connecting youth with society

1. Social inclusion of young residents of disadvantaged areas ends up in more social exclusion
Msc. Tom de Leeuw – Erasmus University Rotterdam, School of Law, Department of Criminology
In this short contribution I want to speak about the paradox of the intention to socially include young
people with the unintended consequence of more social exclusion in the end. Young people in
disadvantaged neighbourhoods live under more pressure of social control than youngsters in more
privileged neighbourhoods. This strain is a consequence of safety problems in this kind of areas in
big cities like Rotterdam and Antwerp. However, we cannot compare the situation of danger,
disorder and crime in West-European cities with the risks in the poor areas in the United States, but
we can learn from their experiences around social inclusion and exclusion. A six year ethnographic
research of Alice Goffman (2009) in an Afro-American poor area in Philadelphia shows for instance
how youngsters have to cope with the situation of heavy surveillance. She describes a world in which
almost every young black male of 19 years old had already some or several experiences with the
judicial system. She shows how almost every young man she got to know distrusted the state,
because, in their perception the state always find a way to lock you up. One of the consequences of
zero tolerance policy in Philadelphia and other North-American cities is, in the words of Goffman, a
culture of suspicion and fear. Young men avoid taking a job, going to the hospital and ask for
assistance of the police when they are victim of crime, because they have to avoid arrest for fine
defaulting or other warrants for minor offences. She concludes her publications with a reference to
the French philosopher Michel Foucault, who wrote about the panoptic power of state institutions
like the prison, the asylum and a mental institution. In his book ‘Discipline and Punish’ (1979) he
explains that the aim of the eye of the state that sees everything is finally internalisation of preferred
behavior. The result of the heavy surveillance in the Philadelphian neighbourhood was just about the
opposite: young men who ‘dip and dodge’ for the police and local communities that become
fragmented as a result of distrust of the state and finally each other.
The discussion about the social inclusion of youth in Western Europe starts with a similar
context in which our cities design and use urban revanchist policies to conquer public space for the
‘decent resident’. Although, our governments use the same rhetoric of zero tolerance , we do not
have the same amount of arrests and punishments as in North-American cities. In cities like
Rotterdam and Antwerp local governments use identity checks of youngsters on public squares and
other public venues, prohibition of gathering of more than three young people in special designated
areas and we have administrative fines for all kinds of misbehavior and disorder like smoking a joint
or making too much noise. The safety problems of our disadvantaged areas got also mixed up with
another domain like migration and integration. Like French sociologist Loïc Wacquant (2008) shows
for the United States: although zero tolerance symbolises authoritarian control of all people who
break the law, they affect ethnic minority groups more. In this context we talk about the social
inclusion of youth, because we witness a lot of social exclusion as a indirect outcome of the
governmental aim to make inner-city neighbourhoods safer. I am not a stranger to the exclusionary
practices in such neighbourhoods and its many social control measures, but I got acquainted to some
youngsters who experience this inclusion during my ethnographic fieldwork in two areas in
Rotterdam and Antwerp since September 2008. I got into contact with mainly Moroccan boys who
were notably present in public space as well as in social facilities especially designed for young
people in the area. I trained with them in a local Thai box gym, I played football with them, I talked
with them about their neighbourhood and I participated in social activities like a video clip for a
campaign about respect in public transport and facilitated with others a visit of some boys to the
Dutch minister of Communities, Housing and Integration.
These boys live in areas where neighbourhood residents complain about disorderly youth. In
order to increase feelings of safety and security, local governments use different social control
measures towards youngsters who are present in public space. The neighbourhood police in Antwerp
has a special action programme to re-conquer public space and in Rotterdam the police use their
power to send youngsters away from streets where drug dealers and drugs users meet each other
1

