Negotiating Youth Citizenship in Toronto PDF

20 Negotiating Youth Citizenship and Belonging in a Toronto...

20 Negotiating Youth Citizenship and Belonging in a Toronto “Priority” Neighbourhood Anuppiriya Sriskandarajah LEARNING OBJECTIVES To understand the impact of socio-spatial marginalization on youth To hear from youth on what belonging and citizenship mean to them To consider some examples of how racialized young people engage in their neighbourhoods To understand citizenship as practice, as opposed to simply status I remember going to school, my teacher in high school was like where do you live Hajda? And I then I am like I live in Chester Le, and then they used to be like, I used to teach one of the gangsters there. It is like what?! There is good people there, not everyone is a gangster.… You are stigmatized. You are, you are judged by where you live to be honest and how you look like especially where I lived in Scarborough [east-end suburb in the City of Toronto], especially there. (Hadja, second-generation Somali female youth) Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  396 SECTION IV CITIZENSHIP, RIGHTS, AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT INTRODUCTION In line with the themes of this section this chapter centres on the importance of looking at both the material and symbolic inequalities that young people contend with in their everyday life. This chapter looks at how social divisions of age, race, and class, as well as spatial location intersect and inform belonging and citizenship. The purpose of this chapter is to foreground space as an analytic tool, as opposed to simply a backdrop, in order to look at how spatial positions inform youth citizenship practices and sense of belonging. The significance of civic incorporation to youth is what makes this research question important. The central argument of this paper is that socio-spatial inequalities in marginalized neighbourhoods inform a particular sense of belonging and citizen- ship. This paper lays out how marginalized realities cultivate particular neighbourhood identities and ways of being that inform young people’s sense of civic engagement in the city: many disengage, while others engage in alternative ways. I also suggest that civic participation can possibly be increased if we widen the scope of what we consider en- gagement. This chapter begins with an overview of the youth citizenship literature, ex- pands conceptualizations of citizenship from formal status to practice, examines young people’s neighbourhood attachments, interrogates neighbourhood identities and ways of being that are cultivated in these spaces, and lastly looks at how these socio-spatial ne- gotiations inform young people’s citizenship practices and sense of belonging in the city. This chapter is based on ethnographic research collected for a larger research proj- ect. The research was conducted at community centres that cater to youth from two “priority” neighbourhoods in the east end of Toronto (Scarborough), “Malvern” and “Chester Le.” I focused on both youth and youth service providers. The data is a cul- mination of 16 months of fieldwork consisting of five days a week at the sites. For the purposes of this chapter, I focus on the neighbourhood of Malvern. In 2014, Toronto was named the most “Youthful City” by the international Youthful Cities initiative ranking 25 global cities from a youth perspective. The news was received with much fanfare from mainstream media applauding Toronto’s coveted number one spot. In addition to ranking number one overall, Toronto ranked number one for diver- sity. It also ranked top-five in 9 of the 16 categories. However, what received much less attention was Toronto’s poor ranking for civic participation, coming in at 23 out of 25. Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. This led me to wonder why, despite Toronto ranking high for many things including diversity, there has been a failure to ensure a sense of belonging to the politic and to engender attachment expressed in the form of citizenship. According to Siemiatycki (2011, p. 1220) the incorporation of youth in everyday aspects of “housing, employment, education, religion, media, and popular culture” are all important. However, civic in- corporation carries with it the most “symbolic resonance.” It is the political realm that defines the rules of society, and how we are responsible to others (Siemiatycki, 2011). The second issue the ranking brought to the fore was the importance of space. These international rankings often foreground space, assessing which place is better for what. The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  Chapter 20 Negotiating Youth Citizenship and Belonging 397 So we learn on a grand scale that Toronto is a “youth friendly” space, but how does living in a cosmopolitan city actually affect young people’s citizenship practices at the everyday level? How are youth differently positioned within the city, and does this influence their sense of belonging and citizenship practices? These large-scale rankings often overlook the internal lived nuances of these spaces; how youth experiences in Toronto are marked by their racial, class, gender, and sexuality positionalities. This led to the main research question I explore in this chapter: how do particular spaces inform racialized youth’s sense of belonging and citizenship negotiations and practices? This paper is guided by Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) key concepts of social field and habitus. I argue that marginalized or “priority” neighbourhoods act as “social fields,” the settings where individuals and their social locations are positioned. These settings, or more specifically these “priority” neighbourhoods, create a particular way of being, or what Bourdieu refers to as habitus, the embodiment of dispositions (Wacquant, 2013). Habitus is formed in relation to specific social fields. In this chapter I explore how these neighbourhoods cultivate particular neighbourhood habitus that inform youth citizen- ship practices. I argue that by living in marginalized neighbourhoods, racialized young people cultivate their own alternative conceptions of engagement. NEIGHBOURHOODS AND