CHIEF: UK Ethnographic Case Study Report

CHIEF’s ethnographic research investigates young people’s experiences and perceptions of other cultures by exploring the cultural competences they forge through their everyday encounters with a diverse range of individuals, communities, and cultures in their local communities. This report introduces the findings of the UK-Coventry ethnographic Case Study conducted in one of the most diverse but extremely disadvantaged and territorially stigmatised neighbourhoods of Coventry. Our field research and extended observations underline how the dilapidated status of public services radically affects the socio-cultural outlooks, discourses, imaginations, and practices of the young people. Ill-designed youth policies and their implementation through various institutions could contribute to feelings of insecurity, fear, and a sense of hopelenessness. For some of the young people, these could work out as an ‘assault on worth’ despite their desire for integration into wider society. For instance, the existing knife-crime prevention policies could contribute to criminalisation of youth in stigmatised neighbourhoods. And yet, this convergence of socio-economic deprivation, condensed sense of criminality, and socio-cultural stigmatisation does not automatically lead to a dissociation from the neighbourhood, at least in the case of the young people we worked with during this research. This case study demonstrates how young people develop integration strategies through rap/drill to reflect on their derogatory life experiences.