Leisure lives on the margins:(re)imagining youth in Glasgow’s East End

Abstract

This chapter looks at leisure amongst marginalized youth in the East End of Glasgow. It addresses the immobility of young people’s leisure lives, located in and around the family home. It argues that marginalised youth have few free public spaces available to them, resulting in an apparent upsurge in free time spent in private space in doors and online. It identifies declining participation in street-based leisure is a result of increased surveillance and social control, by parents and police, and wider neo-liberal processes of market-led regeneration and the commercialisation of urban amenities. The young people experience a retreat into private and domestic spaces in an effort to survive and adopt creative ways to engage commercialised leisure, albeit in marginal ways.