MARGINALIZATION Omitted from the large-scale international rankings is the fact that Toronto, like all cities, is not a homogenous geographic entity. But what is of particular interest is that Toronto is often described as a “city of neighbourhoods” (Hulchanski, 2010, p. 3). Although most cosmopolitan cities are of course made up of neighbourhoods, the description is intended to indicate the especially distinctive nature of Toronto’s neighbourhoods (Hulchanski, 2010, p. 3). Differences are marked along neighbourhood lines. For example, the landmark 2004 report by United Way “Poverty by Postal Code” found that poverty had become concentrated by neighbourhood areas over the last 20 years (United Way & CCSD, 2004). The report led to the creation of a taskforce, and informed the “priority neighbourhood” designation whereby 13 neighbourhoods were identified as being underserviced and re- sources were set aside to specifically target these neighbourhoods. Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. J. David Hulchanski’s (2010) report a few years later found that Toronto really has three cities within its borders, demarcated by income disparities among Toronto’s neigh- bourhoods. Neighbourhoods where incomes have increased since the 1970s are for the most part found in the city’s core, close to the city’s subway lines—what he refers to as City #1. City #3 is the low-income areas where neighbourhood incomes have decreased compared to the city average and they are found mostly in the northeast and northwest parts of Toronto, or what is commonly referred to as the “inner suburbs.” Lower-income neighbourhoods in Toronto are mostly concentrated in the outer layers of the city, as urban development has sprawled outwards where land and housing are cheaper. White The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  398 SECTION IV CITIZENSHIP, RIGHTS, AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT middle-class flight went either out of Toronto or towards the core. City #3 also happens to be where most of the “priority” neighbourhoods are located. The middle-income ar- eas of the city (City #2) have shrunk from 1970 to 2005, while the high-income areas have increased slightly and the low-income areas have dramatically increased. Changes to income can be partly attributed to shifts in the economy, an increase in precarious work, difficulties new immigrants face when they look for work, and changes in govern- ment taxes and income transfers. These changes also coincide with Toronto’s tremendous growth in diversity in the last few decades; in other words, social ineqaulity in the city has taken an undeniably racial form. In 1971, 5 percent of Toronto’s population was non-European, and by 2000 this number had grown to 40 percent. By 2001, 44 percent of Toronto’s population was born outside Canada (Gaskell & Levin, 2011). In City #1, the number of foreign-born people declined from 35 percent to 28 percent between 1971 and 2006, whereas in City #3, the number of immigrants almost doubled in that 35-year period, from 31 percent to 61 percent (Hulchanski, 2010, p. 11). The visible minority population increased in poorer neighbourhoods, from 20 percent in 1981 to 29.5 percent in 2001 (United Way & CCSD, 2004, p. 49). Despite the fact that researchers have found that young people are often more affect- ed by the neighbourhoods where they live than any other demographic group (Kintrea, Bannister, & Pickering, 2010), there is little literature on these kinds of differential spa- tial realities and their impacts on young people’s lives in the Canadian context. Space, for the most part, is taken for granted in sociological research. Researches position space as the backdrop to research, as opposed to interrogating the socio-spatial implications of place on young people. Because young people have fewer freedoms and less money than their adult counterparts, they are more rooted in their local environments (Harris, 2009). Therefore, underscoring the everyday realities that unfold in local spaces bears great sociological importance. YOUTH CITIZENSHIP Turner (1997, p. 5) defines “citizenship as a collection of rights and obligations which give individuals a formal legal identity” in relation to the state and each other. The youth cit- Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. izenship literature can be divided into two strands, the “civic deficit” thesis and the “new engagement thesis” (Harris, Wyn, & Younes, 2007). The “civic deficit” thesis is premised on the belief that young people, due to globalization and economic restructuring, do not experience uninterrupted “structured identities and predictable life trajectories” compared to previous generations and that this in turn influences their limited sense of citizenship (Harris, Wyn, & Younes, 2007, p. 19). Studies show that because of higher feelings of alienation, youth express little interest in civic engagement through conventional political forums (Bang, 2004; Harris, Wyn, & Younes, 2010). For further discussion of youth citizenship, see L. Alison Molina-Girón, chapter 19 of this volume. The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  Chapter 20 Negotiating Youth Citizenship and Belonging 399 One of the reasons the “civic deficit” thesis is popular is because most research on citizenship continues to examine more institutional approaches to citizenship that focus on “political or civic culture” (Miller-Idriss, 2006, p. 543). The institutional focus of citizenship research has led to a concentration on measuring the decline of normative citizenship practices such as voting rates and membership in political parties as opposed to examinations of different ways citizens actually engage in citizenship in their every- day lives (Vromen & Collin, 2010; Lister, Smith, Middleton, & Cox, 2003). Despite the traditional focus on formal engagement and the “deficit thesis,” recently there has been a new emphasis on the “new engagement thesis” (Harris & Wyn, 2009; Harris, Wyn, & Younes, 2010; Vromen & Collin, 2010). This thesis looks at different forms of civic engagement by young people outside formal politics as partly a result of the unique realities that condition contemporary youth engagement. Scholars