehad similarly troubled backgrounds, and that inboth cases contingent life events influenced thecourse of their criminal and drug-using careers.In other words it would be difficult to explain,by reference to the earlier biographies of theseindividuals, why some continued with crimewhile others desisted.

Jason’s early truancy, prolific drug use andoffending, long-term health problems (some of

which were drug-related), hospitalisation at 19for a heroin overdose and little engagement withlicit or illicit employment, fit the profile of acareer criminal and drug user. At first interview, itwas clear that his offending escalated after hebegan using heroin. At second interview heexpressed little desire to stop offending and sawhis drug use as only a partial reason for hisoffending, the main one being economic; farmore money could be ‘earned’ from crime thanlegitimate employment.

Jason’s main aim was to change his type ofoffending (from burglary and theft to drug-dealing) so as to ensure that crime was morelucrative and its risks reduced. Like David(discussed below), he had no relationship withhis parents, conducted short-lived relationshipswith girlfriends, had no ‘close’ friends (knowingmostly only other drug users and criminals) andavoided drug treatment because of beingstigmatised and labelled as a heroin user. Heseemed socially isolated and resigned to hislifestyle. Like others, Jason cited thecompounding effects of being a career criminalin reinforcing the “vicious circle” that workedagainst desistance:

“I’ve been in and out of prison for yearsand years and it gets to the point [where Ithink] ‘I’m gonna stop this, I’m gonna gostraight when I get out of here’. When youget out, you go straight back into the samearea, same faces, all the drug users. So it’s avicious circle. You get straight back intothings.”

David had been a prolific offender and careercriminal from early in his life. His biographyspoke of loss: his mother abandoned him to carehomes, his father left when he was young andhis brother died. His long-standinginstitutionalisation in a string of care homes,secure units, YOIs and prisons made it difficultfor him to form social relationships outside. Itwas difficult to discern what, if any, family orother relationships might discourage him fromcriminality and drug use (even though his ownmother was currently caring for his young child).

Occasional offenders

We interviewed others with careers of moreoccasional offending. Two types of criminal

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career were apparent. First, there was earlier,relatively short-lived offending among non-dependent drug users. Here avoidance of druguse was accompanied by a strong anti-drugsethos and relatively continuous orientation to thelabour market.

Second, there was a pattern of low-level,sporadic offending to fund heroin habitsfollowed by desistance helped by drug treatment(for example, methadone maintenanceprogrammes). Among occasional offenders theinfluence of drug use on crime was less clearthan that in respect of the more prolificoffenders. In some cases, heroin use was the solespur to – and had preceded – offending.Stopping drug use meant stopping offending. Formost, however, there was a pattern of earlytruancy, ‘hanging around’ the public space oftheir neighbourhoods and petty offending priorto heroin use. Most wished to repair the earlierdamage to family and personal relationships thathad resulted from drug dependency, althoughthis moral awareness did not often extendbeyond family, friends and partners to the harmthat had been caused by offending to otherhouseholds and businesses.

It would be wrong to conclude that the life-courses of the occasional offenders were lesstroubled than those of persistent offenders anddrug users. There was just as much evidencehere of early family conflict, trauma and loss intheir lives. Stuart, for example, had been arrestedfor the alleged rape of his sister when youngerbut the case was dropped. This resulted in hisestrangement from his mother and sister: “She’s[his sister] ruined my life. Can’t talk much topeople any more. You know, like, can’t go outand meet people and that … makeconversations.”

Summary: criminal and/or drug-usingsub-sample

The most important ‘predictors’ of laterdesistance among criminals and dependent drugusers were sustained employment, support fromfamily of origin, forming a family and havingchildren and support from a partner (often livingoutside the immediate local area). Support from anon-drug-using partner seemed particularlyimportant for those desisting from dependentdrug use, as was availability and knowledge of

good quality, non-punitive drug treatmentservices (although a few were able to stop usingheroin through self-detoxification aided bypartners). Several persistent offenders and drugusers described a ‘vicious circle’ that involved apattern of repeated episodes of drugdependency, offending, prison, enforceddetoxification, chronic relapse into drugdependency, offending, prison and so on.

Paradoxically, for intravenous users custodialsentences often had the effect of permitting drugdependent careers to be extended for longerthan might otherwise have been the case. Prisonoffered a moratorium from the debilitating healthand social problems associated with longer-term,chronic heroin use. There was, however,evidence of self-detoxification among those whohad not received custodial sentences (sometimeswith support from family or partners). Thosewho, by second interview, had persisted in theiroffending and drug use seemed to lack anyidentifiable ‘moral reference point’ because oftheir isolation from ‘significant other’relationships with family, non-criminal friends orpartners. The amount of time they had spent incustody seemed to disqualify them from formingsuch relationships.

Despite attempts by several in this sub-sample tomove their employment, family and housingcareers forward in a positive direction, theconsequences of earlier criminal careers(especially those enmeshed with a drug-usingcareer) were significant. The metaphor of the‘vicious circle’ goes some way to understandingthe effects of heroin use on extended transitions.It does, however, imply that once out of the‘circle’ (that is, becoming drug-free) the problemis resolved once and for all. Our evidence ofrepeated relapse suggests that this is not the caseand that a metaphor of ‘cork-screw’ drug-crimecareers might be more apposite.

The more protracted the heroin career, thegreater the tolerance, the greater the need formoney to fund increased consumption and,therefore, the more prolific, desperate andserious the crime. Lengthening records of seriousoffending resulted in lengthening records ofincarceration. Those caught up in these spirallingprocesses became ever more deeply embeddedin destructive lifestyles and social networksorganised around heroin use and ever moredistanced from sources of support that might aid

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desistance. Eventually they reached ‘the tip of thecork-screw’, experiencing the most damaging,chaotic effects of their drug dependency. The“decision” to “get clean” and “go straight” is onlythe first step in a long, arduous, risk-ladenstruggle back to a “normal life”, as Richard put it.This necessitates facing – and overcoming – thecumulative personal, social and economicconsequences of their long-term careers of crimeand drug use and explains why many in this sub-sample had biographies that were replete withinstances of failed attempts at desistance (seeLaub and Sampson, 2003).

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3Broader experiences ofextended transitions

The previous section highlighted experiences ofcontinuity and change in extended transitionsthat were particularly relevant to the three sub-samples we interviewed. This section will discussthose broader experiences and processes oftransition that emerged as important inunderstanding the wider transitions andoutcomes of all our interviewees.

The persistence of poverty

In some respects this study revealed considerablechange in interviewees’ lives since we last metthem. The most obvious example of this is that agood proportion had made significant transitionsin terms of their family and – as will be describedlater in this chapter – housing careers.Independent living and parenthood were newexperiences for many. How a majority haddesisted from problematic criminal and drug-using careers was also striking (although thisapparent change must be understood ascontingent, aspirational and fragile). Individualsreported feeling considerable subjective changein their lives that hinged around key turningpoints and critical moments, especially in respectof family, housing, criminal and drug-usingcareers.

That said, their objective circumstances in termsof employment and income had remainedgenerally constant since our previous studies.Regardless of whether or not they were working,had established their own home or becomeparents, the majority experience of materialpoverty had persisted to the time of our mostrecent interviews. As noted in Chapter 2,extended educational, training and employmentcareers continued, in the main, to be marked byeconomic marginality and the rapid movement in

and out of insecure, low-paid, low-skilled work,training and employment preparation schemesand repeated spells of unemployment. Recurrentunemployment and low-paid work contributed toa high level of personal poverty across the entiresample.

Across the whole sample of 34, 10 people nowworked in full-time jobs, two were participatingin NDYP, 20 were registered as unemployed (twoof whom did part-time work that did not affecttheir benefit entitlement) and two wereimprisoned. As noted previously, young motherswere less likely to be in full-time jobs (and morelikely to be unemployed), and that even a thirdof those with extended careers of crime and druguse were now in full-time, legitimateemployment is perhaps surprising. There wasrelatively little difference, however, in the payearned by people in these different sub-samples.Admittedly, the highest earners were Marje (£16kpa) and Martin (£12k pa), from the ‘education,training and employment’ sub-sample, but lowerpay was common across the sample. Manyquoted income around, and in one instancebelow, the level of the National Minimum Wage(at the time of the study this was £4.20 an hour,or £168 for a 40-hour week, for those aged over22).

Overall the majority of informants appeared to bereceiving income below or around that currentlyequated with poverty. This threshold is measuredas 60% of medium income, which for thepopulation as a whole was £187 per week beforehousing costs in 2002 (DWP, 2003). Living with apartner or parents can ease personal poverty andraise overall household income above the 60%poverty threshold. In our study, however, mostparents and partners were also in low-paid workor unemployed, and therefore able to provide

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only modest financial assistance at best. Althoughall interviews contained discussions of theexperience of continued poverty, those whowere parents were most explicit about theproblems of living in poverty. Linda’s householdincome was entirely dependent on social securitybenefits. Her interview stressed the carefulbudgeting that was required to make ends meet:

“I think you manage. I think you work yourmoney out and you manage on it. You sortof, like, think, ‘Well I’ve got this’. Me billsare always paid. Once your bills are paidand your shopping’s in and your gas andelectricity there, you’ve got nothing else toworry about, so … the kids are providedfor.”

Sally commented on the “expense” of sixchildren “especially when all their other friendsgo to school and they’ve all got nice trainers.You try your best to get them the same.” LikeLinda, Sally and other young mothers, Charlottecouched her description of the day-to-daystruggles to get by on benefits with reference tothe effects on her children: “We have nomoney.... I have had things for the kids out ofthe charity shops but I wouldn’t go in there allthe time … I wanna be able to buy my kids nice-looking things.”

