Living Like a Girl: Agency, Social Vulnerability and Welfare Measures in Europe and Beyond 9781800731486

Citation preview

LIVING LIKE A GIRL

Transnational Girlhoods EDITORS: Claudia Mitchell, McGill University; Bodil Formark, Umeå University; Ann Smith, McGill University; Heather Switzer, Arizona State University Girlhood Studies has emerged over the last decade as a strong area of interdisciplinary research and activism, encompassing studies of feminism, women and gender, and childhood and youth and extending into such areas as sociology, anthropology, development studies, children’s literature and cultural studies. As the first book series to focus specifically on this exciting field, Transnational Girlhoods will help to advance the research and activism agenda by publishing full-length monographs and edited collections that reflect a robust interdisciplinary and global perspective. International in scope, the series will draw on a vibrant network of girlhood scholars already active across North America, Europe, Russia, Oceania and Africa, while forging connections with new activist and scholarly communities.

Volume 3

Living Like a Girl: Agency, Social Vulnerability and Welfare Measures in Europe and Beyond Edited by Maria A. Vogel and Linda Arnell Volume 2

Ethical Practice in Participatory Visual Research with Girls: Transnational Approaches Edited by Relebohile Moletsane, Lisa Wiebesiek, Astrid Treffry-Goatley and April Mandrona Volume 1

The Girl in the Text Edited by Ann Smith

LIVING LIKE A GIRL Agency, Social Vulnerability and Welfare Measures in Europe and Beyond

Edited by

Maria A. Vogel and Linda Arnell

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2021 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2021 Maria A. Vogel and Linda Arnell

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Vogel, Maria A., editor. | Arnell, Linda, editor. Title: Living like a girl : agency, social vulnerability and welfare measures in Europe and beyond / edited by Maria A. Vogel and Linda Arnell. Description: First edition. | New York : Berghahn Books, 2021. | Series: Transnational girlhoods; 3 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021005958 (print) | LCCN 2021005959 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800731479 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800731486 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Girls—Europe—Social conditions—21st century. | Social problems— Europe. | Girls—Services for—Europe. | Social change—Europe. Classification: LCC HQ777 .L578 2021 (print) | LCC HQ777 (ebook) | DDC 305.23082/094--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005958 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005959

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80073-147-9 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-148-6 ebook

CONTENTS List of Illustrations

viii

Acknowledgements

ix

List of Abbreviations

x

Introduction

Introducing the Lives of Girls in a European Context and Beyond: Agency, Social Vulnerability and Welfare Measures Linda Arnell and Maria A. Vogel

1

Part I. Agency and Embodiment: Girls Gendered Experiences of Vulnerability and Social Problems Chapter 1

Girlhood and Agency in a Turbulent Society: Russian Girls Caught in the Maze of a Conservative Turn Olga Zdravomyslova and Elena Onegina

13

Chapter 2

Just Ordinary: Self-Surveillance in Relation to Gender and (Dis)Ability Norms Kamilla Peuravaara

30

Chapter 3

Youth Consumptions, Agency and Signs of Girlhood: Rethinking Young Italian Females’ Lifestyles Geraldina Roberti

45

Chapter 4

‘Good Girl’: Israeli Ethiopian Girls Negotiate Their Blackness Sigal Oppenhaim-Shachar

65

Chapter 5

Fighting Like a Boy? Victimization and Agency in the Lives of Young Women Who Offend Susan A. Batchelor

83

v

D

CONTENTS

Part II. Transitions to Adulthood: Girls’ Prospects of Education, Employment and Family Chapter 6

Poor Educational Attainment, Training Opportunities and Transitions to Adulthood: The Case of Young Spanish Women Elena Quintana-Murci, María Tugores-Ques and Francesca Salvà-Mut

101

Chapter 7

Transitions of Young Women from Education to Employment in Croatia: Social Reproduction at Work Dunja Potočnik

123

Chapter 8

Study Counselling Experiences and Educational Choice-Making of Girls with Migrant Backgrounds in the Context of Finnish General Upper Secondary Education 147 Linda Maria Laaksonen, Anna-Maija Niemi and Markku Jahnukainen Chapter 9

‘We Can’t Keep Her Here, She’s Too Bad’: Understanding the Role of Inclusion Programmes in Working-Class Girls’ Post-School Trajectories Hannah Walters

164

Part III. Support and Control: Welfare Measures Handling Girls in Different Contexts Chapter 10

Becoming a ‘Football Girl’: On Disidentification and Appropriation of Gender Norms and Hierarchies in Sports-Based Interventions in the Swedish Urban Periphery David Ekholm, Magnus Dahlstedt and Julia Rönnbäck

185

Chapter 11

‘Really, I Can Take Care of Myself ’: Protection and Care in Danish Secure Institutions Ann-Karina Henriksen

vi

205

CONTENTS

E

Chapter 12

Girlhood Incarcerated: Perspectives from Secure Care Annie Crowley, Anna Schliehe and Maria A. Vogel

223

Conclusion

(How) Can You Live Like a Girl? Summing up Differences and Similarities Maria A. Vogel and Linda Arnell

243

Index

249

vii

ILLUSTRATIONS Figures 7.1. Educational attainment of young women and men and their parents (%)

128

7.2. Educational aspirations of young women and men – age 20–29 (%)

130

7.3. Employment status of young women and men – age 20–29 (%)

136

Tables 6.1. Level of education of girls’ parents

108

6.2. Participation in professional branches by gender

110

6.3. Basic VET professional branches offered in Spain and the Balearic Islands (%)

111

6.4. Main reasons for choosing studies by gender

112

6.5. Girls’ main reasons for choosing studies by the type of studies 113

viii

6.6. Situation after three years by gender

114

6.7. Reasons given for dropping out by gender (%)

115

7.1. Educational attainment of young women by their sociodemographic characteristics (%)

129

7.2. Educational aspirations of young women by their sociodemographic characteristics (%)

132

7.3. Young women’s confidence about obtaining the level of desired education by the father’s education – age 20–29 (%)

134

7.4. Employment status of young women by their sociodemographic characteristics (%)

137

7.5. Perceived easiness of finding a job by sociodemographic characteristics of young women (%)

139

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To devote an anthology to girls’ social vulnerabilities and social problems in a European context is an important, and much longed for, contribution towards expanding the knowledge of social problems in the field of Girlhood Studies. As editors, we are sincerely grateful to the chief editors Claudia Mitchell (McGill University, Canada), Bodil Formark (Umeå University, Sweden), Ann Smith (McGill University, Canada) and Heather Switzer (Arizona State University, US) for giving us the opportunity to edit such a book as part of the Transnational Girlhood book series. We also appreciate the support of Berghahn Books, and would especially like to thank associate editor Amanda Horn for her enthusiasm and helpfulness throughout the process. Thank you also to production editor Caroline Kuhtz for your support in bringing the book through production. Finally, we are sincerely grateful to our colleagues from all over the European continent and beyond. Without your important contributions, there simply would be no book. Maria A. Vogel and Linda Arnell, editors

ix

ABBREVIATIONS ADHD – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder CBT – Cognitive Behavioural Therapy CEDEFOP – European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training CHS – Children’s Hearing System ELET – Early Leaving from Education and Training EU – European Union EUROSTAT – European Statistics GFC – Global Financial Crisis HIV – Human Immunodeficiency Virus IVET – Intermediate Vocational Education and Training LUVA – Programme preparing migrant students for general upper secondary education in Finland MF – Midnight-football MoC – Model of Consumption NEET – Not in Employment, Education or Training OECD – The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development PoC – Practices of Consumption PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ROC – Russian Orthodox Church UN – United Nations UK – United Kingdom VET – Vocational Education and Training

x

D INTRODUCTION

Introducing the Lives of Girls in a European Context and Beyond Agency, Social Vulnerability and Welfare Measures Linda Arnell and Maria A. Vogel

During the last few decades, large-scale social changes have taken place across Europe. These include neoliberal developments within social policy, changes in the shape of economic crises, globalization and the growth of the European Union (EU). At the same time, the United Kingdom (UK) has left the EU and borders have been closing as a consequence of the ongoing refugee crisis resulting from the war in Syria, and lately also due to the Covid-19 pandemic. These changes have affected the societal conditions shaping girls’ and young women’s opportunities and the ways in which they can mould their lives. In particular, there are vast discrepancies between neoliberal understandings of girls’ and young women’s own responsibilities and the material and structural limitations that many of them face. The current geopolitical changes and migration patterns also affect girls’ lives, as well as how girls and girlhood are conceptualized and subjected to political decision-making. It is therefore crucial to investigate and analyse the lives and social situations of girls and young women today. Consequently, the aim of this anthology is to illustrate a range of interactions between constructions of social problems and social systems on the

D

LINDA ARNELL AND MARIA A. VOGEL

one hand, and girls, girlhood and young femininity on the other. While emphasizing the localized experiences of girls and young women within a European context, we also link these individual and local experiences to global structures of power.

Girls, Girlhood and Transnationalism The category of ‘girl’ is generally related to a child of a specific gender and age, often defining adolescent females. However, important scholarly work has been put into problematizing the boundaries of the concept, unfolding its social and/or cultural construction and emphasizing the intersections of not only gender and age but also ability, ethnicity, sexuality and class ( Jiwani et al. 2006; Lindquist, Wuttunee and Flicker 2016; Erevelles and Nguyen 2016; de Finney, Krueger-Henney and Palacios 2019; Brickman 2019). The scholars contributing to this anthology use the concept of girls in different ways; however, a shared basis is the understanding of girlhood as a lived experience, where the lives of children and young people categorized as girls in various ways are affected by that very categorization. The anthology is devoted to girls’ and young women’s lives and social situations in an extended European context, making it an important contribution towards expanding the knowledge of social problems, welfare measures, and girls’ lives and transitions to adulthood in the field of girlhood studies. The broad context of Europe and beyond enables contributors to present findings about social situations and how social problems are formulated and managed in different cultural contexts and political and social systems. Since there is a variety of social and welfare systems in Europe, it also provides an opportunity to investigate how young femininity, girls’ and young women’s social situations and social problems are formulated, managed and understood in relation to different social conditions, which is rarely seen internationally. This also gives us a unique opportunity to map out similarities and differences between various European countries regarding welfare measures and social systems in connection to girls’ and young women’s lives. As mentioned above, the broadened European context is diverse and the political, social and welfare systems vary, as do girls’ lives and opportunities. Hence, it is impossible to paint a full picture of the complexity of girls’ lives and social situations within this context. Rather, the ambition of the anthology has been to focus on girls and girlhood from a social sci2