that subscribe to this thesis argue that the decline in interest of young people in convention- al forums is due to an increasingly heightened sense of alienation from these entities. Instead, research shows young people connect with civic life in new ways that are related to their “fragmented and individualized biographies” (Harris, Wyn, & Younes, 2007, p. 19). These practices are less based on collective affiliations and take form more with the use of “information technologies and engagement with recreational and consumer choice as politics” (Harris, Wyn, & Younes, 2007, p. 19). Harris, Wyn, & Younes (2007, p. 25) argue that in light of increased fragmentation and a sense of individualism, and despite new pressures such as a lack of “predictable pathways and social safety nets,” youth are not simply apathetic, as they are often presented. Young people’s understand- ing of civic engagement involves more than participation in formal political activities. They are finding alternative ways to participate. Bang (2004) identifies a broader shift away from engagement with the state and formal sites of citizenship activities towards network-building and issues-driven civic action. If we use the same template to examine youth citizenship as is applied to adult citizenship then it is generally thought that youth are not engaged. Instead young people need to be examined in light of their difference in capacity, independence, and access to resources. It is for this reason that Lister (2003) proposes a differentiated universalism model to citizenship that accounts for different ways people participate as citizens. This approach requires a move past the understand- ing of citizenship as simply status and instead to view it as practice. Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. WIDENING THE SCOPE: CITIZENSHIP AS PRACTICE To understand citizenship as only a legal status does not capture the different ways young people practise citizenship. When we depart from the conceptualization of citizenship as only a legal idea and instead consider it a social practice we see the im- portance of looking at social factors to understand how young people practise citizen- ship (Kurtz & Hankins, 2005). Feminist research on citizenship has helped move the The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  400 SECTION IV CITIZENSHIP, RIGHTS, AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT concept of citizenship from the abstract to a lived approach. Ruth Lister (2003) found that focusing only on the formal realm of citizenship often ignores the plight of wom- en. This outcome can lead to erroneous conclusions that women are not active citizens. However, by expanding her scope to look at citizenship as practice outside formal avenues, she found that women’s assertions of citizenship were often within arenas of informal politics. Women who might feel excluded from formal avenues and who look for ways to have their voices heard might turn to alternative practices to engage. Practice is composed of both agency (capacity to act independently) on the part of actors and structural constraints (the level of restriction placed on options by the social role one occupies, or lack of access to resources due to one’s social positionality) that limit women’s participation in the formal arena. A practice-focused approach therefore allows us to rethink this relationship between individuals and the state in terms of dif- ferentiated universalism, linking a necessary universalism (whereby everyone deserves the same rights bestowed by the concept of citizenship), while accounting for the particular lived experiences of individuals (Lister, 2003). Differentiated universalism captures the tension between the universal and the particular of people’s experiences. I would add that an understanding of citizenship that does not factor in local spaces also misses how people in different spaces practise citizenship. This exclusion occurs not only in lived reality but also in how citizenship is studied. Conceptualizing citizenship as a mutually negotiated network of practices be- tween individuals and the state foregrounds the need to research both structural constraints and agency. To work through the structure/agency dilemma I draw on Bourdieu’s concepts of social fields and habitus (see also Kennelly, Stam, & Schick, chapter 5). For Bourdieu, social life is made up of social relations. These relations happen in two forms, fields and habitus. Bourdieu describes the social world as being divided into different arenas or “fields,” each with its own rules and forms of capital. Each field has its own positions and practices, and it is in fields that struggles for power and social claims take place. For the purpose of this paper, I conceptualize the neighbourhood of Malvern as a social field. Society is made up of social fields and each field has its particular values and “regulative principles” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1991, p. 17). Being from a particular neighbourhood or social field informs one’s perspectives and actions. For example, if Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. you grew up in a middle-class neighbourhood you might be more likely than others to know how to navigate university life. You might be better prepared with the skills needed for filling out applications, picking courses, and studying, all of which are required for success at university. However, if you were then displaced into a low- income, crime-ridden neighbourhood, you might not have the necessary set of skills and dispositions that would be useful to survive on the “streets”—in other words, your middle-class field would not fit easily within another neighbourhood, or field. The concept of field can help us understand why growing up in marginalized neighbour- hoods might shape particular forms of engagement. The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  Chapter 20 Negotiating Youth Citizenship and Belonging 401 Habitus is the embodiment of the habits and dispositions that actors possess (Wacquant, 2013). Habitus can be the way the youth in my study dress, the brands they wear, the music they listen to, their mannerisms, their values, and the way