Recent rises in Child Benefit and the introductionof tax credits have provided a welcome boost tothe incomes of some interviewees, particularlythose who are parents. Our evidence suggests,however, that Child Benefit rises are marginal(and of course many members of the sample donot have children). Child Tax Credit wasintroduced in April 2003, during the course ofour fieldwork. It is paid to designated parents(usually mothers) who care for children,regardless of whether or not they are in paidemployment. Previously, tax credits were uselessfor most of the parents in our study because theycould only be claimed if they and their partnerswere working 16 hours or more per week (whichmost were not).

Carol-Anne said “Like, we’ve been able to buythings and go shopping where we want and nothave to worry. It’s lovely.” Receipt of tax creditsalso means, however, that parents lose otherbenefits such as entitlement to free school mealsfor their children. The cost of paying for thesemeals can negate the potential benefits accrued

from tax credits, as Nicky pointed out: “I pay forhis [her oldest son’s] dinners. Which is gonna bea nightmare when [her youngest son] goes toschool.”

Tax credits are meant to act as an incentive to getyoung mothers to return to the labour market. Asdiscussed in Chapter 2, however, this runscounter to the preferences of many of themothers in this study to stay at home to care forchildren. It also takes little account of the unevenspread of suitable opportunities in respect ofchildcare and employment and how, in placeslike Kelby, this can also constrain ‘the return towork’ of young mothers. Paid work may provideprotection against family poverty but, to reiterate,the work undertaken by the majority in ourstudy, whether parents or not, was of a type thatfailed to lift them clear of persistent poverty. Wereturn to a fuller consideration of how and whyobjective conditions of poverty persist in Chapter4, where we also try to understand how thesubjective mainstream aspirations of poor peopleto ‘better themselves’ become reconciled withconstrained socioeconomic conditions. InChapter 5, we scrutinise further policies that aredesigned to tackle poverty.

Leaving home and social housing

Moving away from the family home to (relatively)independent living is an important part of thetransition to adulthood. The majority ofinterviewees (27 of 34) had, by the time of thecurrent study, left the parental home, althoughnot always by choice. The sample’s overalleconomic marginality and limited financialresources did not inhibit the ability of most tobegin independent housing careers, but itcertainly did have an impact on the optionsavailable to them and featured prominently indecisions not to leave.

Leaving home

A central factor in determining housingtransitions was the relative poverty of the samplemembers. Few were able to afford the first stepson the private housing ladder. Those with mostfinancial resources to call upon had the greatestroom for manoeuvre. Two of the three ‘owneroccupiers’ (Marje and Tara) were both part ofdual-earning households and the third (Val) had

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a husband in a relatively secure, long-term job.Even some of those with reasonable incomes,such as Martin, possessed debts (Martin haddebts of £17,000) that made house ownershipunlikely for the time being at least. Althoughowner-occupation is higher among over 35-year-olds (Watt, 1996), regardless of age social rentingis more likely to be undertaken by those on lowincomes. The relative youth and the relativepoverty of our sample made them less likely thanthe adult population in general to have soughtprivate ownership.

Remaining in the parental home was a practicalway of displacing and delaying the material costsof independent living. Seven people were stillliving with their parents. One of them, Alex, said“It’s cheaper for me here”. She paid a smallamount to her parents from her low-paying carejob, commenting: “Now you know why I stay!”.Thus, living with parents disguised – and eased –personal poverty. The quality and stability ofrelationships with families of origin were also animportant influence on decisions to leave or stay.Those older interviewees who had stayed livingwith their parents until their late twenties, suchas Annie (27) and Max (28), described strongfamily bonds. The strength of family relationsalso underpinned decisions about where tomove.

From their larger, national survey, Ford et al(2002a) suggest a typology of different sorts ofyouth housing career. Each type reflects theability of young people to plan their moves andfamily resources, and the constraints that restricthousing options (such as finances and the natureof the local housing market). In our study, themajority of those who had left home appear tofall into what Ford et al describe as ‘chaotic’ and‘unplanned’ housing pathways. It would bedifficult to categorise any of our sample as fittingthe other categories they describe, all of whichinvolve greater degrees of planning, familysupport and moves in response to employmentor educational opportunities. Chrissie, forexample, dryly observed that “I’d like to go toAustralia ... it’s the furthest you can go beforeyou start coming back”. This is not to imply thatno family support was lent to the moves ourinterviewees made, nor that some of those stillliving with parents might one day take moreplanned housing moves. The reasons why someremained with parents were exactly because they

wanted to bide their time until they were in abetter position to establish independent living.

For our interviewees, the move to independentliving was not necessarily a simple transition andsome of their biographies exemplified veryclearly what Ford and colleagues meant by a‘chaotic housing pathway’ in which personalplanning, family support, financial resources andchoice were limited. Rapid movement through asuccession of housing options tended to reflect alack of personal control and planning in the livesof the young adults concerned. Unsurprisingly,then, it was a pattern most often reported bythose in the ‘criminal and/or drug-using’ sub-sample, many of whom described biographies inwhich their actions were driven by heroinaddiction rather than a more reasoned, strategicbalancing of options. Here housing careers werecomplicated further by the likelihood ofestrangement from family and siblings and byperiods of penal incarceration. As noted inChapter 2, a criminal record and a history ofheroin use can seriously jeopardise access tosocial and privately rented housing.

This ‘chaotic’ pattern was not limited, however,to those with histories of dependent drug useand crime. When we first met her at the age of23, Sarah, for instance, had changed residence 12times. Her haphazard housing career – whichbegan with her leaving the family home aged 15after a row with her mother – reflected the mixedrelationship that she had had with her parentsand, later, the intense, often violent relationshipswith the fathers of her two children. When firstinterviewed, Sarah was living in a council housein East Kelby with her two children and her 14-year-old sister. She was reasonably happy withthe area, liked the garden that the children couldplay in and planned to stay for a while. Ourcurrent study found her settled in the samehouse.

The relative abundance and availability of socialhousing in these neighbourhoods helpedindividuals like Sarah make eventual transitionsto more settled, independent living (albeit insome cases after earlier, turbulent housingcareers). At second interview, 25 of the samplemembers lived in some form of social housing(two others were in prison). For a few, the socialhousing they moved to brought other problems(see Martin, p 27) and some were yet to findsecure or suitable accommodation (of whatever

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sort). Overall, though, most had made transitionsto independent living and – despite theircontinued experience of poverty and economicmarginality – their housing careers werebeginning to show some stability.

The significance of place in housing careers:dreams of leaving

Interviewees’ changing, varied and complicatedperceptions of their home neighbourhoodsemerged as important in understanding theirprevious housing careers and their currentoutlooks on their futures. Not only didassessments of home neighbourhoods varybetween individuals, the same individuals couldoften readily describe both the difficulties andthe advantages of living where they did.

In general terms, interviewees gave voice to theproblems of living in Willowdene and EastKelby. The related problems of youth crime anddrug use provided the major spur to dreams ofleaving these places. But in no case was thissufficient to initiate a housing move, nor was itthe sole reason referred to by those who hopedto move in the future. As in all these youngadults’ housing careers, a multiplicity of ‘external’factors and personal issues came together in theirhousing ambitions.

At first interview, for example, a series ofpersonal tragedies had energised Martin’scommitment to his neighbourhood (seeMacDonald and Marsh, 2001). When we met himagain as part of this project, he was 23, hadmarried his girl friend and left Primrose Valebehind. The key factor that had motivated hisabandonment of the place to which he waspreviously so committed was the perinatal deathof his first child. His wife became “very severelydepressed”, a situation worsened by the fact thatat the time they were living in a rented flat in anEast Kelby tower block that mainly housed noisy,sometimes disruptive, single young people:

“… socially it was quite bad. There were alot of young people. I’m trying to say youngpeople ’cos I’m quite young myself, butthere’s quite a lot of young teenagers livingthere, probably 16, 17, 18, 19, cause a lot ofnoise and disturbance. In particular, on thenight before we moved out, someone wasactually bottled outside the flat door, which

was quite distressing obviously. It’s just notan environment, really, that I want to bein.”

So, although Martin referred to the potentiallybetter employment factors to be found elsewhereand the problems of delinquency in his homeneighbourhood, his actual move – to anothercouncil property in a north east town – wasinspired by a desire to make a ‘clean break’ withprofound personal loss, a move he described asgoing from a “nightmare” to a “dream”.

The significance of place in housing careers:the costs of leaving

For those three people who had left Kelby(Carol-Anne, Martin and Danny), the formationof new partnerships was a significant factor inthis process. This is shown in Carol-Anne’s case,which also highlights the significance of place inthe sample’s housing careers and the complicatedrisks and opportunities involved in leavingKelby. We give it considerable space because italso illustrates some of our more general findingsand the way that we seek to theorise extendedtransitions.

A central conclusion of this and our previousstudies is that the twists, turns and outcomes ofthe transitions of young adults can rarely beexplained by reference to a single event orexperiences confined to one aspect of suchtransitions (for example, the family or education,training and employment careers). A moreholistic exploration of young adults’ lives ‘in theround’ allows us to see how particular personalexperiences are shaped by complicated,interlinked processes. In Carol-Anne’s case wecan also see how several processes andexperiences associated with the transition toadulthood had paradoxical effects andcontradictory meanings but, together, producedtroubling psychological problems for her.

We interviewed Carol-Anne three times, firstwhen she was 24 and working as anadministrator for a training agency in East Kelby.By the age of 26 she had moved to Huddersfieldto live with her new boyfriend whom she hadmet via an Internet chat-room. At this point weinterviewed her for a second time. She describedlife away from East Kelby in glowing terms. Sheenjoyed her new job in Huddersfield; it allowed

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her to use her secretarial skills and the wage was“much better” than in her previous job (£4.50rather than £3.50 per hour). In our most recentmeeting with Carol-Anne she recalled, however,how the onset of her depression was rooted inthese changed circumstances. She soon began to“hate” the work: “It was a small family businesswith a very high staff turnover and I was off witha tummy bug for a week so they sacked me”.Although she had a doctor’s note to prove herillness: “… I didn’t feel at the time that I could doanything about it. I just didn’t have theconfidence. And I just felt it was all my fault …that was sort of when my depression startedreally. Felt really bad about myself.”