INTRODUCTION

E

ences perspective, striving to stimulate critical conversations about girls’ social situations and lives within different cultural contexts and political and social systems. We have done so, with reference to Catherine Vanner (2019: 128), ‘by analysis of the structural constraints imposed upon them by global hegemonic structures including capitalism, neocolonialism, and patriarchy’. This needs to be understood in relation to the European context and its history of colonialism and patriarchal structure, and its many different cultural, political and social systems, but also in relation to girlhood studies as formed in an Anglo-Saxon context. Girlhood studies is a rather new research field, stemming from a critique of the marginalization of girls within both youth research and women’s studies in the late 1970s. Since then, girl-centred research has increased dramatically and has become a focus for studies within various disciplines and in many parts of the world. However, girlhood studies is still developing, frequently using intersectional analysis and critical perspectives to highlight and question gender-specific research, which in Mary Kearney’s (2009: 19) words tends to ‘naturalize all female youth as white, Western, middle-class, heterosexual, and able-bodied’. This development, Kearney argues, has meant that researchers focus more on girls’ intersectional identities and global diversity, as a result of critical race, postcolonial and queer theory and disability studies. Nonetheless, more attention is still paid to gender than to intersectional identities – which are related to structural aspects of class, ethnicity, sexuality, ability and age – within the field of girlhood studies (Kearney 2009). In relation to the interest in intersectional identities, studying transnational girlhood can be understood as recognizing girls’ lives from their own perspectives and highlighting their situations within global structures of power (Switzer et al. 2016). Vanner (2019: 126) also highlights the importance of recognizing ‘girls who have traditionally not been given equal opportunities to speak on an international stage’. However, as Yasmin Jiwani, Candis Steenbergen and Claudia Mitchell (2006) elucidate, emphasizing girls’ agency while at the same time recognizing the structural and social systems that constrain it is a difficult task. Following Vanner’s (2019) features of transnational girlhood when working with this anthology, we have tried in various ways to include an intersectional perspective, prioritizing girls’ localized lived experiences, which are not always considered within the Anglo-Saxon context, and to recognize girls’ agency and the ways in which structural constraints operate, including global structures such as capitalism, neocolonialism 3

D

LINDA ARNELL AND MARIA A. VOGEL

and patriarchy. Using Ann Smith’s reasoning, transnationalism can refer not only to processes that are related to multiple national territories, such as political, economic and social activities, but also to activities or processes that are ‘weakening borders other than those between nation-states’ (2019: 9). Adhering to Smith’s (2019) definition thus provides us with the opportunity to see girls’ renegotiations of boundaries, whether they are physical, bodily or performative, or have to do with cultural values or social norms, as transnational acts, weakening different structures of power. In various ways, the chapters in this anthology thus demonstrate how the power of national borders, and the various political, social and welfare systems operating within them, regulate the opportunities and constraints in girls’ lives, at the same time as they show how girls renegotiate, or even weaken, boundaries.

The Structure and Organization of the Book This anthology takes its point of departure in current political and social developments in Europe and beyond and investigates the construction of social problems and girls’ agency, vulnerabilities, and performances of femininity. It also highlights the situation of girls who have experienced interventions by social services, such as secure care and study counselling programmes, as well as how social problems are formulated and managed within a European context. The anthology consists of three sections covering three comprehensive themes: Agency and Embodiment, Transitions to Adulthood, and Support and Control.

Part I: Agency and Embodiment The chapters in the first part focus on girls’ own experiences of ‘living like a girl’ in today’s Europe. The interest lies in girls’ lives and their negotiations of agency, vulnerability and social problems, as well as their performance of femininity. The different chapters highlight girls’ local experiences in relation to global structures of power and discuss discrepancies between neoliberal understandings of girls’ own responsibilities and the material limitations of anti-feminism and racism within Europe today. In the first chapter, ‘Girlhood and Agency in a Turbulent Society: Russian Girls Caught in the Maze of a Conservative Turn’, Olga Zdravo4

INTRODUCTION

E

myslova and Elena Onegina discuss girls’ understandings of their lives and futures in a Russian context, focusing on the expanding role of the Orthodox Church and conservative politics, and illustrating the growing visibility of alternative girlhoods. They argue that various norms and behaviours, in comparison to those available to previous generations, have increased girls’ freedom, but at the same time have introduced new risks and conflicts, creating gaps between generations. Chapter 2, ‘Just Ordinary: Self-Surveillance in Relation to Gender and (Dis)ability Norms’ by Kamilla Peuravaara, addresses the experiences of mirroring among Swedish girls with an intellectual impairment, in relation to gender and (dis)ability social norms. Peuravaara shows how this mirroring involves a continuous doing, and how this doing and the idea of an ‘ordinary girl’ are related to disciplinary practices and norms affecting young femininity as well as conceptions of (dis)ability and aspects of ableism. Furthermore, she reveals that being ‘just ordinary’ is a position to which not all girls have access. In Chapter 3, ‘Youth Consumption, Agency and Economic Crisis: Rethinking Young Italian Females’ Lifestyles’, Geraldina Roberti assesses whether the economic crisis in Italy has modified girls’ agency, habits and lifestyles, with reference to values, consumption models and economic and family structures. She shows that consumer culture risks (re)producing socially expected feminine behaviours through the gender-role socialization of girls and young women. Understanding girls as powerful actors in a global market, Roberti argues, also risks diminishing the profound social and economic inequalities that continue to exist within contemporary consumer society. The fourth chapter, ‘“Good Girl”: Israeli Ethiopian Girls Negotiate their Blackness’ by Sigal Oppenhaim-Shachar, investigates how adolescent Ethiopian girls living in the predominantly white society of Israel face the challenge of positively experiencing their skin colour amid experiences of alienation, shaming and low self-esteem in a neoliberal climate. Oppenhaim-Shachar discusses the mechanisms for coping with the stigma surrounding Ethiopian girls’ noticeable blackness, gender and socioeconomic status and shows how these girls both internalize and resist the hegemonic discourses in order to practise varying forms of agentic femininity. In the final chapter of this section, ‘Fighting Like a Boy? Victimization and Agency in the Lives of Young Women who Offend’, Susan A. Batchelor discusses girls’ violent offending within a Scottish context and examines the gendered power dynamics within the families and street5

D

LINDA ARNELL AND MARIA A. VOGEL

orientated peer groups of young women convicted of violent offences. She demonstrates how these girls position themselves as active and empowered agents, drawing upon neoliberal, post-feminist discourses, and how, within the context of the juvenile justice system, these discourses reframe structural disadvantages as individual problems related to risky behaviours or choices.

Part II: Transitions to Adulthood The second part of the book focuses on girls’ academic routes and transitions into adulthood. The four chapters within this section focus on how different national, structural and economic contexts and circumstances regulate girls’ transitions. More specifically, the chapters discuss prerequisites for girls’ transitions from school to work and from girlhood to adulthood, with a focus on marginalization, the labour market, expectations of motherhood and family, economics and social class. The first chapter in this part, Chapter 6, ‘Poor Educational Attainment, Training Opportunities, and Transitions to Adulthood: The Case of Young Spanish Women’ by Elena Quintana-Murci, María Tugores-Ques, and Francesca Salvà-Mut, highlights school-to-work transitions with a focus on the educational, labour and personal pathways of girls who attended basic vocational education and training (VET) courses in Spain. They show that these girls’ educational pathways are characterized by the repetition of courses and expulsions from primary and secondary schooling and that there is a strong and persistent gender segregation within the basic VET. In Chapter 7, ‘Transitions of Young Women from Education to Employment in Croatia: Social Reproduction at Work’, Dunja Potocnik discusses girls’ educational routes and their opportunities in the labour market in Croatia. The chapter takes a close look at how social background, geographical context, intergenerational (im)mobility and social reproduction affect girls’ realization of their aspirations. Potocnik highlights how, to a significant extent, girls’ social background, gender and a restraining social context, especially in rural settings, prevent young women from expressing their educational and career aspirations and accomplishing their life goals. In the following chapter, ‘Study Counselling Experiences and Educational Choice-Making of Girls with Migrant Backgrounds in the Context 6

INTRODUCTION

E

of Finnish General Upper Secondary Education’, Linda Maria Laaksonen, Anna-Maija Niemi and Markku Jahnukainen explore girls’ experiences of study counselling and the obstacles and prospects experienced by academically oriented girls with immigrant backgrounds in Finland during their studies. They show how language proficiency, lack of knowledge about the education system, and preconceptions about gender and their migrant background shape girls’ educational choice-making and the options they are given. In Chapter 9, ‘“We Can’t Keep Her Here, She’s Too Bad”: Understanding How Girls’ School Experiences Influence Post-School Trajectories’, Hannah Walters explores the myriad of structural barriers at work throughout girls’ educational and personal journeys towards enrolling in beauty courses. This includes how compulsory education is understood by participants as a hostile space related to axes of class and gender. She argues that vocational learning environments, originally developed as a means of supporting students, have instead become caught up in a market model of education. This model risks not supporting students to make their own choices but instead contributing to social vulnerabilities and the enduring class and gender segregation in contemporary Britain.

Part III: Support and Control The three chapters constituting the third and final part of the book deal with society’s ways of controlling and supporting girls within the welfare systems of Denmark, Sweden and Scotland. The chapters discuss the different measures with which girls come into contact, measures aiming both to control and support. The chapters reflect upon how social vulnerability and social problems are formulated and managed in different cultural contexts, as well as various political and social systems, including the juvenile justice system, social services and sports interventions. In Chapter 10, ‘Becoming a “Football Girl”: On Disidentification and the Appropriation of Gender Norms and Hierarchies in Sports-Based Interventions in the Swedish Urban Periphery’, David Ekholm, Magnus Dahlstedt, and Julia Rönnbäck discuss sports-based interventions as an integral feature of social policy and one of the strategies to respond to the social problems following on from exclusion and urban segregation. They discuss, and question, sport as a means of inclusion, and how gendered and ethno-cultural characteristics are intertwined, constructing all girls 7

D

LINDA ARNELL AND MARIA A. VOGEL

who live in marginalized neighbourhoods as subject to patriarchal rule, rooted in specific ethno-cultural communities. This obscures the wider socio-economic setting of the surrounding society. Chapter 11, ‘“Really, I Can Take Care of Myself ”: Protection and Care in Danish Secure Institutions’ by Ann-Karina Henriksen, focuses on girls who are placed in secure institutions on welfare grounds. She analyses the effects of secure institutions as a punitive response to social disadvantage as well as a means to protect girls. She discusses girls’ experiences of marginalization, gendered control and regulation and how the effects of confinement are uniquely gendered, with the consequence of inadequate treatment, particularly in relation to trauma and mental illness. In the final chapter, ‘Girlhood Incarcerated: Perspectives from Secure Care’, Annie Crowley, Anna Schliehe and Maria A. Vogel give us an insight into secure care across Scotland and Sweden, and young women’s experiences of confinement in particular. They ask questions about welfare measures, girls’ agency and social vulnerability and delve into the concepts of gender and age in relation to constraining institutional environments, with their joint punitive and protective functions. They show that, in both Sweden and Scotland, the welfare and protection of young people is a joint aim of secure care, something that inherently affects the young women referred there, in terms of both their present girlhood and future opportunities. The comprehensive themes covered in the three sections are arranged pedagogically, starting in the lived experience of girls and young women and from there moving on to structural and sociopolitical aspects regulating those lived experiences. However, the chapters are freestanding, enabling the reader to either choose chapters that speak to their special interest or read the book cover to cover in order to get a composed understanding of the lives of girls in contemporary Europe and beyond.