they carry themselves or perform their identities. Our habitus allows us to navigate our surround- ings. Habitus is the framework and resources we unconsciously draw on in our everyday lives and practices. For example, an upper-class person might be more inclined to attend an opera because they have been exposed to this form of entertainment and socialized to appreciate it from an early age. Tastes, likes, and dispositions are seen as natural or taken for granted; habitus allows us to see them as culturally informed. The concept of habitus can help us understand how marginalized neighbourhoods construct certain ways of being, interests, and values that lead young people to construct forms of citizenship that move beyond normative understandings of engagement. YOUTH CITIZENSHIP PRACTICE IN LOCAL SPACES: SETTING THE FIELD This chapter is based on ethnographic research that evolves throughout the study. Ethnographic research involves empirical work, especially observation with the goal of constructing a nuanced text. It allows for participation in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time. Researchers watch, listen, and ask questions; they produce rich, detailed field notes that seek to describe and makes sense of social settings and relationships to produce theoretically informed, contextualized accounts (O’Reilly, 2005). One of the major fields where youth citizenship unfolds is in the youth’s neigh- bourhood. Malvern is a priority neighbourhood with a population of about 40,000. It is made up of mixed housing, including high-rises, townhouses, public housing (also known as TCHC—Toronto Community Housing Corporation—housing), single pri- vately owned homes, and, more recently, new builds in its northern parts. Malvern has two high schools, a secular public and a Catholic public school. It has a large recreational centre in the middle of the community and a mall that acts as a central hub. I conducted my research at a local community centre. It served youth from both nearby high schools. The two main visible minority groups that make up Malvern are Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. South Asian (mostly Tamil) and Caribbean Black, followed by Filipino and Chinese. Visible minorities make up 87 percent of Malvern, higher than the city’s average of 49 percent. The low-income rate for the city is 19 percent whereas in Malvern it is 21 percent (City of Toronto, 2014). This is the demographic context within which the local young people navigate belonging and citizenship. The importance of neighbourhoods for the construction of belonging and citizen- ship is a common theme that emerged in the accounts of young people and youth service providers in my study. The micro-territories in which young people’s everyday lives un- fold impact their sense of belonging. First, Parekh (1999) states that in order to belong The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  402 SECTION IV CITIZENSHIP, RIGHTS, AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT to a community, a person must feel they are a part of it, see it as their own, feel a sense of commitment to it, and enjoy a special relationship to the community (whether it is at the neighbourhood, city, or national level). Second, for a person to feel they belong to a space they must feel they are entitled to make certain claims to the space and be accepted as a valued member. Belonging involves mutuality and reciprocity. A person cannot feel they belong to a community unless they are accepted as valued members by both the state and civil society. I draw on and reproduce in the chapter large excerpts from my collected data with the explicit intention of allowing marginalized young people to tell their stories through their own words, slang, metaphors, and descriptions. I want their stories to appear as they were told. At times this can read as choppy and does not flow smoothly, but as much as possible I want to stay true to the words of the youth and youth service provid- ers. Often these quotes are fraught with the conflict, ambiguity, and at times contradic- tions that frame their lives. MARGINALIZED SPACES AND NEIGHBOURHOOD ATTACHMENT Young people in the study are aware of the negative framings of their neighbourhoods by outsiders. Youth service providers and youth recognize that their neighbourhoods more often than not fall within two dichotomized framings in dominant discourses. Their neighbourhoods—and more specifically the racialized bodies that occupy these spaces—are presented as either agents of violence and/or victims of violence in need of community support. MP, a service provider at the community centre, articulates these sentiments. I think [pause] the media creates a synopsis of Malvern based on things that have been in the media. So, um a lot of attention in the media regarding Malvern on two fronts, those form a negative perspective or positive perspective. There isn’t a medium or a happy medium in terms of a general approach on how the media news corporations look at Malvern. So it is either they are writing a story about violence Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. or they are writing a story about community support. Yet these “positive” pieces reiterate ideas of these communities as over-reliant on public support and draw on paternalistic tropes that frame these communities as in need of government “saving.” Despite recognition of negative framings by media and outsiders and perhaps in resistance to these framings, most young people contend that their neighbourhood provides a great sense of community, and demonstrate a strong attachment to their community. This position is in contradiction to hegemonic rhetoric of racialized young people as having little attachment to community life, engaging in The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  Chapter 20 Negotiating Youth Citizenship and Belonging 403 antisocial behaviour, generally being responsible for the urban decay that plagues their neighbourhoods, and living in self-imposed social isolation. Young people, I found, take great pride in their neighbourhoods and highlight the deep sense of community that is cultivated in these spaces. Tina, a second-generation Latina