Is There Anybody Out There? Young People from a Bucharest Deprived Neighbourhood in Search of Lost Echo. A photovoice exercise

Abstract

This article explores in what way and to what extent the life of some teenagers from a disadvantaged urban community is affected by the relationship with formal institutions (school, town hall, police, social assistance, employers / labour market) and relationships with other members of the community (neighbours, friends, acquaintances). The first part of this title obviously refers to the famous song by Pink Floyd “Is there anybody out there?” (The Wall, 1979), but also to the song by Machine Head (2016) “Is Anybody Out There?”, the soloist of the band Rob Flynn saying that “The song is about love, loneliness, racism, and not getting what is going on in the world/America…It’s very much about current events, but applies to a bigger picture.“[1] The second part paraphrases Marcel Proust’s famous novel „In Search of Lost Time”, because the echo of the desires and needs of the young people we are talking about is not found in social policies and everyday realities. The participatory research took place within an illegal camp of recently evicted families, mostly Roma ethnics. Over 100 people (27 families) living in a yard of houses in Bucharest, were evicted on September 2014. The research team designed research using photovoice as a method, involving 10 youngsters from this community, focusing on topics like important things in their life; social relationships – group of friends / family; education; employment – future aspirations, the importance of education in finding a job; involvement / participation in community life. The main conclusion drove toward the fact that for (these) young people, the family is the cornerstone. All their values, dreams, aspirations and needs are gravitating around family and mostly in the absence of almost any effective institutional support. Although at the level of public and political discourse there is a declared interest in improving the situation of adolescents and young people (especially from disadvantaged social segments), included in various strategies, programs and projects and in the speeches of decision-makers and politicians, in reality “real life beats the written strategy”, the discord between the two practically leading to innovative adaptation and survival strategies … but marginal!