Linda Arnell has a PhD in Social work and is a researcher at the School of Law, Psychology and Social Work, Örebro University, Sweden. Her research interests include gender, youth and emotions, with an emphasis on the construction of girlhood and children’s and young people’s perspectives on violence, abuse and social relations. Maria A. Vogel has a PhD in Social work and is director of research at a municipal Research and Development unit in Stockholm, Sweden. Her main research

8

INTRODUCTION

E

areas are young people with psychosocial problems, and secure care. An overall theme in her research is the role of gender in young people’s lives and development, with a special interest in teenage girls and the construction of girlhood.

References Brickman, Barbara Jane. 2019. ‘Queering Girlhood’, Girlhood Studies 12(1): vi–xv. de Finney, Sandrina, Patricia Krueger-Henney and Lena Palacios. 2019. ‘Reimagining Girlhood in White Settler-Carceral States’, Girlhood Studies 12(3): vii–xv. Erevelles, Nirmala and Xuan Thuy Nguyen. 2016. ‘Disability, Girlhood, and Vulnerability in Transnational Contexts’, Girlhood Studies 9(1): 3–20. Jiwani, Yasmin, Candis Steenbergen and Claudia Mitchell. 2006. ‘Introduction: Surveying the Terrain’, in Yasmin Jiwani, Candis Steenbergen and Claudia Mitchell (eds), Girlhood: Redefining the Limits. Montreal: Black Rose Books, pp. ix–xvi. Kearney, Mary. 2009. ‘Coalescing: The Development of Girl’s Studies’, NWSA Journal 21(1): 1–28. Lindqvist, Kirsten, Kari-dawn Wuttunee and Sarah Flicker. 2016. ‘Speaking Our Truths, Building Our Strengths. Shaping Indigenous Girlhood Studies’, Girlhood Studies 9(2): 3–9. Smith, Ann. 2019. ‘Introduction: The Transnational Girl in the Text. Transnationalism Redefined?’, in Ann Smith (ed.), The Girl in the Text. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–12. Switzer, Heather, Emily Bent and Crystal Leigh Endsley. 2016. ‘Precarious Politics and Girl Effects: Exploring the Limits of the Girl Gone Global’, Feminist Formations 28(1): 33–59. Vanner, Catherine. 2019. ‘Toward a Definition of Transnational Girlhood’, Girlhood Studies 12(2): 115–32.

9

D PART I

Agency and Embodiment Girls Gendered Experiences of Vulnerability and Social Problems

D CHAPTER 1

Girlhood and Agency in a Turbulent Society Russian Girls Caught in the Maze of a Conservative Turn Olga Zdravomyslova and Elena Onegina

Introduction At the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, as girls and boys who were born in the late 1990s and early 2000s started to grow actively into adulthood, the generation gap within Russian society became clearer and the concept of ‘Putin’s generation’ took shape. Girls and boys of this generation are different from their elders: the ‘Soviet legacy’ is not part of their biography but a story they have never witnessed themselves. However, findings from multiple studies suggest that there are more similarities than differences in the values and social memory of older and younger generations (Kasamara and Urnov 2016; Radaev 2018). Despite the significant changes caused by post-Soviet transformations, this does not seem surprising: throughout the 2000s the state has been building a policy of belonging based on continuity with the Soviet

Notes for this section can be found on page 26.

D

OLGA ZDRAVOMYSLOVA AND ELENA ONEGINA

past, understood as a continuation of Russia’s centuries-old history. In the 2000s, the concept of transition to Western democracy has been revised in the West (Rose 2009; Greene 2014) and the multiple ruptures and continuities with Soviet legacy have been revealed, including the specificities of gender policies and arrangements (Gal and Kligman 2000). A crucial rethinking and revision of the concept of the transition of Russia towards Western democracy coincides with the beginning of a conservative turn – a consistent political course of the state under Putin’s presidency. The 2000s saw the emergence of what one could describe as a refurbished quasi-Soviet model, one that is now based on a conservative set of values – ‘moral foundations’ that a citizen ‘first embraces within the family and that form the core of patriotism’ (Putin 2000). These values, closely related to the feeling of belonging to the state and Orthodox Christianity, are considered as Russian traditional values, a ‘unified cultural code’ (Putin 2012). Criticism of the West and European liberal values is an integral part of the policies of belonging, aimed at rallying the majority behind the state, which declares the protection of traditional Russian values. This drives the paternalistic discourse of the government and the church, which gets codified in legislation, affects the education concept and is promoted in the mass media. In recent years, gender has been politicized: family values, reproductive rights as well as the rights of sexual minorities are at the forefront of an aggressive public discourse of there being no alternative to the ‘unitary model of sexual character’ (Connell 1987) and traditional model of gender relations. The demographic problem is also moving to the top of agenda1 declared in 2019 as a priority for Russia. Since the solution is seen in driving the birth rates, girls – future mothers – become the target group for the gender, family and youth policies and propaganda. What is particularly important is that the anti-Western, dominative conservative discourse is not monopolistic since all social groups in Russia have to adapt to lot of elements of ‘Western’ and ‘universal’ in cultural and consumer practices and in everyday life (Dubin 2010: 11). The girls and boys do not see Europe and the West as alien and hostile forces (Gudkov, Dubin and Zorkaya 2011). In recent years, despite the growing conservative trend and anti-Western rhetoric, ‘for young Russians, Europe still remains an important benchmark for opportunities and desired level of wellbeing’ (Pipiya 2018). Girls are involved in global culture much more deeply and strongly than their older counterparts, but they are sensitive to the increased normative pressure from the state and the church. This re14

GIRLHOOD AND AGENCY IN A TURBULENT SOCIETY

E

quires girls to have inner strength, independence and the ability to reflect in order to act and make choices. The aim of the chapter is to analyse how the conflicting trends constructing the turbulent context of today’s Russia feature in girls’ understandings about themselves and their agency. First, we discuss the increasing role of the state and the Orthodox Church in the construction of conservative gender order. Then we focus on the discussion about young femininity and the growing visibility of alternative girlhoods. Finally, we analyse three interviews with girls conducted as part of the ‘Sense of Group’ Russian-French study (Kourilsky-Augeven and Zdravomyslova 2017), which was the third stage of the comparative Russian-French study about legal representations of girls and boys aged 12 to 20 years. The first stage was carried out in 1993, the second in the beginning of 2000 (Aroutiunian, Kourilsky-Augeven and Zdravomyslova 2008). In 1993, the method of spontaneous associations was used in relation to the concepts and values related to law. In the next stage of the study, this method was supplemented by a questionnaire-based survey. In the third stage, ten interviews were conducted in 2017–2018: the respondents stated their understanding of freedom, responsibility, solidarity and how these values are related to belonging to communities (family, peer group, country). In this chapter, we analyse the interviews with three girls from middle-class families. Anastasia (16 years old), Katerina (20 years old) and Alina (18 years old) discuss their ideas about family and society, the opportunities and challenges they face.

Girlhood and Power In the 1990s, the ‘patriarchal renaissance’ that replaced paternalism in women’s policy and the official ideology of gender equality became a common phenomenon for Russia and the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe. In all these countries, there was a clear trend towards women’s and girls’ exclusion from high-income groups, with them becoming socially vulnerable and facing increased risks of failure and poverty (Zdravomyslova 2003; Bento-Ribeiro 2015). In gender studies, the ‘patriarchal renaissance’, or revival of the traditional gender model in the private and public sphere is defined as a phenomenon expressing growing gender inequality in transitional societies. The perception of man as the breadwinner of the family and the subject of power in the public sphere intensified 15

D

OLGA ZDRAVOMYSLOVA AND ELENA ONEGINA

in the 2000s and was successfully passed on to the younger generation (Gradskova 2015). In 2000, a liberal model of family and private life as a sphere of women’s self-realization was built in Russia. This model is being implemented in middle-class families, where ‘a strong autonomous woman wants to plan her sexual life, family relations, reproductive behaviour, and childbearing. She wants to be financially independent and be able to take care of her loved ones. At the same time, the polarization of gender roles persists’ (Zdravomyslova and Temkina 2009: 13–14). This model, being addressed to girls, approaches the concept of girl power. This phenomenon can be defined as encouraging girls to be ‘simultaneously traditional objects and powerful subject’ (Tormulainen, Mulari and Voipio 2017: 49). From ‘Patriarchal Renaissance’ to Conservative Gender Order Notably, during the Perestroika era and the 1990s, neither Russian cinema nor literature brought forth a strong, independent girl protagonist capable of becoming a new role model (Inggs 2015). In fact, we saw numerous versions of the girl character who had no choice: the girl was most often depicted as a victim of social cataclysms and personal circumstances she could not influence. There was an increased public discourse of a girl-atrisk in need of control and care. This is a direct continuation of the Soviet tradition, in which the gender order was framed by the state (Zdravomyslova and Temkina 2003). Girls were seen as subjects to the disciplining influence of the state and the school (Gradskova 2015). The modern Russian state continues this tradition, adding to it the significantly increased influence of the Orthodox Church. The Church has become an ideological and political actor. It actively intervenes in matters related to the framing of gender socialization. The Church seeks to limit sexuality education2 in schools by eliminating the topics of ‘nontraditional sexual orientation’ that are considered imposed by Western propaganda. The Church seeks to limit women’s and girls’ right to abortion, at least removing it from the general medical insurance plan. Although experts argue that the number of abortions among girls under 18 has been decreasing since the 1990s, the rate of teenage pregnancy remains high (Sakevich 2018). President Putin supported a proposal by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) to enshrine in the Constitution the concept of marriage as the union of a man and a woman (TASS 2020). Thus, heterosexuality is becoming a constitutional norm, opening up the 16