youth, shared her experi- ences of life in Malvern and her deep sense of community: There is a lot of community and there is a lot of love. If anyone is sick, like everyone goes to the house and is just like do you need anything. Even if you are going to the grocery store they will ask like do you need me to pick something up for you. I feel like there is so many positive in Malvern but you just don’t get to see that because of what they portray on the news. It is a nice place. This is not to romanticize marginalized spaces. While these spaces do provide com- fort and safety in familiarity, this does not come without concurrent feelings of ambiv- alence among many young people. For example, in Malvern the sense of safety is often accompanied by simultaneous feelings of fear that result from living in impoverished con- ditions. My conversation with a group of Tamil male youth captures this constant, often contradictory, negotiation that is involved in navigating life in marginalized spaces. Abalsh: I am kind of glad I grew up in Malvern. Anu: How come? Abalsh: I don’t know. Pragash: Just the people that you grow up [with]. Abalsh: Also like. Pragash: Like we got taught, like, Abalsh: In Malvern we are with our own people [Tamils], if we go somewhere else you would be an outcast. So I rather be here. Anu: So what do you guys like about your neighbourhood? What do you dislike? Taran: I dislike that I can’t walk around at any time. You can’t, you always have to watch out. Abalsh: Yea. Shanthan: You can’t just freely walk around. Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Pragash: There is no ever 100 percent you are safe. There is always that chance that they call you over, any time of the day. Anu: Who is “they”? Pragash: Those gangs … Abalsh: At times it is pretty quiet. I don’t know about other areas. Pragash: I would say the people. Tharan: The area. The parks. Since there is a lot of Tamil people you feel comfortable with them right. Abalsh: You feel safe. The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  404 SECTION IV CITIZENSHIP, RIGHTS, AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT Both youth and service providers attributed strong neighbourhood attachment to young people’s limited opportunities outside their communities. The blame for limit- ed opportunities was placed directly on systemic racism and lack of social resources. Marginalized young people have fewer spaces to cultivate belonging. A heightened sense of neighbourhood is often a result of lack of opportunities to identify with anything else (see similar findings in Council of Europe, 2007). Angela, a second-generation Ethiopian youth, discussed at length that when youth are marginalized from other spac- es they grow deeper attachments to the only space available to them: I think what it comes down to is like, like when that is all you have, that is what you identify with. They can’t even go out, well they can, but even for them to go out they can’t … you don’t have nowhere else to connect with, you will make, you connect with where you at. Because you don’t have anything else. MARGINALIZED SPACES AND NEIGHBOURHOOD HABITUS Isolation from wider society is often found alongside a strong sense of “place attach- ment” (Kintrea, Bannister, & Pickering, 2010, p. 448). Strong neighbourhood identi- fication informs specific neighbourhood habitus. Space can inform the way people act, speak, dress, the music they listen to, the way they carry themselves, their values, and what they deem is possible for people that live in that space. I found that many young people often reproduce dominant negative discourses. Despite the positive aspects of living in Malvern young people often internalize negative perceptions, experience various forms of marginalization, and engage in certain activities or forms of postur- ing to belong. This can often have undesirable outcomes, whether it is involvement in gang activities, drugs, violence, or other crimes. Manuela, a second-generation mixed Afro/Latina Caribbean youth, captures this contradiction. She speaks to how lovely it is to live in Malvern but how young people sometimes take on the negative perceptions of wider society, “because maybe we feel we have to live the way we are perceived.” Engagement in negative activities such as gang violence and robberies, Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. she says, is reinforced by over-policing of the area. Over-policing of certain spaces leads to overrepresentation of crime in those spaces. Residents of these spaces then become seen as prone to crime, when the higher crime statistics can partially be at- tributed to over-policing. This reinforces the idea that racialized youth in these mar- ginalized spaces are criminals. When these representations are constantly reinforced, some young people might then see criminal activities as their only viable option. For Manuela, when young people perceive their neighbourhood as “bad,” they feel they have to live up that identity: The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  Chapter 20 Negotiating Youth Citizenship and Belonging 405 Malvern is a very exciting community to live in. Malvern is like this big pot of gumbo, jambalaya that tastes so good. Malvern like any other community has its ups and downs. Its pros and cons, its challenges and its beauties and joys. Uh, Malvern is just so vibrant you know. Like it is, I love, I love walking through Malvern in the summer time and just seeing and coming into connect with ev- erybody around the globe and it is beautiful and I love Malvern for that, I really do. Uh, one of the things that pains me about Malvern is obviously the percep- tion of Malvern, and the subsequent police presence in Malvern uh and even us Malvernites taking that on, or embodying that because maybe we feel we have to live the way we are perceived. Mike, a service provider, spoke to how young people had to “walk the walk” in order to survive in a neighbourhood that puts primacy on a street culture that values toughness: I think one of the big challenges is that young people in this neighbourhood have to, even when they are good, when I say good I don’t mean the kids are bad. When they are law-abiding, they are trying to strive for success they still have to walk the walk of the neighbourhood which means they have to still look like they are tough just to survive.