Going Out of Town: Youth, ‘Race’, and Place in the South East of England

Abstract

In this paper I present findings from research on ‘out-of-town’ leisure destinations and activities by young people from different ethnic backgrounds living in a medium-sized town located in the Home Counties of the South East of England. The predominant way in which the spatialisation of ‘race’ is discussed in Britain is via the discourse of the ‘inner city’. In contrast, the Home Counties' area of the South East has received little recognition of the presence of minority ethnic groups. Instead, it is frequently characterised as being a ‘white place’, or alternatively by some geographers as constituting a ‘nonplace space’ of social and spatial anonymity. However, relatively little research has been carried out on how young people themselves use and perceive different places in the region. I aim to explore issues of race, place, and identity with reference to data from interviews with a multiethnic group of seventy Asian, black, and white young people. I consider the significance of the out-of-town visits for debates over localism, postmodernism, and identity in relation to youth. It is argued that the supposedly anonymous space of the South East is far from being placeless, and instead the out-of-town visits by the young people have identifiable ethnic or racialised meanings. In conclusion, I suggest what implications the findings have for our understanding of the spatialisation of race in this underresearched area of the country.