GIRLHOOD AND AGENCY IN A TURBULENT SOCIETY

E

possibility of the ROC further strengthening its role in institutionalizing a gender order. Russian family policy is an important area in framing a conservative gender order. The family policy has evolved from the predominantly liberal model of the 1990s, focused on supporting low-income families, to the modern pronatalist model. The latter seeks to address the country’s demographic problems primarily through financial support and is focused on large families as an ideal norm (Chernova 2011: 108). The gender analysis of family policy demonstrates the state’s focus on supporting a single model that is recognized as normative and described as a ‘happy young family’. It includes a legal marriage; it also assumes that ‘a family needs to have as many children as is required to support the region’s expanded reproductive potential’ (Chernova 2011: 110). Thus, the modern family policy only ‘sees’ and supports the traditional family type, excluding the diversity of family forms, and actually pushing them beyond the norm. In the 1990s, the ‘patriarchal renaissance’ was largely the result of the economic crisis and was in conflict with family and gender policies, which were geared towards the liberal model and gender equality norms. In contrast, in the 2000s the state framed the norms of a conservative gender order, which became formalized in law and sought to impose the traditional norms of young femininity defining motherhood as a woman’s natural destiny and main goal in life. In this regard, one can refer to gender researchers Oleg Riabov and Tatyana Riabova who highlight an important feature of the Putin regime that contributes to its popularity. This is the ‘remasculinization of Russia’, achieved by creating attractive images of national masculinity and attributing masculine characteristics to the country (Riabov and Riabova 2014). The State is trying to create an education and upbringing programme for teenage girls on this basis. In 2008, a boarding house for girls aged 10 to 18 was opened in Moscow and the second one was created later in St Petersburg by the Russian Government’s Decree and the Order of the Russian Ministry of Defence. The boarding house cooperates with fifteen of the country’s leading universities. During their stay at the boarding school, girls should develop a ‘full Russian identity’, learn ‘female behavioural patterns’ and ‘understand the meaning of motherhood’ (Rotkevich 2019). On the one hand, the boarding school education claims to provide the basis for girls to continue with their education and make a successful career in the future. On the other hand, the principle of separate education and segregated upbringing of boys and girls is being 17

D

OLGA ZDRAVOMYSLOVA AND ELENA ONEGINA

implemented. Methodology-wise, the ideology is based on essentialism, which over the past two decades has become a common view of the gender approach in Russian education (Isupova 2018). This pedagogical approach can be viewed as part of the wider trend towards replicating the disciplining practices of the Soviet school and to framing a continuity between pre-revolutionary, Soviet and post-Soviet models of femininity. Towards the Discussion about Young Femininity In contrast to the West, where since the 1990s, the public and researchers have consistently focused on girls moving into adulthood (Harris 2003), ‘the idea of the girl as a site of both resistance and conformity’ (Driscoll 2008: 20) is just beginning to be discussed in Russia. The conservative discourse is becoming the predominant ‘way of speaking about girls’ (Driscoll 2002: 5). This was evident at the very beginning of the conservative turn – in the first half of the 2000s. A statement by a liberal public opinion leader, Russian author Viktor Erofeyev, is significant in this regard. His essay ‘Why are Russian Beauties Becoming Cheaper?’, published in 2004, actually echoes the reasoning, logic and invectives found in Eliza Lynn Linton’s essay ‘Girl of the Period’, written in Victorian England. In 1868, Linton spoke in defence of the ‘old’ ideal of a noble and humble girl threatened by both the ideas of women’s emancipation and of the ‘new woman’, and the new consumption practices winning the minds and hearts of girls: ‘No one can say of the modern English girl that she is tender, loving, retiring, or domestic’ (Linton 1868: 339–40). Linton was urging the girls to return ‘to the old English ideal’. Linton’s essay is remarkable in that it highlighted the transformed status of girlhood in the era of modernity: girl adolescence was recognized as a problem associated with the crisis of the traditional ideal of femininity, undermining its perceived invariability and monolithic nature. There is evidence to suggest that in the 2000s in Russia, the comprehension of girlhood was at a similar stage. In 2004, and later in 2011, Erofeyev begins his reasoning with calling ‘new Russian girls’ the destroyers of femininity and blaming them for having lost their bearings – ‘the philosophical basis of life’, which is embodied in the image3 of the ‘Turgenev girl’, whose meaning in life is love and sacrifice. The writer is repelled and frightened by the aggressiveness of girls, which is manifest in their desire to compete in the sex market (Erofeyev 2004). The writer reproaches the ‘new Russian girl’ for 18

GIRLHOOD AND AGENCY IN A TURBULENT SOCIETY

E

craving pleasure and earning to ‘make an impression of being’ rich if not actually ‘being’ rich (‘she lives beyond her means’, ‘is drawn to the life of the middle class’, ‘increasingly wants money from men’). Erofeyev warns that ‘new Russian girls’ build a model of female behaviour that ‘consists of mutually exclusive concepts. The girl is romantic and pragmatic, naive and calculating, chaste and lustful. . . . She stands with her one foot in the field of Russian classical culture, in its ruins, and at a disco with the other’ (Erofeyev 2011). To paraphrase Raewyn Connell (1987), we can say that the conservative rhetoric is a measure to judge the tensions inherent in the gender order. Erofeyev quite accurately recorded the destruction of the traditional mode of girlhood, the emergence of new ways of being a girl and the lack of public discussion. In the 1990s the Russian media market saw the emergence of publications seeking to capture the audience of girls-teenagers (Azhgikhina 2018). However, the priority of the mass media targeting girls was to transform them into consumers and promote goods and services through commercial exploitation of the topic of girlhood. In her research, Nadezhda Azhgikhina noted that since the early 2000s, the space of girls’ free reading where the feminist agenda was present started to shrink rapidly as the range of commercial publications filled with advertising and aimed at promoting consumerism was expanding. These publications, as well as the growing number of girls’ blogs (the most typical blogger is a 22 year old girl living in Moscow), offer the image of a ‘stylish girl’ and post recommendations by psychologists, makeup artists, chefs, etc. (Azhgikhina 2018). The desire for commercial success and emphasis on sexuality is combined with freedom as far as the norms of traditional femininity are concerned. Challenges of the Alternative Girlhoods The year of 2012 is considered a turning point in the politics of the Putin regime, which was faced with the problem of finding a new ideological justification for its legitimacy. Fidelity to traditional values (Orthodoxy, the authority of the family and the state) was designated as the essence of politics (Budraitskis 2019: 16–19). It is directly related to an aggressive campaign which began against the girls’ punk group Pussy Riot who were accused of hooliganism after their protest action in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. The conviction of Pussy Riot showed the rise of the authority of the Church in defining the rules of public behaviour and moral norms for girls and women. It is no mere coincidence that the 19

D

OLGA ZDRAVOMYSLOVA AND ELENA ONEGINA

conservative turn policy4 was legally framed immediately after the Pussy Riot performance. Sociologist Elena Gapova describes the performance as ‘a political and feminist protest (girrrlpower!)’ (2012: 13). In particular, the provocative rally of Pussy Riot made ‘other girls’ visible. The majority of Russians did not understand what feminism or alternative girlhood had to do with it. At the same time, they condemned them for the attack on traditional values and institutions (whether it be the state, the Orthodox Church, the family), and heterosexuality. The reaction of authorities, the church and a large part of society to the Pussy Riot performance was a sign of a cultural division. Gapova emphasizes the fact that Pussy Riot produced a symbol that has proved to be ‘global’ due to a number of factors at work in the post-material world. These are first of all the politicization of the (girl) body/body image and the availability of digital media and social networks as channels for rapid information dissemination (Gapova 2012: 15). Since July 2016, when the ‘I Am Not Afraid to Say’ flash mob was held across social networks, the Russian discourse of girlhood has embraced the topic of resistance to violence. The flash mob, launched by Ukrainian journalist Nastya Melnichenko, was joined by hundreds of girls and women in Russia, who told, via social networks, their stories of harassment, violence and rape. Through social networks, girls participate in discussing situations of violence that girls themselves or their friends have faced. In February 2018, three female journalists accused a State Duma deputy, Leonid Slutsky, of sexual harassment. The emerging public conflict revealed that Russian society is divided but is ready to discuss it (Zdravomyslova 2018). Thanks to feminists and the solidarity of girls and young women in social networks, harassment has broken out of the zone of silence although the legal mechanisms of addressing it have been blocked. The ‘I Am Not Afraid to Say’ flash mob and the Slutsky case have become landmark cultural and political conflicts, showing that coercion to remain silent is an effective form of control of girls and women, and that a struggle against a ban on discussion about girlhood is a struggle for agency. The gap between the realities of girls’ life and neo-traditionalism, actively pursued by the state and the church in the second decade of the twenty-first century, is growing. However, independence, freedom of choice, non-acceptance of violence have become unconditional priorities for girls. 20

GIRLHOOD AND AGENCY IN A TURBULENT SOCIETY

E

Girls about Themselves In searching for a balance between the requirements of a conservative policy and liberal norms, girls demonstrate different logics; they focus on different behaviours to expand their space for agency. Girlhood under Multiple Demands (Anastasia) Girls today face conflicting and tougher social demands. These include many criteria, including readiness for motherhood, beauty, sexuality, fidelity, independence and emancipation (Gentina and Chandon 2014: 16). These demands become imperative for Anastasia, a 16-year-old schoolgirl, who describes in her interview her image of a desired future. The absolute requirement is to be the mistress of the house, a good mother: You should be a good housewife; you should be exactly the ‘keeper of the hearth’. You have to be a good mother. Having kids is very important. You should also be able to be aggressive and, if necessary, stand up for yourself and your loved ones. You need to have the strength of character, and you also need to look beautiful, well-groomed.

An equally imperative requirement for Anastasia is a career: ‘You can’t, just marry a rich man and stay at home. You have to fulfil yourself, move up the career ladder. You have to be a leader and not to hope that someone will do something for you’. Anastasia sees a woman who does not meet these requirements as a negative role model. The traditional idea of girlhood as a binary opposition of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, turning here into the neoliberal opposition of a successful and ‘unsuccessful’ woman, who does not expect to succeed in life and who manifests low ambitions, is extremely persistent. She is a woman without higher education, single, not sociable, does not want to start a family, to get married. She is content with whatever little she has. Constantly working as a waitress or a sales assistant, for example, and she is ok with it. She doesn’t want to study, make a career and then earn good money and help her parents when they get old. She doesn’t stay in touch with her parents at all.

Anastasia describes the difference between the positive and negative role models, which basically represents the unequal chances of girls and women from different social groups. Nevertheless, for Anastasia a failure to succeed is seen as individual weakness. The negative role model is a woman who has refused or was deprived of family support, so she does not have enough resources, she is a failure, while the value of success is important for Anastasia. 21

D

OLGA ZDRAVOMYSLOVA AND ELENA ONEGINA

As the gap between wealthy and poor families becomes more pronounced, a family’s social capital not only becomes significant but is often the only factor determining the girl’s aspirations and their life chances (Gudkov, Dubin and Zorkaya 2011). Anastasia believes that the most reliable model is the traditional multi-generational family, in which resources, women’s skills and a clear division of gender roles are inherited: From grandmother to mother, important qualities are passed on to the next generations of women. In our family, a man (a grandfather) is the head of the family and the boss, he earns money and owns everything – the apartment is registered in his ownership, as well as the country house. And this is right. And grandmother is in charge of everything that is done at home. That is, grandpa is the breadwinner, and grandma keeps the house.