… I think some of them feel a sense of power saying they are from Malvern, you better not mess with me because I am from Malvern. And it is. In the absence of the positive reinforcement then you take things that are left, right? There is also a sense of power that comes from saying they are from these margin- alized spaces. This is particularly important because it bestows a form of local social and cultural capital that these young people are often denied in other social fields. When you have limited access to other spaces you cultivate parallel fields where different un- derstandings of prestige, honour, and recognition exist, or what Bourdieu calls symbolic capital. For example, many youth and service providers spoke about the great weight that was put on youth, especially boys, on appearing “tough” and “street smart,” and display- ing a particular type of machismo with a strong sense of territoriality. However, this can also mean there is potential for detrimental consequences. Priya, a second-generation Tamil youth, explains: Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. So if you are from Malvern you would be like I am from Malvern, this is sort of like I felt it was more guys always presenting I am from Malvern. Oh I am from this area so don’t mess with me kind of thing.… If you are from the Scarborough neighbourhood you know, if you grew up in Scarborough from when you were little you could tell who is from Malvern and who is not. Sometimes when they say they are from Malvern I just laugh cause I know who is from Malvern and who is not.… You can also tell from their physical appearance, the way they are, you can just tell. The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  406 SECTION IV CITIZENSHIP, RIGHTS, AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT Priya speaks to how neighbourhood habitus is internalized and informs how young people exist in space. She can’t quite articulate it in words but, as she states, “you can just tell” from the way the young people act, carry themselves, and look that they are from certain neighbourhoods. Young people recognize that different spaces produce different ways of being. Some of the service providers who work across the city also recognize how different neighbourhoods in Toronto inform different outlooks on life. For example, Esquire discussed different neighbourhoods as social fields that inform neighbourhood habitus differently, depending on which part of the city people were in: When you end up going along the, again Church Jarvis area, there is a certain culture you see there. If you walking past Lawrence market than you would see [different things than] when you passing Malvern mall. It is just a different out- look when you getting from that. It is just embracing that uniqueness that really tells a, that really tells an important story … there is a uniqueness to being from Scarborough that you won’t get from being anyone else. It is the same that you get from being from Jane and Finch. That you are a little bit harder, a little bit street smarter. I welcome that.… So there is some pride that comes in that, you know what I mean. That you are not able to get anywhere else. I appreciate that you are able to see a lot more being from Scarborough that you would from being from other parts of the city. A sense of community facilitates possibilities for change and citizenship (Travis, 2013). Neighbourhoods remain important sites for youth citizenship practices (Dillabough & Kennelly, 2010; Nayak, 2003). Wacquant (2007) argues that people in marginalized areas often try to separate themselves from others in their neighbour- hood, saying things like “I want to move out” or “I am not really like others here.” He refers to this as “lateral denigration and mutual distanciation” (p. 68). I argue, however, that this is not always the case for racialized young people. Racialized young people take great pride in their neighbourhoods. This is often because they are not able to easily move outside their neighbourhood and have yet to live or work outside their localities. There isn’t a sense of shame that is imposed on them from the outside since most of their daily encounters continue to be restricted to their immediate localities. Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. It is when they seek out opportunities like employment that takes them outside their neighbourhood that they face the harsh realities of living in racialized neighbour- hoods. Young people’s claims to the city are more subject to scrutiny when they leave the confines of their neighbourhoods. Consequently, some young people are cognizant of the divide between their neigh- bourhoods and outside spaces, especially the centre of the city and how it affects their dispositions. I had a particularly revealing conversation with Deque, a second-generation Ghanaian youth. Deque, who had recently graduated from high school and was working at a local pizza shop, often spoke about feeling unwelcomed when he leaves Malvern. The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  Chapter 20 Negotiating Youth Citizenship and Belonging 407 Deque, who is also a rapper and civically active in the city—with both roles often tak- ing him out of his neighbourhood—feels the most social distancing when he travels to more well-off areas. This can explain why marginalized youth often do not traverse both physical and imaginary boundaries. Deque recognizes that when he ventures out of his neighbourhood, a different social field operates. There is a different habitus, a different way to exist and even to speak in these spaces. Deque, active in his community, said that he confronts this difference the most when he engages in his advocacy work: It is like, it is like these filters that everybody has to go through as soon as they step into a new environment. I feel that everybody should be living in on a common ground.