2. regularly. However, there is not only repressive state control to tackle crime and disorder, but local
governments also add social preventative initiatives. There is a Youth Intervention Team in Antwerp
that visits families of children, teenagers and adolescents who are framed as potential risks, because
of official signals of misbehavior after identity checks of the police or as the result of an
administrative sanction. There is an intervention programme from the Rotterdam local government
towards disorderly and criminal groups of young people. The police and youth workers work together
in periodic gatherings to talk and distribute information about young residents of the area to make
arrangements about collective and personal preventive treatment. The result of these discussions
can be psychological and social coaching, finding proper recreation, and guidance in education.
Despite of all good intentions, this kind of social investments can become negative in its
consequences. In the system of state control all preventative and repressive efforts together become
almost the panoptic power Michel Foucault mentioned within institutions. Instead of the
internalization of self-control, all these different kinds of attention seem to be interpreted as
negative interference in private matters in the perspective of many youngsters. More prevention in
earlier phases of growing to maturity means state interference when probable or uncertain risks
have not become real yet. This can lead to the culture of suspicion and avoidance Alice Goffman
speaks about.
Local governments therefore have the difficult task to control their own control system In
our welfare state we do not risk a culture of negligence in comparison with neo-conservative liberal
countries like the United States. We run the risk of engaging in too much interference on the wrong
moments and with too many irreconcilable ambitions. We want our youngsters to become
responsible middleclass citizens, although a lot of them grow up in disadvantaged socio-economic
circumstances. We want them to be disciplined, ambitious and educated. This reflects the ideal of
inclusion, but not the whole reality of our social policies. The problems in our welfare policies arise
when young people do not fit this ideal and seem to resist our initiatives to model them towards the
active and responsible citizens we want them to become. Disappointment and frustration about the
stubborn and sometimes fatalistic attitude of those youngsters with the biggest problems leads the
authorities to enact more repression and sanctioning in our caring welfare system. In my fieldwork I
came across enthusiastic social workers on public meetings who only put blame on the youngsters
who gave them most difficulties and rather talk about the nice kids of nice families who respectfully
contribute to their social events. I came across severe stigmatisation of a critical and stubborn
Moroccan boy who was labeled as a negative element in the neighbourhood who was avoided by
almost all professionals.
So, what is missing in our approach of an inclusive youth policy? In my opinion there is a lack
of a realistic vision around the development of self-confidence and personality of youngsters with a
different social context and expectations than the average citizen who develops policy. Local
governments need to invest more in understanding the social circumstances and the perspective of
these young people to deal with these circumstances. They need to understand their socio-
psychological coping with different kind of socio-economic strains in order to help them overcome
minor and major setbacks. How is it possible that I can talk about social problems with the same
young men who are interpreted as troublemakers in the opinion of policy makers and street level
bureaucrats? It has something to do with social distance between social actors in daily interactions. A
police officer without a community policing responsibility does not have a lot of positive contacts
with youngsters, because he only speaks to them when there is a problem. Youngsters distrust the
community police despite their efforts to establish a relationship, because they had too many bad
experiences with the police in general. Social workers have less time for investing in social
preventative contacts with youngsters, because they ended up in new public management
arrangements with their local government who wants more control and less talking. Youngsters have
tense relationships with residents, because they distrust each other in the context of safety. They are
thinking: is this young man threatening my safety and does the resident call the police, when I am
loitering too long on this place? Again we see social distance instead of social understanding.
2

3. Therefore we need more stable personalities and mentalities in times of growing
perceptions of insecurity. Residents, professionals, policy makers and politicians need to invest on
social understanding and tolerance in order to receive the same social understanding we expect from
sometimes rowdy youngsters. At the same time local governments have to invest in professionals
who can teach youngsters social skills to see a world of opportunities rather than closed doors and
restricted horizons. These educative signals are not given through more surveillance and control;
they need to be taught at school, at home and in the community during normal daily interactions. It
is also us as residents who have to include young people in our local communities instead of the state
with his restricted socialising opportunities.
Literature:
Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage.
Goffman, A. (2009). On the Run: Wanted Men in a Philadelphia Ghetto, in: American Sociological
Review, 74(3): 339-357.
Wacquant, L. (2008). Urban Outcasts. Cambridge: Polity Press.
e-mail: deleeuw@law.eur.nl
3