Thus, Anastasia’s choice to respond to the pressure of multiple demands is a deliberate acceptance of the traditional family and the patterns of behaviour shown by her elder family members. It is characteristic that in her reasoning, there is no place for the society and the state. She relies on the help and resources of the parental family, counting on the support of the husband – breadwinner in the future. This is, it seems, exactly the type of reasoning that a policy of conservative turn implies. At the same time the value of individual success compromises traditional ideals of femininity by forcing Anastasia to follow the idea of an independent ‘can-do’ girl. Urge for Agency as a New Way of Living (Katherina and Alina) By denying the conflict of generational values, Katherina, a 20-year-old student, recognizes changes. The most important for her is the discovery of new spaces of choice in the private and public areas that are inaccessible to older generations: Our generation is different from my parents’ generation – it’s not a difference in values, but rather in tools. A family has a dominant role; it’s a fundamental value. I want to have stable employment, to have two children, just like in the Soviet times. And to have some partner who would understand me, appreciate and respect me. Nothing changes in term of values overall. But the practices we use are different. They cover family, childbearing.

The availability of new contraceptives dramatically changes the attitudes of young women towards their decisions about having a child, which are now made in a more thoughtful way. This is a clear break from the reproductive abortion-driven culture of their mothers’ generation: ‘I un-

22

GIRLHOOD AND AGENCY IN A TURBULENT SOCIETY

E

derstand that I don’t need to have a child at 20–22 and can postpone it until you are 30, for example. And I’ll be using contraception that’s more accessible than in my parents’ days’. Katherina says that Internet platforms such as Youtube and Instagram are becoming convenient tools for discussion, fostering solidarity and at the same time building an autonomous space of freedom from the state. New areas of social, non-political activity, unknown to the Soviet generations, are emerging for girls to get involved: The possible field where we can express our activism is charity. Girls also more often and more willingly engage in charitable activities than their male peers. Girls even think that charity is a potential field where we can express our activism. But charity in this sense is not seen as political activity. A lot of girls do it with passion and consider it an important part of life, and civic experience and communication. But this is not a political experience, politics is not interesting.

Sociologists claim that this generation of girls and boys is a generation of individualists. They are focused on material prosperity and are not interested in history and politics (Kasamara and Urnov 2016; Pipiya 2018). Katherine says that she and her friends do not discuss the events of country’s past or the Soviet history: ‘It seems to me none of us even wants to ask the question: “What has really happened?”’ At the same time changing everyday practices create new opportunities, and compared with older generations, girls form a more reflective approach to the future. Speaking about the importance of charity, Katerina, in fact, recognizes that girls create together a space of freedom and responsibility. The urge for agency is combined here with a deliberate urge for civic non-political activity. An interview with Alina, an 18-year-old student, shows how the urge for agency emerges from experiencing a lack of freedom that she wants to explain and overcome: I don’t feel free. I think it’s every person’s need to search for freedom. And they try to create a way to be free wherever they are. And they’ll always be looking for a way to become free. Everybody needs freedom in equal measure. Everyone wants to have freedom. But not everyone achieves it. I don’t know how one can live without having the freedom of self-expression. I feel bad when there’s no such freedom.

For Alina, as well as for Katerina, the circle of friends and togetherness is important. The concept of solidarity appears in her reasoning. For her,

23

D

OLGA ZDRAVOMYSLOVA AND ELENA ONEGINA

solidarity is freedom and support in the circle of friends who feel and think the same way she does. As Caroline Humphrey notes, speaking of a specifically Russian mixture of freedom and embeddedness: ‘freedom here melds svoboda (freedom) with mir (community) producing an emotion of security, warmth and expressiveness’ (Humphrey 2007: 3). Alina partly echoes this understanding of freedom, unconsciously referring to the traditional Russian concept: ‘Solidarity means having shared views. But it is more than shared views; it’s also a support. Not only do you think alike, but one supports the other. Solidarity emerges at rallies, for example. It [solidarity] is best seen when people unite to achieve something’. For Alina, the experience of a lack of freedom is associated with vulnerability in a repressive Russian state. In Russia, people working in the government, who are representatives of the state, are trying to transform into a different class: they think of themselves as being the ‘aristocracy’. This is a system of inequality, but it’s not about incomes, it’s about power (that they have) and the demonstration of power. Alina says that the state is the oppressive context in which social solidarity is repressed and the space for the individual agency is rapidly shrinking: The worst thing is when a person or a group comes into conflict with the state. And there is nothing you can do about it. Because the state has all the power, and you do not. The state has a policy that sometimes impacts relations between people. It’s a human rights violation. This is unacceptable! But it seems to me that in Russia, the Orthodox Church is trying to regulate everything. A person should not be pressured.

At the same time Alina makes her choice, relying on herself and using the opportunities open to her generation to leave Russia to study and work abroad: I will put it very simply: I do not feel free (here). For me, freedom – not to be here. To be not in this country. Then you are freed for some time from all your responsibilities. From the people around here. But it is at the same time difficult. Because one of the most difficult responsibilities remains – responsibility for oneself.

Urge for agency is realized here as ‘individual modernization’ (Greene 2011) combined with a yearning for solidarity, political change and a reluctant refusal of political participation.

24

GIRLHOOD AND AGENCY IN A TURBULENT SOCIETY

E

Conclusions In conservative discourse, girlhood is not viewed as an independent stage of life, a period of life choices and the formation of an agency, but only as a kind of pre-life, a period of preparation for the future roles of wife and mother. In the absence of a strong feminist tradition and a public debate about girlhood, the alternative girlhoods can be viewed as a resistance to the gender norms imposed by a conservative turn. In conservative discourse, by means of contrasting traditional and alternative girlhoods, the opposition of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘us’ and ‘them’ is constructed. However, from interviews with girls, it is clear that conservatives are not the only rule makers and norm-setters. Girls create the space of agency under the pressure of a conservative turn, of which the traditional concept of girlhood is a necessary part, based on the idea of reviving the stereotypes of girls as weak, dependent and ineffectual. Urge for agency is rooted in ‘girl energy’ (Tormulainen, Mulari and Voipio 2017), that is, the resilience and ability to reflect, act, and create personal and social change. At the same time the positions and judgments of the girls about their future are different and often opposite. One can refer to the findings of the sociologist Grigory Yudin about various, even contradictory ‘political styles’ (Yudin 2019) both among girls and within girls themselves: individualism, orientation towards hierarchy and the accompanying political apathy are the most common, ‘strongest’ positions. This is contrasted with a different, potentially ‘strong position’ – one framed through participation, including involvement in local networking groups, inclusion in media and networking discussion, and a cosmopolitan outlook. The wider offering of various norms and behaviours, compared to those available to the previous generations, has clearly expanded the personal freedom space for girls, while simultaneously introducing new risks and conflicts, and paving the way for value gaps between generations. The main challenge to the conservative gender order, which has proved to have powerful resources for replication, is that Russian girlhood is increasingly being transformed into a space for discussion.

Olga Zdravomyslova is a sociologist, a Doctor of Philosophy, Executive Director of the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies

25

D

OLGA ZDRAVOMYSLOVA AND ELENA ONEGINA

(the Gorbachev Foundation) and a member of the editorial board of Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Elena Onegina, is a PhD student in Sociology at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow.

Notes 1. In 2020 Putin connected the fate of Russia and its prospects with demography: https://www.rbc.ru/politics/15/01/2020/5e1ed6b09a7947b2d382a726 (accessed 18 March 2020). 2. ‘Sexual education in schools should not corrupt, according to the Russian Orthodox Church’: https://ria.ru/20181201/1536961096.html (accessed 18 March 2020). 3. A generalized ideal image of female protagonists of novels by the Russian literature classical author Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883). 4. Three documents were passed by the Russian State Duma and Federation Council and signed into laws by the Russian President in late June 2013: Federal Law No. 135-FZ On Amendments to Article 5 of the Federal Law On Protection of Children from Information Harmful to their Health and Development, referred to subsequently as the Law on the Ban of Propaganda of Non-Traditional Sexual Relations among Minors; The Concept of the State Family Policy of the Russian Federation until 2025 – an attempt at creating a comprehensive vision of patriarchal family values; and Federal Law On Amendments to Article 148 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code to introduce responsibility for public action that shows clear and obvious disrespect for society and intent to offend religious believers’ feelings, or the Law on Offending Religious Feelings of the Faithful.

References Aroutiunian, Marina, Chantal Kourilsky-Augeven and Olga Zdravomyslova. 2008. Obraz i opyt prava: Pravovaia socialisatcsia v sovremennoi Rossiia [The Image and Experience of Law: Legal Specialization in Modern Russia]. Moscow: Ves’mir. Azhgikhina, Nadezhda. 2018. ‘Devochki prosiat vnimaniia: Is istorii rossiyskich isdanii dlia devochek-podrostkov i molodych zhenschin’ [‘Girls Asking for Attention: From the History of the Publications for Teenage Girls and Young Women’], Neprikosnovennyy zapas (119): 169–79. Bento-Ribeiro, Ana. 2015. ‘Bodies in Transition: Girlhoods in Post-Communist Balkan Cinema’, Interdisciplinary Journal Girlhood Studies 8(1): 10–25. Budraitskis, Ilya. 2019. Mir, kotoryi postroil Hantington I v kotorom zhivem vse my [The World That Hantington Built and in Which We All Live]. Moscow: Tziolkovskyi. 26

