Alternative post-16 transitions: examining the career pathways of young women ‘on road’

Abstract

ABSTRACT To understand why young women engage in the (sub)culture of badness whilst ‘on road’, as opposed to more conventional employment pathways, it’s imperative to consider their access (or lack of) to legitimate opportunities. Living in deprived urban areas creates a set of conditions which can impact on life chances, thus demonstrating the continued importance of intersecting factors class, gender, race and place in their lives as they navigate precarious transitions against a backdrop of neo-liberalism and racial disadvantage. The Teesside transitions literature, based on white young people from a deindustrialised area of the north-east of England, is considered in terms of its usefulness of thinking about young women ‘on road’ in London, given that the interest in capturing and analysing their experiences has been notably absent in the British criminological literature. Consequentlyvery little is known about those who are entrenched in road culture as the majority of what we know around crime and violence is focused on the experiences of young men, so experiences of young women of colour are even more limited. This paper has begun to make some headway in terms of addressing these gaps so they are more visible in marginalised urban spaces.