When pressed about this, she said:

“[The sacking was] not the cause, but afactor. There was all different things goingon and it just built up. The house flooded… and then there was the stuff with mybrother and all that at the same time. It waslike – Help! Need Help! [her emphasis]. Iwent to see the doctor and he gave mequite high anti-depressants and sleepingtablets and things.... It’s like a tunnel andyou just can’t see no light at the end.Everything just seems dark and you don’tthink your life’s going to get any better.That’s how I felt at the time, for five or sixmonths at least.”

More significant than the flooding of their house,“all the different things” Carol-Anne referred toincluded the deaths of her uncle, aunt andcousin’s baby daughter within a few months ofeach other. Carol-Anne valued strong familybonds and felt particularly close to her motherand father: “I was homesick for about a year anda half after I came here.” She currently visits themin East Kelby at least once a month andtelephones them everyday. A particular cause ofconcern – and factor in her depression – was thebehaviour of her heroin-dependent, nowestranged, brother:

“It got worse when I moved. [My parents]let him move back in [to the family home]and then he’d steal from them and thenhe’d go and then they’d let him back in. Itwas just a vicious circle ... mostly it was mybrother [who caused me to be depressed],’cos he just kept hurting my parents andseeing them hurt and me not being there …

put a strain on me really because I keptthinking – ‘Should I go back?’. I’d left themand they needed me.”

This physical separation of Carol-Anne from herfamily in East Kelby – and the consequent limitsto the emotional support that she could offerthem, and vice versa – was, in her mind, thething that caused her most unhappiness. Herbrother had caused problems for the familybefore but now she felt too distant to offer muchin the way of immediate help. Together with thequick succession of tragic deaths of members ofher extended family, being unfairly dismissedfrom a job that she initially loved and theflooding of her new home, these events andexperiences culminated in serious ill-health (shestill received medication for depression).Paradoxically, the same process of leaving theparental home in Kelby, establishing a new homewith her boyfriend and becoming a parent(Carol-Anne had a one-year-old son whom shespent most of her time looking after) had alsobrought her most happiness. For her, leaving EastKelby was both the “best and worst thing I’veever done … if my family could move here, I’dhave a perfect life really.”

Leisure careers: making the most of‘staying in’

Our previous ESRC study identified ‘leisurecareers’ as a useful concept through which tohelp understand long-term processes of youthtransition (MacDonald and Marsh, 2002b). Theycan play an important role in shaping the socialnetworks in which young adults operate which,in turn, play an important role in opening up andclosing down the range of personal socialidentities and courses of action perceived aspossible by young adults.

Constraints on leisure: money, families and jobs

Contrary to some accounts of British youthculture, the lifestyles of these young adults didnot take shape in relation to the consumercultures and ‘supermarkets of style’ now said tobe important influences on youthful identities(Muggleton, 1997; Hollands, 2002). Rather, theiraccounts suggest a somewhat prematurewithdrawal from the sort of public leisure said to

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typify the youth phase (for example, at 26, Lindabelieved she was “too old for night-clubs now”).

Overall, relative poverty seemed to be a mainshaping factor in leisure careers. Where samplemembers did specify leisure activities they mostlylisted those typical of the wider, adult populationin Britain – for example, nights out to pubs,social clubs and nightclubs, or home-basedactivities such as drinking alcohol, watching TV,reading and playing computer games. Home-based leisure seems to have become an evenmore important part of the leisure lives of thisgroup, particularly for the young mothers in thesample. Sally, a mother of six children, describedthe financial limitations on her social life. Shevisited a nightclub that provided free drinks. Shecould only afford to go, however, once a monthand had to save up over the preceding weeks tobe able to afford the £15 entrance fee. Chrissie –unemployed at most recent interview – explained“I just stay in and watch TV. I can’t afford to goout.”

A few with higher incomes seemed to beinvolved in more consumption-based leisureactivities (such as visiting the cinema and eatingin restaurants). The frequency with which ourinterviewees remarked that they were unable toafford a holiday was, however, particularlyrevealing of the financial constraints on leisurethat the majority experienced. Even whereinterviewees did not have the costs of supportingchildren to consider, leisure activities wereconstrained by low income. Simon, for instance,was currently in a job but still could not go onholiday with his girlfriend and family because hewas short of money. Linda explained why herfamily did not go on holiday:

“Well no, you go on holiday – you’ve gottasave big amounts of money. Holiday for meisn’t the most important thing in the world.I’d rather decorate the house than go onholiday. I see the benefit of the house forthe next year and a half. A holiday lasts ustwo weeks.”

Poverty was not, however, the only limitation toleisure. The responsibilities and time constraintsof parenthood and running a home also limitedthe time available for personal free time. Foryoung mothers, then, leisure time was oftenspent with children, extended family and otherfriends (many of whom had children

themselves). Sarah explained: “I mean, you’vegot to plan everything around them [thechildren]. You just can’t say ‘I’m going outtonight’.... You can’t just go to the shop, ’cosyou’ve got to dress the kids to go the shop, youknow? Just little things like that.” Tara describedorganising a night out with her husband as like“planning a military operation”.

One might expect those in the ‘criminal anddrug-using’ sub-sample to have rather differentleisure activities from those described by theothers. This was true to some extent andcertainly in retrospect. Early criminal and drug-using careers took shape as a form of alternativeleisure. Committing crime and using drugs hadbeen motivated, in part, by boredom: “The onlyreason why I’ve done it [heroin] in the past is’cos I’ve been bored: nowt to do, no job, stuck inthe house all day” (Richard). Several in the‘criminal and/or drug using’ sub-sample attachedimportance to being ‘fit’ and working out,primarily in order to be able to ‘look afterthemselves’ (see Winlow, 2001). This was aleisure activity that also helped ‘kill time’ forthose who were attempting to desist from heroinuse, and it took the place of the daily routines ofa drug–crime lifestyle. Max, for instance, didboxing and weight training and emphasised theimportance of having things to do:

“If you ask me life’s fucking ... it’s shit. Youneed money and you need hobbies tofucking … you know? Like, I get depressed,me, if I don’t do summat. I get depressed.Like, if I was on the dole, I would offucking ... probably ended up doin’ myselfin. I don’t know how people survive on thedole, fuck that.”

So, the leisure careers of our sample displayedthe continuation of trends revealed in our earlierstudies. For all sub-samples, leisure activitieswere primarily home-based and constrained bypoverty. Further constraints for parents includedthe heavy demands of childcare and domesticwork and, for some of those in employment, theunsociable and long hours of the jobs they did.The constraints they described are not unusualones in that most families also need to balancethe demands of childcare and employment, butthe restrictions on leisure for this sample seemedparticularly tight. The absence of holidays in thelives of interviewees was particularly revealing ofthis point.

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Social networks: strong bonds butweak bridges

In tracing the development over time ofindividuals’ leisure careers we can see as well therange and type of people with whom individualschoose to associate in their free time. Althoughan individual’s social network is not restricted tothose with whom they socialise (including,typically, family and work colleagues as well),these relationships of choice did much to shapehow people saw themselves, their circumstancesand their futures.

By examining social networks we can also beginto discuss the sort of ‘social capital’ to which ourinformants had access. By this we mean theadvantages and disadvantages that can comefrom longer-term commitment to the socialnetworks in which people operated (Bourdieuand Wacquant, 1992; Coleman, 1994; Forrest andKearns, 2000; Putnam, 2000; Field, 2003). Theresearch literature draws a distinction between‘bonding social capital’ and ‘bridging socialcapital’. ‘Bonding social capital’ refers to thestrength of connections between individuals andtheir families and closest friends. ‘Bridging socialcapital’ refers to associations with people beyondone’s immediate circle of family and friends.Many contributions to debates about socialcapital emphasise how social networks areadvantageous in ways “that enable participants toact together more effectively to pursue sharedobjectives” (Putnam, 1996). Our study lendsitself, however, to a more critical interpretation ofthe effects of social capital.

It was certainly the case that strong bonds acrossour informants’ social networks helped in copingwith life in poor communities. They offeredemotional and financial support, childcare andaccess to job opportunities. They could also,however, exclude, marginalise, constrain andentrap people, and draw them into and maintaincriminality and dependent drug use. Theknowledge, views of the world and social andemotional resources that circulate in suchnetworks can play an important role ininfluencing the steps taken in young adults’extended transitions. But social networks canalso be restricting. Some of our evidencesuggested that the trust and loyalties engenderedthrough such ties could result in alternativeopportunities being ignored. One mother, Linda,

for example, made the following commentsabout a local Sure Start scheme, despite neverhaving visited it: “I can just imagine it’d be like aload of women whinging saying ‘I’ve done this,I’ve done the other’ and the kids playing about”.This image was constructed via the anecdotalevidence of a close friend, the veracity of whichLinda had not questioned.

While bonds with personal networks tended tobe strong, few interviewees had maintained orestablished ‘bridges’ with wider networks ofacquaintances. Since our earlier studies, thewider peer networks of teenage years hadslimmed down and there was a general trend –across all sub-samples – toward socialising with,and receiving support from, family.

Those in the ‘education, training andemployment’ sub-sample continued to havefriends from work but, for some, the demands oftheir job – and in some cases new families – leftlittle time for socialising. This meant that familymembers often were considered ‘best friends’.Alex described her mother as her “best friend”and how they went on holidays together:

“... because I wouldn’t have got on a planeif it wasn’t for her [her mother]. It’s just thatshe come in and told me it was booked andI have to go and I got on a plane. And Iliked it so much, so we went back last yearand we’re going back this year.”