GIRLHOOD AND AGENCY IN A TURBULENT SOCIETY

E

Chernova, Zhanna. 2011. ‘Semeynaya politika v sovremennoy Rossii: “pyatyy natsproyekt”’ [‘Family Policy in Modern Russia, “the Fifth National Project”’], Yuzhno-rossiyskiy zhurnal sotsial’nykh nauk (2): 100–12. Connell, Raewyn. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Driscoll, Catherine. 2002. Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2008. ‘Girls Today: Girls, Girl Culture and Girl Studies’, Interdisciplinary Journal Girlhood Studies 1(1): 13–32. Dubin, Boris. 2010. ‘“Osobyy put” i sotsial’nyy poryadok v sovremennoy Rossii’ [‘“Own Way” and Social Order in Modern Russia’], Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniya. Dannyye. Analiz. Diskussii 1(103): 7–18. Erofeyev, Viktor. 2004. ‘Pochemu desheveiut russkiie krasavitzy?’ [‘Why Are Russian Beauties Becoming Cheaper?’], Moskovskie novosti, 21 May. ———. 2011. ‘Nuzhno li legalisovat’ prostitutziiu’ [‘Is It Necessary to Legalize Prostitution’], Echo Moscow website. Retrieved 17 March 2020 from www .echo.msk.ru/programs/klinch/755080-echo. Gal, Suzan and Gail Kligman. 2000. The Politics of Gender after Socialism: A Comparative-Historical Essay. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gapova, Elena. 2012. ‘Delo “Pussy Riot”: feministskiy protest v kontekste klassovoy bor’by’ [‘The Case of “Pussy Riot”: Feminist Protest in the Context of Class Struggle’], Neprikosnovennyy zapas (5): 10–22. Gentina, Elodie and Jean-Louis Chandon. 2014. ‘The Role of Gender on the Frequency of Shopping with Friends during Adolescence: Between the Need for Individuation and the Need for Assimilation’, Recherche et Applications en Marketing 29(4): 32–59. Gradskova, Yulia. 2015. ‘Organizing Girls’ Groups for a Better Future: Local and Global Challenges and Solutions’, Interdisciplinary Journal Girlhood Studies 8(1): 76–92. Greene, Samuel. 2011. ‘Russia: Society, Politics and the Search for Community’, Eurozine. Retrieved 17 March 2020 from http://www.eurozine.com/ russia-society-politics-and-the-search-for-community. ———. 2014. Moscow in Movement: Power and Opposition in Putin’s Russia. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gudkov, Lev, Boris Dubin and Nataliya Zorkaya. 2011. Molodezh’ Rocsii [Youth of Russia]. Moscow: Moskovskaya shkola politicheskikh issledovaniy. Harris, Anita. 2003. Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century. London: Routledge. Humphrey, Caroline. 2007. ‘Alternative Freedoms’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 151(1): 1–10. Inggs, Judith. 2015. ‘Fictional Girls in Transition during Perestroika’, Interdisciplinary Journal Girlhood Studies 8(1): 60–75. 27

D

OLGA ZDRAVOMYSLOVA AND ELENA ONEGINA

Isupova, Olga. 2018. ‘Intensivnoye materinstvo v Rossii: materi, docheri i synov’ya v shkol’nom vzroslenii’ [‘Intensive Motherhood in Russia: Mothers, Daughters and Sons in School Growing Up’], Neprikosnovennyy zapas (119): 180–89. Kasamara, Valeria and Mark Urnov. 2016. ‘Naziohal’naia identichnost’ studentov Rossii i SSHA (sravnitel’nyi analiz)’ [‘National Identity of Students of Russia and the USA (Comparative Analysis)’], Obshchestvennyie nauki i sovremennost (5): 75–103. Kourilsky-Augeven, Chantal, Marina Aroutiunian and Olga Zdravomyslova. 2008. Obraz i opyt prava: Pravovaia socialisatcsia v sovremennoi Rossiia [The Image and Experience of Law: Legal Specialization in Modern Russia]. Moscow: Ves’mir. Kourilsky-Augeven, Chantal and Olga Zdravomyslova. 2017. ‘Le sens du groupe chez les adolescents en France et en Russie’ [‘The Sense of Group among Adolescents in France and Russia’], Droit et cultures: Revue internationale interdisciplinaire (73): 229–60. Linton, Lynn Eliza. 1868. ‘The Girl of the Period’, Saturday Review (25): 339–444. Pipiya, Karina. 2018. ‘Kuda propal konflikt ottsov i detey’ [‘Where Did the Father-Child Conflict Go?’], Vedomosti. Retrieved 17 March 2020 from https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2018/09/25/782022-kuda-pro pal-konflikt-ottsov-i-detei. President of Russia. 2004. ‘Message to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation’, Kremlin. Retrieved 17 March 2020 from http://kremlin.ru/events/ president/transcripts/22494. Putin, Vladimir. 2000. ‘Inaugurzionnaia rech’ [‘Inaugural Speech’], 7 May 2000. Retrieved 17 March 2020 from http://www.mn.ru/blog_reference/ 20120507/317328193.html. ———. 2012. ‘Russia: nazional’ny vopros’ [‘Russia: National Issue’], Nezavisinaia gazeta, 23 January. Retrieved 17 March 2020 from http://www.ng.ru/ politics/2012-01-23/1_national.html. ‘Putin sviazal sud’bu Rossii i ee perspektivy s demograpfiey’ [‘Putin Linked the Fate of Russia and its Prospects with Demography’]. 2020. RBC Daily, 15 January. Retrieved 17 March 2020 from https://www.rbc.ru/politics/ 15/01/2020/5e1ed6b09a7947b2d382a726. Radaev, Vadim. 2018. ‘Millenialy na fone predshestvuiuschih pokoleny: empirichesky analis’ [‘Millennials Versus Previous Generations: An Empirical Analysis’], Socioligicheskie issledovania 3: 15–33. Riabov, Oleg and Tatyana Riabova. 2014. ‘The Remasculinization of Russia? Gender, Nationalism, and the Legitimation of Power Under Vladimir Putin’, Problems of Post-Communism 61(2): 23–35. Rose, Richard. 2009. Understanding Post-Communist Transformation: A Bottom Up Approach. London: Routledge. 28

GIRLHOOD AND AGENCY IN A TURBULENT SOCIETY

E

Rotkevich, Elena. 2019. ‘Minoborony provedet eksperimenty na devochkakh’ [‘Ministry of Defence Conducted an Experiment on Girls’], Peterburgskiy zhurnal ‘Gorod 812’. Retrieved 18 March 2020 from http://gorod-812.ru/ minoboronyi-provedet-eksperimentyi-na-devochkah/?fbclid=IwAR1N_JTb AtyL82MNbuMFtZmCGYdOq23eCXKNNQ1QjHIKeP82rzNQ0cu_6h8. Sakevich, Victoria. 2018. ‘Politika reproduktivnogo zdorov’ia v regionah i stranah mira’ [‘Reproductive Health Policies in Regions and Countries of the World’], Demoskop Weekly (777–778). Retrieved 17 March 2020 from http:// www.demoscope.ru/weekly/2018/0777/barom04.php. ‘“Soyuz zhenshchiny i muzhchiny” ili “soyuz dvukh lyudey”: Opredeleniye braka v raznykh stranakh’ [‘Marriage of Men and Women or Marriage of Two People: The Definition of Marriage in Different Countries’]. 2020. TASS, 13 February. Retrieved 17 March 2020 from https://tass.ru/info/7757761. Tormulainen, Aino, Heta Mulari and Myry Voipio. 2017. ‘Explosive SelfConfident Femininity: Experienced and Remembered Girl Energy’, in Bodil Formark, Heta Mulari and Myry Voipio (eds), Nordic Girlhood: New Perspectives and Outlooks. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 49–72. Yudin, Grigory. 2019. ‘Dva politicheskih stilia’ [‘Two Political Styles’], IPG Journal. Retrieved 20 April 2020 from https://www.ipg-journal.io/mnenie/statja/ show/dva-stilja-881/. Zdravomyslova, Elena and Anna Temkina. 2003. ‘Gosudarstvennoye konstruirovaniye gendera v sovetskom obshchestve’ [‘State Construction of Gender in Soviet Society’], Zhurnal issledovaniy sotsial’noy politiki 1(3–4): 299–321. Zdravomyslova, Elena and Anna Temkina. 2009. ‘Novyy byt v sovremennoy Rossii: gendernyye issledovaniya povsednevnosti’ [‘New Way of Life in Modern Russia Gender Studies of Everyday Life’], in Elena Zdravomyslova, Anna Rotkirkh and Anna Temkina (eds), Sozdaniye privatnosti kak sfery zaboty, lyubvi i nayemnogo truda [Creating Privacy as a Sphere of Care, Love and Employment]. St Petersburg: Izd-vo Yevropeyskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburg, pp. 7–20. Zdravomyslova, Olga. 2003. Sem’ia i Obshchestvo: Gendernoie izmereniie rossiyskoy transformatsii [Family and Society: Gender Dimension of Russian Transformation]. Moscow: Editorial URSS. ———. 2018. ‘Delo Slutskogo: Pochemu v Rodssii terpimo otnosiatsia k Harassmentu’ [‘The Slutsky Case: Why Do Russians Tolerate Harassment’], Forbes Women. Retrieved 20 April 2020 from https://www.forbes.ru/forbes-wom an/358863-delo-sluckogo-pochemu-v-rossii-terpimo-otnosyatsya-k-harassm entu.

29

D CHAPTER 2

Just Ordinary Self-Surveillance in Relation to Gender and (Dis)Ability Norms Kamilla Peuravaara

John Berger (1972) describes how the mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of women. The real function of the mirror, however, was different. It was to encourage women to treat themselves as, first and foremost, a visual display. I assume that girls and women in contemporary Western society have a variety of experiences of mirroring. The mirroring process might take place before we leave home in the morning, in the form of checking our hair, putting on some face cream, foundation and some mascara. While brushing our teeth, we check that we haven’t missed any spots or food residue. We might continue the process by checking that our clothes are spotless and neat. All of these manoeuvres may be described as routines that take place to varying extents on a daily basis, without us reflecting on it. However, these routines are related to social norms concerning conceptions of appearance, and they are definitely gendered. In this chapter, I highlight how self-surveillance takes place in relation to social conceptions of gender and (dis)ability by combining feminist theory, disability studies and sociology of the body. I illustrate how young

SELF-SURVEILLANCE IN RELATION TO GENDER AND (DIS)ABILITY NORMS

E

women labelled with an intellectual impairment monitor themselves and their bodies in relation to the intersection between gender norms and (dis)ability. Moreover, the young women’s experiences tell us about contemporary norms and ideals concerning young femininity in a Swedish context. To accomplish this, I focus on three themes of mirroring: the importance of dressing smartly, the importance of saying the right things and the importance of ‘not looking so weird’. Certain streams in previous feminist research have clearly described how girls and women monitor themselves in relation to patriarchal hierarchies in contemporary Western society. This takes place, for example, when girls and women control and surveil their body and self by dieting, fixing their hair and make-up, and wearing ‘fashionable’ clothes – all in relation to social norms and ideals concerning what it means to be ‘feminine’ (Bartky 1990; Bengs 2000; Björk 1999; Bordo 1998; Brook 1999; Frost 2001; Meurling 2003). When it comes to ways to be, the Nordic feminine ideal has been described as a strong, independent and outspoken young femininity – which is called ‘Pippi Longstocking feminism’ (Formark and Bränström Öhman 2013; my translation). But how is self-surveillance done and experienced when gendered norms concerning femininity and the body are combined with ableism? Ableism is a matter of prejudice toward, and discrimination against, people with disability (Kumari Campbell 2009; Harpur 2012). This oppression is described as a network of processes that discriminate against those who may not completely meet the criteria of bodily normality and bodily standards that are projected as being fully human: ‘A network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect, speciestypical and therefore essential and fully human. Disability then is cast as a diminished state of being human’ (Kumari Campbell 2009: 44). The structures of ableism are ‘gendered’ because social conceptions of the ideal body are closely related to ideas of an ideal femininity among women (Peuravaara 2015b). Moreover, conceptions of ableism are related to and influence our conceptions of who we ‘are’ and who we ‘should be’ (Kumari Campbell 2009). The feminist disability researcher Susan Wendell (1996) believes that norms concerning what the ideal body should look like and how it should behave constitute societal disciplinary practices that promote physical normality, which may be similar to the societal disciplinary practices present that promote femininity. Social conceptions of ‘beauty’, ‘fitness’, ‘competence’ and ‘normality’ serve to exclude and 31

