Abstract
The global COVID-19 pandemic has created, exposed and exacerbated inequalities and differences around access to—and experiences and representations of—the physical and virtual spaces of young people’s leisure cultures and practices. Drawing on longstanding themes of continuity and change in youth leisure scholarship, this paper contributes to our understandings of ‘liminal leisure’ as experienced by some young people in the UK before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. To do this, we place primary pre-pandemic research on disadvantaged young people’s leisure spaces and practices in dialogue with secondary data on lockdown and post-lockdown leisure. Subsequently, we argue that existing and emergent forms of youth ‘leisure liminality’ are best understood through the lens of intersectional disadvantages. Specifically, pre-existing intersectional disadvantages are being compounded by disruptions to youth leisure, as the upheaval of the pandemic continues to be differentially experienced. To understand this process, we deploy the concept of liminal leisure spaces used by Swaine et al Leisure Studies 37:4,440-451, (2018) in their ethnography of Khat-chewing among young British Somali urban youth ‘on the margins’. Similarly, our focus is on young people’s management and negotiation of substance use ‘risks’, harms and pleasures when in ‘private-in-public’ leisure spaces. We note that the UK government responses to the pandemic, such as national and regional lockdowns, meant that the leisure liminality of disadvantaged young people pre-pandemic became the experience of young people more generally, with for example the closure of night-time economies (NTEs). Yet despite some temporary convergence, intersectionally disadvantaged young people ‘at leisure’ have been subject to a particularly problematic confluence of criminalisation, exclusion and stigmatisation in COVID-19 times, which will most likely continue into the post-pandemic future.
Highlights
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic being described as a ‘great leveller’ (Jones 2020), there is emerging evidence that its differentiated negative impacts reflect and exacerbate underlying inequalities (Marmot and Allen 2020) and re-establish exclusionary social hierarchies (Pfaller 2020)
In exploring the continuities as well as changes in youth leisure experiences, differentiated according to intersectional disadvantages apparent prior to and during the pandemic, we hope to have highlighted opportunities to use insights from pre-pandemic studies to understand the contemporary context. This includes the interdisciplinary intersections of youth studies and criminology which pay attention to the policing of those young people inhabiting liminal leisure spaces who are largely excluded from legal commercialised leisure spaces
Leisure liminality is exacerbated by intersectional disadvantages, compounded by disruptions to youth leisure spaces and practices given the COVID-19 pandemic and the UK government responses to it
Summary
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic being described as a ‘great leveller’ (Jones 2020), there is emerging evidence that its differentiated negative impacts reflect and exacerbate underlying inequalities (Marmot and Allen 2020) and re-establish exclusionary social hierarchies (Pfaller 2020). Evidence is emerging of the largely negative impact of restrictions and lockdown leisure upon young people’s wellbeing (Roberts 2020; NHS Digital 2020) Those with existing mental health conditions have been affected (YoungMinds 2020a). To foreground continuity and change, we combine findings from a pre-pandemic study exploring disadvantaged young people’s risk perceptions and practices (Woodrow 2017), with more recent ethnographic observations of youth leisure practices as well as media representations of youth ‘at leisure’ during the pandemic (March 2020 to May 2021). We place primary pre-pandemic research around disadvantaged young people’s leisure spaces and practices in dialogue with secondary data on lockdown leisure On these combined foundations, we offer our thoughts on enduring and emergent ‘risks’, harms and pleasures of leisure spaces and related practices. We discuss how some young people have been portrayed and treated as ‘risky’, how they have been policed and how they manage and negotiate their leisure and substance use practices before and during COVID-19 times
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