For those in the ‘family’ sub-sample, friends whoremained from the time of the first interview –and the new ones made since then – tended tobe mothers themselves and live close by. Dailyroutines shaped by domestic and especiallychildcare responsibilities resulted in all the youngmothers streamlining their lives down to whatthey considered most important and the benefitsthat accrue from these relations for theirparenting career:

“Janine [Val’s previous best friend] wantedme around there all the time.… She waswanting me to stay over ’cos she was onher own and I couldn’t do it, with havingme own family. We just drifted apart really.She hasn’t bothered for a while now.” (Val)

Our earlier studies showed that – for thoseinvolved in crime and drug use – social networksencouraged criminal activities that worked

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against wider community interests. Among themembers of the ‘criminal and drug-using’ sub-sample in our current study, their involvement insocial networks had very significantly changed.Earlier, neighbourhood-based social networksserved as a form of social capital inaccompanying, supporting and encouragingcriminal and drug-using identities, offeringprotection and criminal opportunity, keepinggoing the momentum and excitement oflawlessness and drug use, providing skills andcontacts and, crucially, offering a means ofentering illicit local markets in drugs and stolengoods. As individuals in this sub-sample gotolder and custodial sentences more frequent,these neighbourhood networks extended intolocal prison populations. As individuals enteredand were released from prison they could rely ona continuum of support through an exchange ofsimilar populations between the two sites ofneighbourhood and prison.

By second interview, however, interviewees inthis sub-sample complained of the disruption anddiffusion caused to social networks by regularincarceration and dependent drug use.Furthermore, these criminal and drug-usingnetworks constrained the realisation of adultindependence and the achievement of wider anddifferent life goals (for example, of finding andsustaining partnerships or finding or staying inwork) or immediate, contingent and oftendesperate goals (such as fighting addiction orsaving a relationship). As individuals grew olderand drug-criminal careers progressed, the earlierbenefits that had accrued from social networksbecame liabilities. Micky was trying to desist fromdrugs with the support of his partner and herfamily. He talked about how dependent drug useled to increasing isolation as networks becamerestricted to other users only. He noted hisstruggle to escape from the people he had onceconsidered friends:

“When you’re on the drugs, no cunt wantsto know ya. All they can remember is allthe bad things about ya. Like when you’reon the heroin, obviously anything you do isbad, ’cos that’s all you fucking think about.You just think about the habit. You don’tthink about the people around you.... Ihaven’t got none [best friends]. I’m trying tokeep myself to myself ’cos, like, now youcan find a best mate and he’ll sit there andtell you he’s clean and then two minutes

later, it’ll be ‘haway, let’s go get fuckin’some gear [heroin]’ and I’m like, ‘I don’teven wanna talk to you.’”

As a result, these social networks decreased ininfluence, as individuals reduced or relinquishedprevious associations, to be replaced by oneswhich were smaller in scope and more centredon partners and family members. Rebuildingbonds was, however, a difficult process.Continued relations with family were conditionalon individual’s demonstration of good behaviourand that they were ‘staying clean’. Where for theother two sub-samples norms of reciprocity wereopen to negotiation, this condition, for thisgroup, seemed non-negotiable. Amy had beenoff heroin since October 2002 when she was puton remand in a London prison for alleged drugoffences. She was acquitted seven months laterand returned to Kelby. She has become closer toher mother and sister, largely due to her drugdesistance:

“They’re [the family] really important nowbut I never realised when I was on thedrugs ’cos you only think about your drugs.You don’t think about nobody else.... Well,I’ve fucking tortured my family. I’vetortured my Mam and Dad while they’re inthe house, you know? Putting all thewindows in and smashing the cars andpinching ... nah, it’s not summat you do.”

Overall, then, the majority of informants hadestablished very few new ‘bridging ties’ intonetworks beyond their close personalassociations. Coping with the problems thrownup by their various careers and transitions meant,in fact, that their social networks had becomesmaller in scope, more focused on immediatefamily and friends and even more embedded intheir immediate neighbourhoods. The geographicand social horizons of our interviewees tended,therefore, to be restricted to the place they werefrom. This process has important implications forlonger-term possibilities in respect of theireducation, training and employment careers,which we spell out in Chapter 4.

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‘Critical moments’: the unpredictableconsequences of bereavement andill-health

Our previous studies highlighted the importantinfluence on youth transitions of what have beentermed ‘critical moments’ (Thomson et al, 2002).Particular life events and experiences – such asparental separation, bereavement or episodes ofill-health – were found to have significant effectson the nature, direction and outcomes of anindividual’s transition to adulthood. Thus, whilethose we researched shared many social andeconomic experiences in common, some hadquite different transitions, partly because of theinfluence of particular critical moments on theirlives. This finding, which was confirmed again inthis study, allows us to see how individualagency and decision making can operate within acontext of shared poverty, economic marginalityand – as we describe in Chapter 4 – shared,personal experiences of ill-health and loss.

The influence of personal agency was alsoillustrated in informants’ experiences ofbereavement. The personal consequences of andreactions to this sort of critical moment differedmarkedly between individuals and betweenindividuals’ separate instances of loss. Strikingly,over half reported the loss of a significant personin their lives (and this estimate does not includegrandparents): that is, of parents, siblings,partners, children or friends. Typically theseresulted from various chronic or acute illnesses,but accidents (for example, car crashes), drugoverdoses and suicide also took their toll onmembers of the interviewees’ families and socialnetworks. The psycho-social effects of thesebereavements were often significant in the laterlives of the people to whom we talked, eventhough – and perhaps understandably – theywere not quick to speak of these things.

We discussed Martin in Chapter 2 in respect ofhis ‘successful’ employment career and earlier inthis chapter in respect of his housing career. Hisexperience of ill-health and bereavement is whatis of interest here. When we first interviewedhim, Martin described how the suicide of hisfather and of a best friend had served to energisehis commitment to his job (“I’ve worked a lotharder since it happened, for me own good ...”)and to his neighbourhood. He established a grassroots youth group in order to improve conditions

for local young people: “to fight back … [and to]try and put myself right”. His second interviewcame after his marriage to his girlfriend, hisdeparture from Kelby and the perinatal death ofhis first child. Although his wife became “veryseverely depressed”, Martin’s own response tothis tragedy was to sink himself into his job:

“My way of mourning is basically to get towork and immerse myself in that, which iswhat I did when my Dad died. I had threedays off and I was straight back to work.With Ben [his son] I had three weeks offbut personally – if it was just me – I wouldhave gone back straight away. It’s just myway of dealing with things.”

Martin’s commitment to work, and the relativesuccess he had achieved, is all the moreinteresting given the health problems he and hisfamily have suffered. Shortly before the death ofhis child, Martin was diagnosed with Type 1diabetes, after collapsing at work and beingrushed to hospital: “I was lying in the hospitalbed and burst into tears and thought ‘why hasanother thing happened to me?’”.

Martin’s experience illustrates the way thatindividuals responded to bereavement, ill-healthand other critical life events in unpredictableways. There were many examples of this. Annielost her brother when she was 11 years old. Atthe age of 27, she said “I think about it all thetime, you know”. Annie described how her otherbrother “went on drugs and stuff; he wentinward on himself, as a result”, whereas she was“quite level headed and kept everything together.I suppose I was 11 going on 21 ...” Otherinterviewees variously described ‘going off therails’ and ‘everything going wrong’ following thedeath of a parent: the emotional shock associatedwith loss blew their previously straightforwardteenage transitions off course, at least for a shortperiod. In contrast, such experiences sometimesserved to orient informants away from more riskyactivities. As noted in Chapter 2, for Micky thedeath of his mother was reported as the key,motivating factor behind his ambition to desistfrom a long-term career of dependent drug use:“It affected me in loads of ways. It’s kept me offthe drugs anyway. ’Cos I was a heroin addict. Iwas messing about with the heroin for the pastfour year and – since this has happened – I’vestraightened meself out.”

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The social and psychological consequences of aserious life event such as bereavement could playout over a long period and had implications forextended youth transitions that were not obviousat the time of the event itself. Max’s stepfatherdied when Max was in his mid-teens. Onelonger-term consequence of this is that Max, nowaged 28, feels firmly tied to Willowdene and tomaintaining his local reputation as ‘a handy lad’who can protect himself and his family (despitehis emergent idea to move away to somewherewith greater personal opportunities):

“I don’t really want to leave me Mam here,you know what I mean? If my Mam wasn’tin this area I’d fuck off today. Like I say,she hasn’t been burgled in 28 year but I’dput money on it that if I moved she wouldget burgled. That’s why I make myself outto be hard. Like round here you’ve got tobe a bastard to survive, you know what Imean? It’s one of them things.”

Max gave a further instance of the sort ofdramatic life events that affected this group andthe ‘hard’ response that some men, like him, triedto take towards them:

DS: You said you had two friends thathad died?

Max: That’s them two on that photo there,Steven and Dekker.

DS: So, what happened?Max: Steven crashed in the car and hit a

tree. I don’t know if you heard aboutit on the news? The car burst intoflames, upside down [This incidentwas well-known, particularly amongour Willowdene interviewees. It was,however, not the only fatal car crashto affect those in our sample]. Therewere six of them in the car. I was thefirst one there ’cos it was rightoutside our house. Ginger’s sisterwas there, Sharon. Steven. Stevendied. Wayne. Wayne died. Sharondied. Ginger lost his legs. Smithy gotburnt badly and another lad brokehis arm. He hit the tree at 130mph,something like that.

DS: Were they just joy-riding?Max: No, they were coming back from a

club. They were on E [ecstasy].DS: What about the other lad – Dekker

was it?

Max: He died of alcohol poisoning.[later in the interview]

DS: What sort of impact do you thinkthat these two deaths have had? Imean you obviously keep thephotographs?