D

KAMILLA PEURAVAARA

disable many individuals’ bodies, while others are validated (Garland Thomson 1997). I argue that internalized discipline regarding the body is not only aimed at physical normality, i.e. the body’s physical appearance and the objectification of our bodies. It also concerns, for example, bodily behaviour and ways of speaking. Previous research has shown how women with an intellectual impairment are not seen as women because of their lack of access to traditional female roles, such as being mothers (Barron 2008; Johnson and Traustadóttir 2000). Previous research has also demonstrated that these young women are considered disembodied – with the exception of possible sexual and physical abuse – because they have seldom been included in feminist research focusing on the ideal body and femininity (Peuravaara 2015b). This chapter is a part of a larger sociological study focusing on twelve Swedish young women, aged between 17 and 20, and specifically on their subjective experiences of controlling themselves and their bodies in contemporary society. I understand the young women’s individual conceptions of the body and gender as expressions of prevailing social norms and values. The women attend a special class within the Swedish school system and have been categorized as having an intellectual impairment. The education in special schools aims to offer a regular education to students labelled with an intellectual impairment. As far as possible, the education is to correspond to that provided in regular high schools (Skolverket 2011). The study is inspired by feminist studies, where experience-based studies have been highlighted as specifically important in research about, and with, women with impairment. This is important because disability research has essentially consisted of male-dominated knowledge production. When research is instead based on women with disabilities and their personal experiences, male-dominated knowledge production is challenged (Thomas 1999). The informants do not ‘have’ disabled bodies. But I argue that when we study those who have been positioned, to some extent, beyond the limits of normality, social norms in relation to the body and femininity can become visible and be understood more clearly. What is considered normal in terms of appearance, body movements and expressions usually ‘passes’ unnoticed for most, except for those who do not match the current views on what constitutes normality (Goffman 1963; Wendell 1996). The young women have not only been categorized with an impairment, which means that they encounter notions of normality and deviation in (dis)ability, but have also been categorized as young, which implies 32

SELF-SURVEILLANCE IN RELATION TO GENDER AND (DIS)ABILITY NORMS

E

some conceptions on normality in relation to age. Moreover, they are categorized as women, which means they conform to certain notions of normality regarding appearance and behaviour based on norms of femininity.

Method The study was conducted together with an already existing ‘girl group’, created by the teachers at school and consisting of young women between the ages of 17 and 20 from different special school classes. The study is inspired by collaborative research, which means that the participants have participated and designed interview topics in the focus group interviews. The interviews were conducted at a school attended by the young women. Within the Swedish school system, there are special classes for young women and men who have been diagnosed as having an intellectual impairment. Special classes are usually located in the same main building as the ‘regular’ school. However, the special classes are sometimes in a separate part of the school building, with separate lecture rooms, indicating that the Swedish school system contributes to the categorization of impairment. Previous research with women with intellectual impairments has illustrated that they may not necessarily experience being categorized as having an intellectual impairment as the main problem with regard to experiencing discrimination, but rather that the problems stem from social discrimination (Johnson and Traustadóttir 2000). The young women were already familiar with each other before the fieldwork began, which was valuable given the research method used. Collaborative research can be seen as an umbrella term; it is sometimes also called emancipatory or inclusive research. This kind of research has been part of a major methodological field for at least the past forty years and is mainly focused on marginalized groups. The research method has its foundations in qualitative research, action research and emancipatory and feminist research (see, e.g., Peuravaara 2015a; Zarb 1992; Walmsley and Johnson 2003). The focus group interviews had two purposes: to establish contact with the young women and to engage them in the design of interview themes. The inspiration derived from so-called collaborative research concerned jointly contributing to knowledge production based on the women’s subjective experiences. I also used individual interviews based on the themes formulated and discussed by the young women during the focus group interviews. In the 33

D

KAMILLA PEURAVAARA

individual interviews, I have followed the interview structure as regards the order of topics. But the most important thing during the interview was that the young women were given the freedom to describe their subjective experiences as much as possible, rather than following the sequence of the interviews correctly. Coding of the transcribed interviews has taken place alternately with consideration of theories related to feminist and disability perspectives on the body, and these have been a guide in the analysis process, although I consider the empirical material to be main focus of the analysis. The power dimensions of gender and (dis)ability have functioned as my core analytical inputs. This means that the coded sections have been reread repeatedly to enable an analysis of the interaction between these power dimensions. I focus on the power dimensions – i.e. gender and (dis)ability – as a way of enabling an understanding of conceptions of normality and young femininity.

Theoretical Perspectives on Self-Surveillance Michel Foucault (1978) suggested that pursuit of the perfect body is a matter of internalized monitoring, i.e. a disciplinary power that leads to self-control. This monitoring, as Foucault describes, was primarily related to institutions in society and could occur, for example, in hospitals, factories, prisons or schools. Bentham’s Panopticon is an example of a building described by Foucault. Through its architectural design, it allows a monitor, located in a tower with windows for each cell, to observe all individuals in the cells in the building. The central feature of these buildings was that they were not only designed to allow for transparency and observation, but also to enable internal and detailed control. Although surveillance rests on individuals, its function involves a network of relationships from top to bottom, but also to a certain extent from bottom to top and laterally. This network is held together by exercising power, and it contributes to a feeling of always being supervised. This feeling also makes adjustments and corrects behaviour (Foucault 1978). This form of monitoring affects how we act and behave, and it impacts on our bodies. Although it is a process that starts from the ‘outside’ (from the disciplinary viewer/supervisor), its effectiveness is based on it being moved to the ‘inside’ and becoming self-regulation; the guarded individual monitors himself (Foucault 1978: 176f ). Inspired by Foucault and the perspective of internalization of discipline, Sandra Bartky (1990) theorizes the internalization of femininity. 34

SELF-SURVEILLANCE IN RELATION TO GENDER AND (DIS)ABILITY NORMS

E

Unlike Foucault, who means that disciplinary practices are institutionally bounded, Bartky says that the disciplinary practices of femininity are unbounded, i.e. they take place everywhere. From a feminist disability studies perspective, Susan Wendell (1996) is inspired by Bartky and argues that social norms regarding what a body should look like and how it should behave constitute societal disciplinary practices as in relation to physical normality, which may be similar to societal disciplinary practices in relation to femininity. Wendell describes them as norms that are internalized by most of us. These norms are socially penetrated and demand that we live up to a specific physical standard that objectifies and controls our bodies. And if we cannot meet the standard of normality, a feeling of shame and self-hatred will arise. This illustrates how normality is enforced through powerful internalized discipline. According to Wendell, the disciplinary aspect of normality is a prerequisite for being able to participate in most social contexts. But it may pass unnoticed by those who are able to comply with the norms without noticeable effort (Wendell 1996). This involves social rules and norms that many of us ignore and rather see as ‘natural’ and unproblematic, rather than as socially enforced (Wendell 1996: 89). Describing the process of internalized normality, Jenny Morris (1991) suggests that the greatest ‘problems’ for persons with impairment are the destructive messages from the ‘non-disabled world’ that become part of their everyday life. It is the ambient norms and values about them that become part of them. The ‘normal’, ‘ideal’ body is not equivalent to what is right, good and positive. Struggling to achieve the bodily ideal and bodily norm is a form of compensatory behaviour that fuels the nonsensical notion that it is better to be average than to deviate from the norm (Morris 1991).

Experience of Mirroring One day when I entered the classroom to prepare one of the focus group interviews with the young women, a large book had been left on the teacher’s table after the latest lecture. It was impossible not to notice it given its enormous size. I imagined the thud and the subsequent echo that must have reverberated through the classroom when it was put down on the table. My curiosity made me check it out. The title of the book was ‘Grease and label’. This book deals with codes of conduct, what could be called folklore, ways of socializing and social skills in different situations 35

D

KAMILLA PEURAVAARA

and contexts. Women (and men) of different ages are continually being educated and rebuked on aspects such as proper behaviour, respectable clothing, ‘good’ language and so forth, by various societal institutions such as the school and the family. The young women I interviewed described, for instance, an inherent feeling of always having to stay clean and of distress about having food residue around their mouth after eating or about wearing clothes that do not fit them properly. John Berger (1972) describes how men look at women and women watch themselves being looked at and how this determines the relation between men and women as well as women’s relation to themselves. Berger highlights that the surveyor of woman in herself is a male and that she turns herself into an object of vision – something to be seen (Berger 1972). Pamela, one of the young women, describes her feelings of fear about having food left around her mouth after finishing her lunch: Pamela – I’ve noticed that when I’m in for example the canteen and people look at me I become afraid and so. I think I have something around my mouth so I become so afraid. There’s something within me that says I must be clean all the time. I find it quite hard to think about it, seriously. Interviewer – Do you do anything specific when you get these feelings? Pamela – I always have my pocket mirror with me and I always look into it and yes look to see it’s clean and all.

Anna, another young woman, describes how she always looks at herself in the mirror before leaving home. This is done to check that her hair and make-up are appropriate and in the right place: Anna – When I leave I always look at what I look like. In the bathroom, I always go and check what I look like. Interviewer – What are you looking at? Anna – My hair, make-up, all kinds of things… Interviewer – Okay and how do you want to look before you leave home? Anna – That everything looks good and doesn’t look so messy and stuff.

