Street-involved youth’s unstructured leisure: activities and their social consequences

Abstract

Research has shown that leisure can be an effective tool in reducing disaffiliation for those who live on the streets; however, there is little research that incorporates input from street-involved persons themselves, especially from street-involved youth. In the study described herein, we sought to examine the role of unstructured leisure activities in forming social connections between street-involved youth as well as between these youth and members of the mainstream community. We conducted eight interviews with street-involved youth in Ottawa, Ontario. Our findings reveal that the youth used unstructured leisure to form social connections with others. Further, in contrast to popular assumptions, our findings suggest that street-involved youth participate in a range of conventional unstructured leisure activities within the mainstream. Nevertheless, although the youth engaged in conventional leisure within the mainstream, most did not result in the generation of feelings of connections to the broader community. These findings illustrate the complicated nature of using leisure in attempts to help street-involved youth form social ties. They also illustrate that street-involved youth exercise agency in managing constraints in ways that enable them to be resilient in the face of often daunting life circumstances.