Max: Oh, it was fuckin’ bad. It was justbad like. I’m glad that I’m workingand that now, ’cos me head wouldbe up me arse if I wasn’t workinglike.... All the shit I’ve had in me life,it’s my mates that have got methrough it. There’s a lot of peoplewho say, “Have you seen acounsellor?”. You know with thecrash. I’m like, “No I don’t fuckin’need counselling”, you know what Imean?

While Martin and Max operated with quitedifferent personal styles of masculinity, it isperhaps interesting to note that both menspecified that working had been a strategy forstaving off the psychological trauma that mightotherwise have followed the loss of friends andparents (or, as Max more simply put it, “me headwould be up me arse if I wasn’t working.”).

Given the multiple hardships and instances ofloss suffered by our interviewees, it isunsurprising that many reported experiences ofdepression. As predicted by Brown and Harris(1978) – and suggested by Martin’s and Max’sways of coping with bereavement – women weremore likely than men to describe to us thesymptoms associated with often severedepressive episodes. Epidemiological surveysshow depression to be concentrated among“women, the young and disadvantaged”(Hammen, 1997). That is not to suggest that themen in our study were immune to this form ofpsychological ill-health but that women appearedmore likely to label their psychologicalexperiences in this way and to seek medicalassistance for it (Luck et al, 2000). Rather thanmake use of the available health and welfareservices, some men – like Max – preferred topresent a more resilient face to the world (and tous as researchers). Memorably – when we firstmet him four years ago – he told us that “onlystone-faced fuckers” survived in Willowdene.

Broader experiences of extended transitions

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Poor transitions

4Summary and conclusions

Our study has been interested in the longer-termtransitions of young people fromneighbourhoods suffering social exclusion inextreme form. The earlier chapters of the reportmapped processes of change and continuity andpicked out common themes in the lives of ourinformants. This chapter summarises our mainfindings and tries to explain why their transitionsinto adulthood continued to be ones typifiedprimarily by material poverty, economicmarginality and social exclusion.

Continuity and change in extendedtransitions

The interviews with young adults presentedsomething of a paradox. Many of them certainlyfelt that their lives had changed considerablysince we last talked to them. Our earlier studiesdescribed youth transitions in this context asvaried, precarious and multifaceted. Between thetime of their first and most recent interviewnumerous events and experiences influencedindividual biographies in ways that might nothave been predicted. Buffeted by unanticipatedcritical moments – ill-health, parental separationor bereavement – these transitions were acomplex set of twists and turns.

At case-by-case level this description still capturesthe nature of their transitions as they extendedover time. As in earlier periods of their lives, theflux and fluidity of individual transitionsengendered subjective feelings of personalchange. Moreover, our most recent interviewsrevealed that the research participants had, inmany cases, taken important steps in their livesin respect of housing and family careers. This is asignificant finding given the lack of progress they

had made in respect of their education, trainingand employment careers and their continuedexperience of poverty. The formation of newpartnerships, households and families, for a largeproportion of our interviewees, constitutes realchange and progress. The other, mostnoteworthy experience of change was had by asignificant number of those people withextended drug-using and criminal careers.Compared with our first studies, several peoplenow displayed serious commitment to desistancefrom their previous destructive lifestyles.

Thus, the study revealed not only a subjectivesense of flux in personal lives but, for many inthe sample, real changes in their housing, family,criminal and drug-using careers. These changeswere played out in a situation where informants’general experiences of the economic aspects oftransition remained constant. All but a few of theinterviewees continued to express veryconventional attitudes and attachment to work,even if several of those who were mothers stillprioritised the care and upbringing of theirchildren and had largely put concertedengagement with the labour market on hold untiltheir children were older. Even some of thosewith the least promising work histories – fromthe ‘criminal and drug-using’ sub-sample – hadnevertheless managed to access employment.

The work the interviewees did, however, waslargely of the type they had encountered in theirlives to date. Even that group who showed mostcommitment to and closest engagement with thelabour market in our first studies had made littleprogress since. Theirs were still low-skilled, low-paid manual and service sector jobs at thebottom of the labour market. In this context,getting a job that paid £4.50, rather than £3.50,an hour was counted as a good outcome and

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potential jobs in call centres or as bus driverswere regarded as a step up. They did poor work,often for seemingly punitive employers who,according to these accounts, were as quick to fireas they were to hire willing workers.

The insecurity of jobs was a central feature of theeconomically marginal education, training andemployment careers the interviewees described.The experience of training and employabilityschemes (of YT and NDYP in particular) thatinformants had amassed – prior to our firststudies and since then – seemed to have hadlittle positive impact on their chances of gettingand remaining in employment. Dispiritingexperiences of school did not predict later,wholesale rejection of formal learning. Themajority had accessed further education andtraining courses since we last met them butremained poorly qualified. While the experienceof these may have been enjoyable and they mayhave had useful social and personal functions(such as allowing young mothers time away fromchildcare and domestic work), these were mostlyshort, basic courses that, to date, had not helpedthem move to secure employment. Cyclicalmovement around jobs at the bottom of thelabour market, unemployment and short-term orsometimes unfinished education and trainingcourses remained the norm.

The description we give here, then, is virtuallyidentical to the way we described theseindividuals’ encounters with the labour market atearlier dates. That individuals were able toprogress to a relatively more independentlifestyle and to begin families is commendable.That this was done in such inauspiciouscircumstances is further testament to their abilityto get by in conditions of relative poverty. Asdescribed in Chapter 2, however, ‘getting by’ wasalso very much dependent on the practical,emotional and (albeit limited) financial supportthey received from their families (of origin anddestination). The availability of social housing inthese neighbourhoods, and the various welfarebenefits that accrue, particularly to householdswith children, also made these sorts of transitionspossible.

Thus, while individuals may have felt andexperienced considerable change since we firstmet them, the economic aspects of the sample’stransitions had remained largely unchanged. Thelocal economy is crucial, we think, in shaping the

overall outcomes of their transitions, even if, atthe individual level, people pointed to otheraspects of change in their lives. As Bertaux andThompson (1997) suggest, there is a tendency forindividuals not to question the socioeconomiccircumstances to which they have becomeaccustomed, even when, by most standards,these would be regarded as highly restrainingand unrewarding. Even where interviewees didnot directly criticise the economic conditionsunder which they lived, these constraintsemerged in passing comments. These includedmore profound statements about howprogressing with a pregnancy was simplyunaffordable to more mundane asides aboutlimited leisure and the absence of holidays intheir lives. Most in the sample were unable toafford products and activities that the majority inwider society feel are essential. In short, theconstraints and opportunities afforded by theinformants’ economic situations overshadowedall other aspects of their transitions.

Social exclusion, poverty and socialnetworks

We conclude, then, that social exclusion is areasonably apt term to describe the situations oursample were in, if by social exclusion we meanthe problems associated with relative poverty.One advantage of the concept of social exclusionis that it draws attention to the multiplicity ofproblems experienced by poor people. Nationalleague tables show the neighbourhoods in whichour informants live to be ones in which themultiple problems of deprivation are mostconcentrated. Our study shows the livedexperience of individuals who struggle toovercome these multiple hardships – of poverty,recurrent unemployment, personal and family ill-health, crime, problematic drug use and so on –as they make extended transitions to adulthood.The problems of social exclusion areinterconnected, cumulative and a process. So, forour sample, the cumulative experience of earliertransitions compounded current situations andpossibilities. Those whose earlier lives had beendominated by sporadic employment, childcareresponsibilities or dependent drug use stillcontended with the legacy of thesepreoccupations at the time of the recentinterviews.

Summary and conclusions

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Poor transitions

Of course, the problems of social exclusion arenot mutually exclusive and nor are the differentdimensions that make up youth transitions. So,for instance, while some had more to tell thanothers about their attempts to progress housing,family or employment careers, virtually all werenow more directly contending with these aspectsof transition. Careers of crime and dependentdrug use were the exception. There was noevidence of the later onset of criminal or drug-using careers within our sample. Typically, thesecommenced in teenage years and – as we haveshown – many of those involved were nowtrying to bring these to a halt.

A further trend that was common to all sub-groups was the narrowing down and closing inof social networks, compared with the wider,peer networks of teenage years. Intervieweesrarely operated outside their own,neighbourhood networks.

In the past, social mobility for Teesside residentshas in part been facilitated by geographicalmobility, yet this was rare for our interviewees.This is an area that has historically – andcontinues – to experience net out-migration(Webster et al, 2003). Those, usually younger,residents who do acquire higher skills andqualifications are prone to leave for moreprosperous labour markets elsewhere.

Our informants’ lack of access to wider networksmakes individual or collective social mobilityunlikely. Seldom did their networks of family andfriends provide the sort of social capital thatmight assist in transcending the limitingsocioeconomic conditions in which they lived.Indeed, they could be read as closing downopportunities (Strathdee, 2001). The bestexample of this can be found in the fact thatsuch networks remained the key mechanism forjobsearch. Because those they used to help infinding jobs (that is, extended family networksand friends) were also typically confined to thesame sectors of the labour market as them, ourinterviewees remained tied to insecure, poorwork that offered little chance of personalprogression.

De-industrialisation and theintergenerational experience of familydisadvantage

We do not conclude, however, that the socialexclusion experienced by our sample is in someway a direct product of their cultural practices,social networks and lifestyles. On the contrary,networks of family support proved indispensablein helping people keep their heads above water.

For us, the rapid and widespread de-industrialisation of a place that was, untilrelatively recently, one that ‘worked’, is central toany understanding of the contemporary,extended transitions of its young adults (Beynonet al, 1994; Byrne, 1999). What we see at the coreof our interviewees’ biographical accounts is theirvarious, resourceful, resilient ways to live withthe consequences of the collapse of the‘economic scaffolding’ that previously enabledtransitions to stable and secure working-classadult life (Salo, 2003).

