Introduction

Through the course of this book, we have attempted to convey both the internal and external complexity of young people’s lives. In our discussion of mattering and social harm, we have sought to describe the psycho-social difficulties that young people can face, particularly those whose biographies and communities are characterized by a concentration of structural harms. These are fostered and reinforced by the profound historical maldistribution of recognition, resources and risk in contemporary Britain, which leaves some young people to enjoy substantial affluence, freedom, prestige and safety, and forces others to negotiate a crushing combination of scarcity, shame, danger and powerlessness. This multifaceted inequality characterizes our historical conjuncture, and means that, though growing up is never easy, different young people face very different predicaments when attempting to establish a sense that they matter – that they are a significant and consequential part of the world. All young people of course have choice and agency in how they navigate their lives and in how they seek to secure a self-perception of mattering. But there are vast disparities in the material and social resources available to young people and in the structural harms that they are exposed to, shaped in large part by a young person’s social class, gender and racialization. The extent and nature of this problem is hugely important in itself: the structure of our society is harmful to far too many children and young people. There are also good reasons to believe, as demonstrated in Chapter 5, that the issue of violence between young people is closely connected to these societal conditions.

These arguments are not wholly novel – they build upon and echo many other studies of young people’s lives and of violence, but we hope that we have offered a fruitful perspective on these issues.