… There is, it goes back to what I was saying about how there is so many different environments so it is like outside of Malvern there is, there is a different way you have to articulate yourself. You have to communicate differently. Despite their alienation, and partly as a result, young people’s neighbourhood hab- itus propels them to get involved in their communities. In the final section, I turn to how marginalized social fields inform young people’s neighbourhood habitus and more specifically its implications for their citizenship practices. SOCIO-SPATIAL NEGOTIATIONS AND CITIZENSHIP PRACTICES Despite hegemonic ideas that racialized youth in marginalized spaces engage in de- structive behaviours and act as prime catalysts of urban disorder, my time in the field revealed that young people have strong neighbourhood attachments and a desire to make their neighbourhoods better. Randy was one of the tremendously resilient youth whom I had the pleasure of working with during the course of my research. Randy had started an art program in Malvern, which I refer to as SPEAK. This organization had a mandate for civic engagement (this includes feeding the homeless initiatives, youth empowerment workshops at schools, and even endorsing political candidates). SPEAK holds weekly performances once a week in a local community hall with 50 Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. to 100 youth; on special nights there are upwards of 200 youth in attendance from across the city, but mostly from Malvern. A typical night is filled with spoken word, rap, and song performances that speak to issues of social injustice. Through SPEAK, Randy built a grassroots community of like-minded civically engaged youth. When asked about the success of his organization, he attributed it to his neighbourhood and the social inequality he experienced living in this space. He credited his resilience and his desire for change largely to having grown up in Malvern. Randy illustrates how young people use marginalized neighbourhood identities and attachment as catalysts for citizenship practices: The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  408 SECTION IV CITIZENSHIP, RIGHTS, AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT SPEAK came about because, because of Malvern I would have to say. Because of Malvern and because I knew people didn’t have space to express themselves, didn’t have the space to come together.… I honestly, I feel when people are self- empowered and people can self-motivate themselves they will, be willing to step outside themselves and help out other people. When citizenship is conceptualized as a particular type of neighbourhood-building, youth are more willing to become involved compared to when citizenship is defined only in relation to formal arenas of citizenship practice. Young people in my study recon- ceptualized traditional ideas of citizenship from formal avenues and at the level of the nation state to more local level involvement that moved past normative activities such as petitions or organized walks that might be more easily recognized as citizenship. Randy speaks about how the NDP (New Democratic Party) representative for his area was the person to really reshape how he formulated citizenship: She said something that stood out to me. She said politics is community building and that is what you are doing. How come people don’t talk about politics like that? She is the only person, and the first person to introduce it to me like that. She said politics is community building. So how come I don’t see that in other politicians. Why do I just see people dress up in suits and talking about themselves? There are many other stories like the one Randy shared. Racialized young people are engaged in marginalized neighbourhoods. Their citizenship practices often differ from traditional engagements due to socioeconomic deprivation, racism, and other forms of social inequalities. This study showed that socio-spatial marginalization—and its implications for belonging and citizenship practices—needs to be accounted for when examining young people’s everyday lives. CONCLUSION This chapter examined how the socio-spatial realities of the social inequalities in mar- Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. ginalized neighbourhoods inform subjectivity, sense of belonging, and citizenship. A racialized, criminalized, marginalized existence produces a neighbourhood habitus that informs young people’s sense of belonging and engagement in the city. Many disengage while others engage in subversive ways. This paper advocates centring the socio-spatial when studying young people. This is especially important when examining citizenship practices. Racialized young people who are often more restricted to their local environ- ment than adults due to a lack of opportunities outside their community tend to engage more in their local spaces. This has implications for how youth citizenship is studied, as well as for policy initiatives. A better understanding of civic engagement and belonging The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  Chapter 20 Negotiating Youth Citizenship and Belonging 409 allows for reform to citizenship education policies. I recommend a move from a national to a more local focus. A local focus can also inform municipal funding schemes, in rec- ognizing which programs youth feel contribute to citizenship practices and which poli- cies stifle these practices. A socio-spatial focus can also lead to wider understandings of how to cultivate conditions that foster a greater sense of belonging and civic engagement for racialized youth in marginalized neighbourhoods. CHAPTER SUMMARY Together, in this chapter, we Learned the importance of expanding our understanding of citizenship from one that focuses on status to one that focuses on practice. Saw the importance of neighbourhood space for young people’s conceptions of belonging and civic engagement. Learned that the young people in the study often feel marginalized due to rac- ism and a lack of social resources from other spaces in the city. Saw alternative ways young people engage in their neighbourhoods. STUDY QUESTIONS 1. After reading this chapter, what would you say are some of the sociological factors that inform young people’s ideas of citizenship? 