In rooting our analysis in Teesside’s industrialhistory we do not intend to romanticisecommunities that were characterised by hardship,the dangers of heavy industry, and rigid andoppressive sexual divisions of labour.Nevertheless Charlesworth’s (2000, p 10) accountof the comparatively recent dislocation oftraditional working-class life provides a suitableepitaph for Kelby’s decline:

“The loss of a way of living that was basedupon hard work and industry, within whichthere was a sense of friendship andrelation, of basic dignity and respect. Ofsomething that one could live in. Of aonce-present state now lost, in whichindividuals could plan a future, buy ahouse, marry and have children, live a lifethat, though constrained by the routines ofwork, offered some security and somecircumscribed pleasures. However, thedecline of traditional industry, and itsreplacement with jobs governed by newworking practices have brought greatvulnerability at work, through worry aboutthe security of employment, its durationand the low pay most jobs offer.”

The wider, global processes of economic changethat have led to the de-industrialisation of places

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like Teesside have also given rise to a new‘information economy’ sector, basedpredominantly on information technology,finance, retailing and some service sectors(Wilson, 1996; Castells, 2000a, 2000b). A keyfeature of the new ‘information economy’ is thepremium placed on a high level of education andskills. Our informants seemed poorly positionedto take advantage of the graduate-levelemployment associated with expanding sectorsof the economy. Our study touched on some ofthe difficulties that young adults from poorneighbourhoods faced when they attemptedhigher education. Questions remain about theavailability of more rewarding, lucrative, graduatejobs for those who do manage to acquire higherlevel skills and qualifications but who remainliving in de-industrialised poor towns like Kelby.Annie, the only person from our study who hadgained an undergraduate degree, wascontemplating seeking work in care homes or inthe police service.

In short, Kelby is one of the places that has lostout in the shift from a predominantly industrial toa predominantly information economy. The factthat it is a town with the highest concentration ofthe most deprived wards in the country istestament to this (DETR, 2000). While theexpansion of the service sector since the 1970shas, here as elsewhere, meant increasing rates ofemployment for women, often in part-time jobs,even this sector of employment contracted inKelby during the 1990s. High rates of femalejoblessness persist in the neighbourhoods westudied.

These changes in the economic structure havebeen accompanied by the creation ofincreasingly polarised primary and secondarylabour markets (Hutton, 1996). The former,compared with the latter, carry with them jobsthat are better paid, higher skilled, more secureand of higher status. Despite the importance ofthe new ‘information economy’ at national andinternational levels, it is important not to over-predict the disappearance of low-skilled andlow-paid jobs. These kinds of jobs continue to befound in Kelby – as our informants’ workhistories showed – but the conditions associatedwith them have worsened. Confined to jobs inthe precarious secondary labour market andexcluded from the new economy, 70% of Kelby’spopulation live in deprived wards (Webster et al,2003).

The concentration of poverty and multipledeprivation in Kelby has led some commentatorsto cite it as a place in which a culturally distinct,welfare underclass is likely to be found (Murray,1994). Underclass theories implicate the poor asmakers of their own poverty, particularly throughthe intergenerational transmission of allegedlydelinquent, immoral and irresponsible ‘culturesof poverty’. We found little evidence of this.Rather, virtually all the young adults in our studyoperated with highly conventional attitudes tofamily life and mainstream personal goals inrespect of work that were remarkably durable,given the experiences they had. Some, as in ourprevious studies, turned the intergenerationalinheritance of idleness on its head (unemployedChrissie said “My father never had a job and Idon’t wanna be like him. I can get up at seven.”).However, that is not to say there were nocorrespondences between their experiences andpractices and those of their parents.

That they often came from families in whichpoverty, economic inactivity and ‘benefitdependency’ were also common reflects notsome sort of inherited cultural dispositiontowards worklessness but the fact that thesefamilies of origin and destination shared thesame structured conditions of disadvantage.Where they were still engaged in the labourmarket, most of their parents now also undertookinsecure, marginal work (typically towards theend of working lives in which better skilled,working-class jobs had featured). Where theywere not, this was often explained by disabilityand illness, not voluntary unemployment.

This latter point allows us to mention one furtheraspect of shared, intergenerational disadvantage.This concerns the problems of ill-healthexperienced by our interviewees. The sheerpreponderance of physical and mental ill-health(particularly depression) in their lives and thoseof people close to them was striking, as was theextent of their experience of bereavement. Overhalf the interviewees reported the loss of a lovedone after illness, suicide or accidents. Has Fatedealt our informants and their families aparticularly unlucky hand or did we somehowrecruit a skewed sample of the least healthymembers of the local populace? We think neitheris the case. Rather, representative statistics for theplaces we studied suggest that their experiencesreflect socially structured health inequalities asthey play out in poor neighbourhoods (Mitchell

Summary and conclusions

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Poor transitions

et al, 2000; Macintyre et al, 2002; Tees ValleyJoint Strategy Unit, 2002). These experiences aretypical of the class and place from which theycome.

Learning from more successfultransitions?

This overall summary has inevitably concentratedon the general findings of our study. A fewindividuals displayed more successful outcomes,particularly in respect of their education, trainingand employment careers. What can we learnfrom such cases that might help others in thesecontexts to make progress in their extendedtransitions?

Marje had liked school, been a good pupil andavoided the “bad ones”. She left with some lowergrade GCSEs at 16 and was then continuouslyemployed in a succession of hairdressing jobs.She had met her partner at age 15 and married at23. By second interview, aged 26, she wasemployed as a youth worker for a smallvoluntary sector agency, working withdisadvantaged young people. By this time shehad given birth to her daughter, was buying ahouse with her husband (also employed full-time), lived near and continued to have close tieswith her family of origin who provided informal,unpaid childcare. She felt ambiguous aboutstaying in a run-down area while realising thatmoving might be expensive.

At this point of our discussion we draw attentionto a significant factor that seems to have beenimportant in shaping Marje’s relative success: thenature of her employer. Her earlier jobs inhairdressing did not ‘predict’ Marje’s lateremployment as a youth worker. This came aboutbecause Marje had – while employed as ahairdresser – been involved in delivering YT at alocal Further Education (FE) college. She enjoyedthis work and noticed an advertisement for a full-time job working with disadvantagedschool-leavers. She applied and was taken on byher current employer because, she feels, in partthey were keen to offer the post to someonewho came from a not too dissimilar backgroundfrom their ‘clients’. The supportive, beneficentethos of this agency towards socially excludedyoung people extended to her too and wasfurther demonstrated by the fact that they funded

her part-time, distance learning degree (in youthwork) and allowed her two study days a week.

At the time of her most recent interview Marjewas the best paid member of the sample,enjoyed her job and had had continuousemployment since leaving school. She wasmarried and owned her own home. The fact thather qualifications at 16 were not markedly betterthan those of the majority supports our finding,from this and earlier studies, that formalqualifications at 16 in themselves do not predictlater outcomes, at least not among the relativelypoorly qualified. Marje’s comparatively positiveattitude to school may, though, be important forlater re-engagement with education and training.Her association with peer networks whogenerally shared an instrumental, rather thandisaffected, orientation to school helped maintainschool engagement and disinclined her towardsteenage truancy and delinquency.

Marje’s post-school apprenticeship seemed amore effective route to a ‘proper job’ than thesorts of training schemes most others in thesample had entered. Entering work that sheenjoyed and to which she was committed waspart of the reason why she had continuousemployment when most had more sporadicengagement with jobs. She avoided crime anddrug use. Her parents were supportive and herhusband was in full-time employment.Acceptable, informal childcare support wasavailable so she was able to remain in her jobafter the birth of her daughter. Critically, she nowworked for a benign, particularly supportiveemployer who encouraged her to undertake apart-time degree and allowed her two days aweek study time.

Evoking Marje’s atypical, ‘successful’ case allowsus to cast light on the more typical, ‘unsuccessful’cases of the majority. A combination of thevarious, positive biographical experiences andcircumstances that we described earlier seemedcrucial in ensuring Marje’s relative success. Whenthis sort of balance of beneficial factors ‘comestogether’ across the range of an individual’scareers, then progress towards satisfactoryoutcomes becomes more likely. Now considerthe typical range and combination of factors andexperiences found among and influencing thesample in general. They included dispiritingschool experiences; a collapsed, low-waged,local labour market; attached poor quality

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training opportunities; casualised, insecure jobswith few employment rights; predominantlysocial housing (some of which brought problemsof its own); limited or fragile childcare support;often close and supportive but sometimesprecarious and traumatic family relationships;intergenerational poverty; personal and family ill-health; the prevalence of dependent drug useand crime in their home neighbourhoods; and adepressing physical and social environment.

In short, for most interviewees there was littleevidence of the sort of ‘positive’ factors presentin Marje’s biography that might facilitate theirovercoming the numerous, interconnectedbarriers and hurdles they faced over time.Moreover, it is difficult to envisage how –through personal effort alone – these individualsmight escape the conditions in which they live.Despite their harbouring of very conventionalattitudes and desires for the future, it seems that‘poverty jobs’ will be, at best, the finaldestination of our sample and economicmarginality a long-term future. We consider inthe final chapter of the report what, if any, policyinterventions might change this prediction.

Summary and conclusions

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5Implications for policy

The causes and effects of socialexclusion

We are hesitant about listing policy suggestionsin respect of the findings that we havesummarised earlier. We could, if space allowed,identify numerous ways that currentinterventions might be improved in respect of theproblems associated with poor work, ineffectivetraining, drug treatment, educational dis-engagement, childcare, leisure provision, thecriminal justice system and so on that we havedescribed. Because we took a rounded view ofthe lived experiences of individuals and exploredthe many dimensions of their transitions toadulthood, any list made would involve manydifferent and complex policy interventions orreforms that implicate and impact upon sociallyexcluded young adults. Such a list, ifimplemented, might help some of the individualswe talked to deal with some of the particularproblems that they encountered.

