As we identified within the literature review, violence can be defined more widely than direct forms of interpersonal violence. It can take non-physical forms (that is, not just on the body). Here, we wish to argue that the state can be a visible and invisible violent actor in the lives of young people, acting in its own interests or in the interests of powerful groups in society. Physical abuse and brutality, or discriminatory use of powers like stop and search by state representatives such as the police, are relatively easy to identify, as we do later in the chapter. However, state-drawn boundaries around national identity, the creation of gradations in citizenship, welfare and education policies, the operation of the justice system, discourses generated within the media, and even foreign policy and wars, can be interpreted as acts of violence too, in that their impact can cause physical, psychological and material harm.

Young people's freedom to meet and socialise in public space (a facet of social life that we see as key to their healthy development), if restricted by legal decrees or poor town planning, can result in the creation of tensions and frustrations that are then turned in on themselves or others in their community, often violently. Finally, and perhaps most imperceptibly, culture, defined here not just as high art forms (opera, ballet, theatre) but also as the discursive framework passed down from generation to generation through which people make sense of their lives, can come to be dominated by one group in society that then has a stranglehold on meaning. In our context here, this means that how society thinks about young people, and what behaviour is legitimate and what is not (which is in fact highly contestable) becomes naturalised. Put simply, one way of seeing the world (from the perspective of an adult) becomes the way of seeing the world.

Interpreting such control of space and meaning as violence is a theoretical leap that requires some deep thinking and lucid explanation, particularly when addressing a wider audience for whom young people's violent behaviour is seen as rooted solely in their own rational choices and psychological deficiencies.