2. Why do you believe that we continue to use the concept of “citizenship” as formal sta- tus, as opposed to a wider conceptualization of “citizenship” as “practice”? 3. Think of the neighbourhood you grew up in as a social field. What are some ways your neighbourhood informed your habitus? 4. You have been asked to advise the Ministry of Education to help revamp the civics education curriculum. What are some of the ways that a socio-spatial analysis of citi- zenship could shape that curriculum? Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. 5. This chapter did not focus on gender. Taking into consideration socio-spatial realities, what might be some implications for a gendered analysis of youth citizenship? What are some examples? SUGGESTED RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT Research some policies and programs that your three levels of government have put in place to get youth involved in the community. Evaluate their strengths and potential weaknesses. The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  410 SECTION IV CITIZENSHIP, RIGHTS, AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT SUGGESTED FILMS/VIDEO CLIPS Young Voices Reach Out: A Youth-to-Youth Civic Engagement Initiative www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mfHME3Niu8 This clip looks at how a group of Lebanese youth use art as a means of civic engagement in high-conflict zones. This video shows the potential of alternative forms of citizenship to cultivate sense of belonging and camaraderie even amidst civil unrest. Youth Civic Engagement through Social Media www.c-span.org/video/?299457-1/youth-civic-engagement-social-media In this clip, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library and the Annen- berg Presidential Learning Center host a panel discussion with digital media users. The discussion is centred on the ways young people use social media for civic engagement. Topics include activism, politics, and entrepreneurship. Arab Canadian Youth: Pursuing Responsible Citizenship to Counter Disempowerment www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m4g_UZGhC4 This clip outlines the intersection of academia and public policy research concerning youth citizenship among Arab Canadian young people. Bessma Momani, a professor from the University of Waterloo, describes her research project and its main goals. SUGGESTED WEBSITES Samara Canada www.samaracanada.com/ Samara Canada is a charity established in 2009 that is dedicated to reconnecting citi- zens to politics. Its goal is to increase civic engagement and create a more positive public life. The site offers research and educational programming for all segments of society, including youth. Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. Youthful Cities www.youthfulcities.com/ Youthful Cities ranks cities from a youth perspective. Their purpose is to build youth networks. The goal is to gather data from a youth perspective in hopes of informing urban social policies. United Nations Development Programme www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/results/fast_facts/Fast-Facts- youth-civic-engagement-and-participation.html The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-ebooks on 2024-09-05 19:15:15.  Chapter 20 Negotiating Youth Citizenship and Belonging 411 The United Nations Secretary-General has made youth a priority and appointed a Spe- cial Envoy on Youth. The UN has also developed a United Nations System-wide Action Plan on Youth (Youth-SWAP). The goal is to support policies aimed at empowering youth and deepening engagement. This site illustrates the many ways youth are involved in the global context. REFERENCES Bang, H. P. (2004). Everyday makers and expert citizens: Building political not social capital (Working Paper). Australian National University. Retrieved from digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/42117/2/ Henrik.pdf Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (1991). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. City of Toronto. (2014). Neighbourhood census/NHS profile. Retrieved from www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/ contentonly?vgnextoid=100c861b9fdb1410VgnVCM10000071d60f89RCRD Council of Europe. (2007). Young people from lower-income neighbourhoods: Guide to new approaches to policies. Strasbourg Cedex, Belgium: Council of Europe Publishing. Dillabough, J., & Kennelly, J. (2010). Lost youth in the global city: Class, culture and the urban imaginary. New York: Routledge. Gaskell, J., & Levin, B. (2011). The challenges of poverty and urban education in Canada: Lessons from 2 school boards. In C. Raffo, A. Dyson, H. Gunter, D. Hall, L. Jones, & A. Kalambourka (Eds.), Education and poverty in affluent countries (pp. 148–160). New York: Routledge. Harris, A. (2009). Shifting the boundaries of cultural spaces: young people and everyday multiculturalism. Social Identities, 15(2), 187–205. Harris, A., & Wyn, J. (2009). Young people’s politics and the micro-territories of the local. Australian Journal of Political Science, 44(2), 327–344. Harris, A., Wyn, J., & Younes, S. (2007). Young people and citizenship: An everyday perspective. Youth Studies Australia, 26(3), 19–27. Harris, A., Wyn, J., & Younes, S. (2010). Beyond apathetic or activist youth: “Ordinary” young people and Copyright © 2018. Canadian Scholars. All rights reserved. contemporary forms of participation. Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 18(1), 9–32. Hulchanski, J. D. (2010). The three cities within Toronto: Income polarization among Toronto’s neighbourhoods, 1970–2005. Toronto: Cities Centre Press. Kintrea, K., Bannister, J., & Pickering, J. (2010). Territoriality and disadvantage among young people: An exploratory study of six British neighbourhoods. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 25, 447–465. Kurtz, H., & Hankins, K. (2005). Guest editorial: Geographies of citizenship. Space and Polity, 1(1), 1–8. Lister, R. (2003). Citizenship: Feminist perspectives (2nd ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. The Sociology of Childhood and Youth in Canada, edited by Xiaobei Chen, et al., Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/concordiaab-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6282142. Created from concordiaab-e