We are resistant to sketching out such a list ofpolicy remedies and adjustments of this sortbecause at best it will deal only with the effectsof poverty, economic marginality and socialexclusion, and offer little that might change theunderlying causes and conditions that createthem. For example, defining ways in which toimprove drugs education, to better control drugsupply and markets and to revise the treatmentof addicts are all laudable exercises but nonetackles the social and economic conditions whichgive ‘poverty drugs’ their appeal (MacDonald andMarsh, 2002a; Webster and Robson, 2002).Despite various initiatives of these sorts over thepast 10 years, Teesside continues to have someof the deepest problems of drug-related crimeand youthful addiction in the country (Home

Office, 2003). Similarly, a whole raft of anti-poverty initiatives in the past and recently – suchas Sure Start, Tax Credits and New Deal – havebeen implemented in Kelby; yet it remains thepoorest district in England. The failure of suchinitiatives beyond the temporary respite they maybring to some individuals is unlikely to be only aproblem of presentation or targeting.

Instead we offer a concluding discussion thatasks some more strategic, higher level questionsabout current policy agendas and resultantinterventions towards tackling poverty, socialinclusion and exclusion. While we do not havethe space to specify every point of connection,we should add that this detailed, close-upethnography of the lived experience of extendedtransitions for socially excluded young adultsleads us to strongly endorse the general, over-arching proposals for the redirection ofgovernment policy towards poor people andplaces presented in the JRF’s recent overviewTackling disadvantage: A 20-year enterprise(Darton et al, 2003).

Principles and practice for tacklingsocial exclusion

According to Darton et al (2003) a broad-basedstrategy for tackling poverty needs to beunderpinned by certain principles. Theseprinciples would seem to currently shapegovernment policy. They are that poorerhouseholds and communities benefit from themarket economy; an adequate basic income isneeded for everyone; also access to necessaryresources such as housing and care; and that, inthe implementation of policies, there is nodiscrimination. Again although laudable, our

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study suggests that such principles are not beingdelivered in practice and the current mechanismsfor their delivery are not having the desiredeffect.

For example, New Deal will reflect the locallabour market conditions and context in which itoperates. In our study, poor and casualised locallabour market opportunities meant thatindividuals were placed in New Deal options thatthey did not want, were short-lived, were of poorquality and provided little long-term benefit interms of future occupation. They did notenhance educational opportunities for the lesswell qualified (Furlong et al, 2003), and led tolow-waged, unrewarding and insecureemployment.

Those sample members experiencing familypoverty and in receipt of Working Tax Credit andChild Tax Credit thought them important andwelcomed them in alleviating low income. Ourevidence suggested, however, that one-parentfamilies – those most in need – benefited leastfrom these credits. Young mothers who wereunable to work because they prioritised childcareover employment, or experienced difficultieswith childcare arrangements, did not benefit.Those in employment and receiving tax creditswere trapped in poor work, and those withoutchildren were not eligible. Child Tax Creditwould seem to offer a better mechanism forreducing poverty among young mothers becauseit is paid to all primary carers regardless of typeof family or if they are, or are not, in paidemployment. Tax credits and other benefits,however, engender a complicated trade-offbetween gaining and losing income throughmeans testing, and between not working andpoor work. Those sample members usingservices delivering support to parents with youngchildren such as Sure Start were very positiveabout them. Others either didn’t know aboutthese services or felt them to be inflexible inproviding the childcare support they needed.Initiatives geared to encouraging lone parents towork need to take account of local labour marketconditions – the quality and availability of work– and personal circumstance and life events – forexample, the need for flexible childcare, currenthealth problems and social misfortune that caninfluence or delay the ability to work.

Anti-poverty policies and initiatives that ignorethe underlying problem of poor work will not lift

people out of poverty. Among ex-offenders anddependent drug users such policies andinitiatives can become almost irrelevant as theyface discrimination in areas such as housing andemployment at every turn.

Extended, holistic and ‘joined-up’policy or ‘employability’?

As in our earlier studies we found that theproblems associated with youth transitions donot conclude at neat, age-specific points and,therefore, age-related policies (such as theConnexions Service and NDYP) do not ‘fit’harmoniously with the realities of the extendedtransitions that our sample members haveundertaken. While policies to attack povertyneed to be widely focused, they also need to belonger-term and sustained throughout transitionsto adulthood (Catan, 2003). The joining up ofdifferent areas of policy such as family, housing,drug treatment policy and labour market policytowards the ‘joined-up’ problems of socialexclusion (Coles, 2000) remains important.However, this wider, longer-term agenda hasbeen displaced by a narrower, shorter-term‘employability agenda’.

In conditions of poor work and a precariouslocal labour market we question theappropriateness of the ‘employability agenda’ –moving people from welfare to work – thatpermeates current government policy towardssocially excluded young adults living in poorneighbourhoods. We are not saying thatemployment is unimportant in alleviating povertyand social exclusion; on the contrary, paidemployment is important as a route out ofdisadvantage. Most importantly, it can providethe income that lifts people out of poverty and itsassociated problems. This has not happened,however, for our sample. Most of the many jobsthey and their partners had occupied have beeninsecure, low-paid, unskilled and lacking inprospects. They operated in a local labour markettypified by pervasive under-employment andunemployment. Tax credits and other benefitsreceived simply boost the low pay from thesejobs to something nearer a decent living level.These are the sorts of unattractive low-level jobsthat will always be present in local labourmarkets whether or not, at national level, wewitness the arrival of the high-tech, high-skill

Implications for policy

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information economy that some foresee. Undercurrent arrangements, there is every possibilitythat this sort of poor work will continue to formthe basis of economic life for our sample, andtheir children in future years.

Our diagnosis of why their extended transitionsinto adulthood are continuing to be hindered bythe conditions of social exclusion closelyimplicates de-industrialisation and the decline ofa once buoyant heavy industrial manufacturingsector within the local economy. This structuralfactor has caused a decline in the number of‘decent’ jobs available locally and this and theresultant poverty is a cardinal reason for thedisadvantaged positions that our samplemembers find themselves in as they have movedthrough the life-course. Problems of poordemand for labour and a paucity of realisticopportunity, training and support in respect of‘decent’ work characterise the ‘conditions ofchoice’ for our sample. Becoming a youngparent, having a criminal record or being drugdependent clearly make ‘successful’ employmenttransitions even more difficult, but economicmarginality was a condition shared by our wholesample. These are conditions of the place, not(just) the individuals we studied.

Area regeneration, social integrationand the redistribution of wealth

While our findings, analysis and conclusionsrecognise place as important in understandingthe problems of extended transitions and socialexclusion, we raise further questions about thegovernment’s continuing commitment toprivileging area as the conduit for socialinclusion policies. Since the 1980s, Teesside hasbeen the subject of repeated rounds ofgovernment programmes for economic and socialregeneration (for example, City Challenge, theSingle Regeneration Budget, New Deal forCommunities), but they have been unable tosolve the persistent, long-term and variousproblems of de-industrialisation, structuralunemployment and entrenched poverty. Area-based programmes do have a potential to helpmove people onto more progressive, upwardpaths if employment preparation and trainingconnects with real employment (with greatersecurity, opportunities for further training andpromotion and pay) in sectors where there are

labour shortages (Simpson and Cieslik, 2000;Lupton, 2003). For us, the key shortcoming ofarea-based policies to counter social exclusion isthat they cannot address the national andinternational trends that make particular placeseconomically marginal and create some groups associally excluded (Byrne, 1999; Lupton, 2003).

This brings us to our main policy conclusion.Youth policies like Connexions and NDYPpropose remedies that imply the problem ofexclusion lies in the deficits of the targetpopulation who, without the necessary or rightsorts of knowledge and skills, are unable to takeadvantages of the opportunities said to exist.Therefore policies for young adults in poorneighbourhoods are usually geared towardsemployability and training schemes, help withjobsearch, interview and personal skills. Thisignores, however, the availability and quality ofexisting employment opportunities in places likeTeesside. The problem is framed in terms of thesupply of labour being poor quality, not the poorquality of the demand for labour. Yet, both thesupply and demand of labour decide thedevelopment and nature of employmentopportunities. Historically the availability andquality of existing employment opportunities inTeesside has actually declined to the extent that,in comparison with the occupational positions oftheir parents and grandparents, young adults inour study have undergone marked intra-class,intergenerational downward mobility (Toynbee,2003). In this context, the narrow supply sidelabour market initiatives described earlier – NewDeal, Sure Start, Working Tax Credit, Child TaxCredit and so on – may in effect collude with oreven reward, rather than challenge, theprevalence of poor work in places like Teesside.Getting people into poor work hardly addressesthe multiple hardships and disadvantages ofgrowing up in poor neighbourhoods.

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6

The British ‘welfare to work’ agenda was initiallyinspired by the American system of ‘Workfare’,but even Workfare’s main advocate suggestedthat in the British context:

“Workfare does assume that jobs areavailable to recipients required to work.…Some regions are historically depressed,particularly in the north, and it might benecessary to create some jobs there if all thedependent are to work.” (Mead, 1997,p 127)

Of course, such an admission does not addressthe quality of the jobs so created. The availabilityof low-paid work does not resolve poverty andexclusion, as Polly Toynbee suggests:

“What if work, hard demanding, importantwork, does not liberate people frompoverty at all? ‘Work for those who can,welfare for those who can’t’, ‘A hand up,not a hand out’, ‘Work is the best welfare’ –these were Labour’s mantras and theychimed with the spirit of the times. Butwhat if they disguise the awkward fact thatthat work pays so little that those on theminimum wage are still excluded,marginalised, locked out?” (Toynbee, 2003,p 3)

Current policy emphasises supposed deficits inemployability and skills among marginalisedadults. This is to be rectified by training, advice,incentives and childcare support. However, thismarginal redistribution of income andopportunity will not lift people out of poverty,unless they have access to good quality trainingand rewarding and secure employment. Poortraining and poor employment opportunities tendto be synonymous. Income from decent rather

Policy conclusions

than poor work, for those able to work, is thebest way of lifting people out of poverty.Although the minimum wage raises the incomethreshold of poor work for some, it does notresolve how people might progress beyond this‘minimum’. Those who are unable, or ‘choose’ todelay work, because of childcare responsibilitiesand/or the disincentives of poor work, needmore generous Income Support to lift them outof poverty traps. This might in the short termhave the effect of deterring individuals fromseeking poor work, but it may also have thebeneficial longer-term effect of deterring pooroffers of work. A more comprehensive andgenerous redistribution of resources andopportunities, such as the creation of availableand accessible good quality training, flexiblechildcare and decent jobs, might allay the longer-term social exclusion and economic marginalityexperienced by the individuals featured in thisreport. We suggest that the current government’smuch-vaunted ‘joined-up’ policy towardsreducing poverty and social exclusion, to beeffective, needs to rediscover demand-sidelabour market reform by creating more secure,better quality, decent jobs in places like Teesside.

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Hills, J., Le Grand, J. and Piachaud, D. (2002)Understanding social exclusion, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

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Details at 1999 interview: age; Details at 2003 interview: age;employment status; qualifications employment status; qualifications

Sub- (education and training); (education and training); housing;Pseudonym sample housing; drug use; criminal activity drug use; criminal activity

‘Broderick’ Crim/DU Age 18; HMP; two GCSEs; limited Age 22; F/T employed; no furtherdrug use; criminal activity. qualifications; living with partner and child;

claims no current criminal activity.

‘Harry’ Crim/DU Age 19; HMP; no qualifications; Age 23; F/T employed; parents’ home; nocriminal activity. drug use; claims no current criminal activity.

‘Max’ Crim/DU Age 24; unemployed; no qualifications; Age 28; F/T employed; no furthermother’s home; cannabis use; criminal qualifications; lives alone; no drug use;activity. claims no current criminal activity.

‘Micky’ Crim/DU Age 21; HMP; no qualifications; Age 25; unemployed; no furtherheroin dependent; criminal activity. qualifications; bail address; claims no current

heroin use or criminal activity.

‘Richard’ Crim/DU Age 20; HMP; low GCSEs; YT; heroin Age 23; unemployed; City & Guilds; livesdependent; criminal activity. with partner and her two children;

methadone treatment; claims no currentcriminal activity.

‘Danny’ Crim/DU Age 21; HMP; no GCSEs; heroin Age 24; unemployed but ‘fiddle’ jobs;dependent; criminal activity. lives with partner, stepchild and their

daughter; drug treatment programme; claimsno current criminal activity.

‘Tim’ Crim/DU Age 20; unemployed; no GCSEs; Age 24; New Deal; lives with partner andNVQ levels 1 & 2; mother’s home; stepdaughter; methadone programme;heroin dependent; criminal activity. claims no current criminal activity.

‘John’ Crim/DU Age 28; unemployed; no qualifications; Age 34; unemployed; no furtherlives alone; heroin dependent; qualifications; lives alone; one child butsome criminal activity. limited contact; no partner; methadone

programme; criminal activity.

‘Stuart’ Crim/DU Age 28; unemployed but ‘fiddle’ jobs; Age 34; unemployed but ‘fiddle’ work; noCity & Guilds; no GCSEs; lives with further qualifications; lives alone; methadonepartner, their child and stepson; treatment; some criminal activity.claims no criminal activity.

Appendix:Cross-sectional profileof the achieved sample

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Details at 1999 interview: age; Details at 2003 interview: age;employment status; qualifications employment status; qualifications

Sub- (education and training); (education and training); housing;Pseudonym sample housing; drug use; criminal activity drug use; criminal activity

‘Amy’ Crim/DU Age 24; unemployed; no qualifications; Age 28; unemployed; lives with friend; nohomeless hostel; heroin/crack use; heroin use and no drug treatment; newcriminal activity. partner; claims no current criminal activity.

‘Jason’ Crim/DU Age 21; HMP; no qualifications; Age 25; HMP; no qualifications; continuedheroin/crack dependent; criminal drug use; some drug dealing; no partner; noactivity. children.

‘Dougie’ Crim/DU Age 21; HMP; no GCSEs; partner; Age 25; HMP; NVQ levels 1, 2 & 3; one childone child; heroin dependent; criminal in care of his mother; no treatment while inactivity. HMP; claims to be using and dealing drugs in

HMP.

‘Sarah’ FAM Age 23; low grade GCSEs; NVQ level 2; Age 27; New Deal; leaves degree course afterF/T university student; lives with her 2nd year; lives with two children and partner;two children. recreational drug use; no crime.

‘Sophie’ FAM Age 19; unemployed; low GCSEs; YT; Age 23; unemployed; no furtherlives with child; no crime. qualifications; lives with child; no drug use;

no crime.

‘Alison’ FAM Age 20; unemployed; GCSEs; YT but no Age 24; unemployed; no furtherqualifications; lives with partner and qualifications; lives with partner and twotheir two children; no criminal activity. children; no drug use; no crime.

‘Linda’ FAM Age 23; unemployed; GCSEs (B, C & Age 26; unemployed; no furtherE grades); YT (NVQ levels 1 & 2); qualifications; no drug use; no crime.lives with partner and their child;no drug use; no crime.

‘Tara’ FAM Age 22; F/T employed; GCSEs and 2 Age 25; F/T employed (hairdresser); noA levels, NVQ level 2; lives with further qualifications; lives with partner andpartner and two children; no drug use; three children; no drug use; no crime.no crime.

‘Nicky’ FAM Age 22; unemployed; low GCSEs; Age 25; unemployed; no furtherNVQ levels 1 & 2; lives with child; no qualifications, education or training; livesdrug use; no crime. with partner and two children; no drug use;

no crime.

‘Sally’ FAM Age 24; unemployed; GCSEs (A, B & Age 27; unemployed but P/T college student;C passes); YT but no other lives with six children; no drug use; no crime.qualifications; lives with four childrenand partner; no drug use; no crime.

‘Val’ FAM Age 18; unemployed; GCSEs (grades Age 22; unemployed; no furtherunknown); YT but no qualifications; qualifications, education or training; liveslives with partner and their child; no with partner and two children; no drug use;drug use; no crime. no crime.

‘Alice’ FAM Age 18; unemployed; GCSEs Age 22; unemployed; no further(low grades); lives with partner and qualifications; lives with partner and threetwo children; no drug use; no crime. children; no drug use; no crime.

‘Mary’ FAM Age 19; unemployed; GCSEs Age 23; P/T employed; no further(grades unknown); lives with child; qualifications, education or training; livesno drug use; no crime. with child; no drugs; no crime.

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Details at 1999 interview: age; Details at 2003 interview: age;employment status; qualifications employment status; qualifications

Sub- (education and training); (education and training); housing;Pseudonym sample housing; drug use; criminal activity drug use; criminal activity

‘Charlotte’ FAM Age 23; unemployed but ‘fiddle’ work; Age 27; unemployed; no furtherGCSEs (low grades); NVQ levels 1 & 2; qualifications; lives with father of twolives with child; some recreational drug children; no drug use; no crime.use; shoplifting when young.

‘Adam’ STW Age 21; New Deal; low GCSEs; doing Age 25; unemployed; no other qualifications;NVQ levels 1 & 2; parents’ home; parents’ home; recreational drug use; norecreational drug use; no crime. crime but victim of assault.

‘Roy’ STW Age 20; unemployed; YT; low GCSEs; Age 23; unemployed; no furtherparents’ home; recreational drug use qualifications; parents’ home; no drug use,(cannabis); no crime. but two criminal convictions for drunk and

disorderly.

‘Chrissie’ STW Age 21; unemployed; New Deal; low Age 25; unemployed; no further education orGCSEs; YT but no qualifications; lives training; lives alone; no drug use; no crime.alone; no drug use; no crime.

‘Annie’ STW Age 24; no GCSEs; NVQ levels 2 & 3; Age 27; unemployed; degree (2:2); about toAccess course to university; F/T student; move into new home with partner; expectingliving with partner; recreational drug first child; no drug use; no crime.use; no crime.

‘Simon’ STW Age 19; unemployed; low GCSEs; Age 23; F/T employed; no furtherCity & Guilds; parents’ home; no drug qualifications; parents’ home; no drug use; nouse; no crime. crime.

‘Marje’ STW Age 23; F/T employed (hairdressing Age 26; F/T employed; P/T degree course; livesapprenticeship); low GCSEs; lives with with partner and child; no drug use; nopartner; no drug use; no crime. crime.

‘Catherine’ STW Age 19; New Deal; no GCSEs taken; Age 22; F/T employed; no furtherNVQ level 2; lives alone; no drug use; qualifications, education or training; livesno criminal activity. alone; no drug use; no crime.

‘Martin’ STW Age 20; F/T employed; low GCSEs; lives Age 23; F/T employed; moved with partner;with partner; no drugs; no crime. no drug use; no crime.

‘Elizabeth’ STW Age 19; F/T employed; low GCSEs; Age 23, F/T employed; no furtherparents’ home; no drugs; no crime. qualifications, education or training; lives

with parents; no drug use; no crime.

‘Alex’ STW Age 23; New Deal; low GCSEs; YT but Age 25; F/T employed; doing NVQ level 2;no NVQ; lives with parents; no drug lives with parents; no drug use; no crime.use; no crime.

‘Carol-Anne’ STW Age 24; F/T employed; GCSE passes; Age 28; unemployed; no furtherNVQ levels 1, 2 & 3; moved to live qualifications, education or training; liveswith partner; no drug use; no crime. with partner; one child; no drug use; no

crime.

Appendix: Cross-sectional profile of the achieved sample

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