Looking at oneself may be described as a daily routine. Liv, one of the young women, describes how she looks at herself when I asked about it: Liv – Yes, I do it every day. Interviewer – Is it in any specific situations or places? Liv – When I get dressed, is classic, or when passing a mirror, then you always look. Interviewer – What are you looking at? Liv – I always look at my ass. I think it’s so damn big. 36

SELF-SURVEILLANCE IN RELATION TO GENDER AND (DIS)ABILITY NORMS

E

Liv, Anna and Pamela describe different techniques for how and where they monitor their bodies and their self, e.g., looking in their mobile phone or mirror, in different situations such as when passing a mirror, eating lunch or leaving home. The monitoring is a kind of controlling process; they can be understood as doing it to make sure they will make a ‘good’ impression and appearance (McRobbie 1991). Bartky (1990) suggests that the woman who checks her make-up several times a day to see if her mascara has run, who worries that the rain or wind may spoil her hair, who monitors everything she eats or feels fat has become a self-policing subject. This selfsurveillance is a form of obedience to the patriarchy (Bartky 1990: 80). The dominant narrative, within feminist research about young women and the body, is that young women have internalized a problematic way of looking at their bodies, due to normative representations of femininity in the mass media and popular culture. Moreover, young women have incorporated the idea that they are valued solely on the basis of their appearance. This is understood as problematic in a society where the female ideal is considered a small, weak and thin female body – an ideal that causes young women to control their body, resulting in suffering in the form of ill health and, in the worst case, anorexia (see, e.g., Darmon 2009; Frost 2001; Meurling 2003; Palmgren 2014). The young women are clearly monitoring themselves and their bodies in relation to gender norms concerning what the body is supposed to look like and how a young woman in contemporary society is supposed to behave. However, the young women are also controlling themselves and their bodies, striving to present themselves in relation to ability norms, such as dressing smartly. The Importance of Dressing Smartly The young women described the importance of dressing ‘suitably’ and ‘properly’ in relation to age and gender. Pamela, one of the young women, describes why: Someone here [in special class] sometimes doesn’t look very smart. I’m the only in my class who dresses a bit better. Not to brag, but my siblings think I look normal on the inside and outside. I’m on the verge of going to a regular class so that . . . Here [in special class] you should dress like you’re going to high school and not like you’re in lower secondary school.

Pamela describes the importance of dressing properly in relation to her age, which to her means looking ‘normal’. Based on her clothing, she could be identified as belonging with the young women who study in the 37

D

KAMILLA PEURAVAARA

ordinary high school and at the same time distances herself a bit from her classmates in special school. Sally, another young woman, describes getting help from her older sister to dress fashionably and wear trendy make-up. She says these efforts result in appreciated compliments for her appearance from young men studying at the regular school. Sally – I got the best compliment from a guy at school. He said I was very pretty and I was so embarrassed. Interviewer – What did he say to you? Sally – Like ‘You’re so good looking and who has been styling you’ and I told him that it was my sister and he kind of ‘you look like you should be able to study in a regular class’ and I kind of huff and blushed.

Contemporary society has been described as an individual, consumption culture in which we are consuming our identities and our bodies (Bauman 2007; Johansson 2006). As we consume our bodies in an ‘individualized’ consumer society, we can tell other individuals in our environment who we ‘are’ through our body. The body becomes a means, a kind of ‘cultural capital’, that you invest in to pass as you wish (Skeggs 1999). Beverly Skeggs (1999) describes how women in the working class invest in their bodies to pass as not belonging to the working class. This can be related to the women in this chapter, but for them this is a matter of using the body to pass as someone who does not study in a special class. For them, the choice of clothing and accessories is a way of showing others that they are young women who study – the same as the young women studying in the regular high school classes. The Importance of Saying the Right Things The young women described experiences of getting critical looks in their everyday life. When I asked about these experiences, they described the importance of ‘passing’ (Goffman 1963) as an ‘ordinary girl’ – or at least, passing as a girl who does not attend a special class. ‘Passing’ as unnoticed has also been described by Sara Ahmed (2011) in relation to norms of whiteness. One example of how this ‘passing’ as an ordinary girl is done is Sandra, one of the young women, who describes her important and partly stressful struggle to ‘say the right things’ in her interactions with students attending ‘ordinary’ school: Sandra: I’m very scared of making a fool of myself and saying the wrong things. When you think about it you think. Is it okay to say that or isn’t it, or I kind of 38

SELF-SURVEILLANCE IN RELATION TO GENDER AND (DIS)ABILITY NORMS

E

wish that I had the head for those kinds of things. So I can think of it. Sometimes I say really stupid stuff and when I have said goodbye and those kinds of things then kind of, why did I say that, and kind of gahhh. . .

Sally, another young woman, describes the feeling she has when she, in an interaction with a young man, is spoken to in an ordinary fashion, which is a rather rare experience: Sally – I notice that people talk to me and look at me like I’m normal and, for example, one friend of mine that I met the first time on the bus he kind of talked to me just as if I was an ordinary girl like, I was so happy when I talked with him. Interviewer – What did he do differently? I mean how did he talk to you in a way you’re not used to being talked to? Sally – He talked to me like you talk with your friends, like just ordinary. Interviewer – Are you not used to being talked to like that? Sally – Well, my speech, when I talk really fast, you might notice that I may say something strange and talk really fast and then they say ‘what did you say’ and if I say something really fast like then people don’t take me seriously, then they think like I’m talking too fast and that I can’t even talk, so I’m working on it!

Sally describes the experience of being an ordinary girl in the interaction with the young man on the bus. It can be described as desirable to be seen as an ordinary girl, because it makes her feel accepted and taken seriously. Through the young women’s experiences of the importance of saying the right things and the emotions of happiness when someone is talking to you, because you are ‘ordinary’, it may be understood that questions of appearance in relation to young femininity are not only about physical appearance, i.e. dressing smart, but also about ‘talking smart’. The norms regarding what it means to be an ‘ordinary’ girl and the strategies of striving for, and in that way reproducing, that norm are related to what the women describe as ‘not looking so weird’. The Importance of ‘Not Looking So Weird’ The process of mirroring doesn’t end when one leaves home in the morning. It may be described as an ongoing process during the day. Mirroring is done by the young women to guarantee and control, as some of the women express it, that they do not look so weird. Noor – Well sometimes it can be like I have put on make-up in the morning and after I’ve been at school for a couple of hours the kohl turns out kind of weird. And then I kind of go and see how it looks and fix it kind of. Interviewer – Okay, are there any other situations when you are mirroring? 39

D

KAMILLA PEURAVAARA

Noor – No, but I’m very nit-picky about my shirt, for example, the patch [pointing on the washcloth in the shirt] sticking out or if my clothes are not in the right place and so I’m very careful. Interviewer – Okay. Noor – Because there are some people who don’t care if they have their pants on backwards or, yes I’m very careful about that. Interviewer – Okay and why is it important, these things you describe? Noor – So I don’t look so weird. Why should it [the weirdness] be seen as well?

Noor describes her experiences of controlling and thorough checking so that her clothes will really fit properly. In this way, she will not look so weird, as she puts it: ‘why should it be seen as well’. This may be understood as a strategy for not making the impairment visible by following the rules of normality for gender and (dis)ability. It is not only mirrors that provide opportunities for mirroring during the day. There are different techniques and places where mirroring is done, e.g., in shop windows and other people’s sunglasses. Liv, one of the young women, suggests that even if there are people on the other side of the shop window (in the store), people’s eyes are still aimed at themselves. Liv – Sometimes when I pass shop windows, I do it. I just like [throws her hair back]. But then I’m mainly looking at my hair. And sometimes people are standing there on the other side of the window. But you don’t care about them. Interviewer – So what are you looking at? Liv – It’s kind of if your pants aren’t behaving or your hair is crooked and your glasses aren’t straight, it’s just like that, otherwise I don’t care so much, then I’m pretty cool. Interviewer – Are there any other situations where you look at yourself? Liv – It’s always when you walk by a window or looking in someone’s sunglasses when they are facing the sun, then you can see yourself, usually you don’t look in the sunglasses at the person’s eyes who are wearing them. It’s more like you look at yourself in the sunglasses. I think all ordinary people do that. Interviewer – But why do you think they do this, look at themselves in somebody’s sunglasses? Liv – I don’t know, it’s probably because they see themselves, and they think they’re obviously amazing.

Liv’s experience is a description of a young woman in a contemporary society crowded with people, but where the real observer, the critical eye, is self-surveillance.

40

SELF-SURVEILLANCE IN RELATION TO GENDER AND (DIS)ABILITY NORMS

E

Conclusion: The Intersection of (Dis)Ability and Gender in Relation to Self-Surveillance In this chapter, I have illustrated how a group of young women with an intellectual impairment monitor themselves in relation to gender and ableist social norms in contemporary Swedish society. This has been analysed using three themes of mirroring: the importance of dressing smartly, the importance of saying the right things, and the importance of ‘not looking so weird’. These themes do not exist separately, rather they are closely related to each other and share the effort to appear to be ‘normal’ – to look like an ‘ordinary’ girl. The mirroring takes place in different places and situations in the young women’s everyday life, for example in the bathroom, at school and at home, but other self-surveillance devices are also used, such as the mobile phone mirror, another individual’s sunglasses and shopping windows. The mirroring is related to disciplinary practices and takes place to ensure that they have no dirt on their face, that their clothes fit properly, and that their body does not look too big, etcetera. Many of these things mentioned that are being controlled by the young women are related to norms of young femininity. But the pursuit of being ‘ordinary’ and ‘normal’ and the worry about saying the ‘right’ words are also related to conceptions of (dis)ability and aspects of ableism. The young women’s subjective experiences illustrate that being just ordinary involves a continuous ‘doing’. It highlights the fact that being ordinary is not something that happens automatically; it is a privileged position in contemporary society that not all young women automatically have access to. It is a complex process related to the intersection of (dis)ability and gender and conceptions of normality. The importance of talking smart by speaking the right words and dressing smartly to avoid looking weird (because ‘why should it be visible?’) illustrates that conceptions of normative young femininity not only concern femininity (such as wearing fashionable suitable clothes and make-up). Also included here are normative conceptions of (dis)ability. Expressing oneself in a ‘clever’ way in a school context is a way to signal that you are a well-spoken student, that you are just an ordinary young woman, an ‘able’ young woman – just like the other young women studying in the regular classes. The young women’s experiences illustrate how being ‘able’ is included in what is considered to be normative young femininity.

41

D

KAMILLA PEURAVAARA

The feminine body has attracted considerable attention in feminist research as well as disability studies. But I stress the need to combine theoretical perspectives on the feminine body with disability studies, and specifically an intersectional perspective focusing on the power dimensions of (dis)ability and gender. This makes a fruitful theoretical contribution when analysing the complexity of the ideal normative feminine body and makes visible and problematizes conceptions of normality in contemporary society. Previous research has described how girls and women are monitoring themselves in relation to patriarchal structures, are objectified and mainly become an object of the male gaze. However, young women also monitor themselves in relation to gender structures and through a male gaze, and this process intersects with an ‘able’ look. This could be described as a contemporary society crowded with people, where the observer, the critical eye, is self-surveillance through a male and able gaze. In contemporary society, different ideals of femininity are present; these are of course also changeable to some extent. It is interesting that in contemporary society in the Swedish context, the able norm – and being ‘ordinary’ – seems so strong that the young women are, to some extent, forced into that position. At the same time as this demands constant ‘doing’ on the part of the young women who wish to be ‘ordinary’, it is also a position that not all women automatically have access to.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the foundation Erik och Carola Tengströms fond, which has financed the writing of this chapter.

Kamilla Peuravaara has a PhD in sociology and currently holds a postdoctoral position at the Department of Education at Umeå University, Sweden. Her research interests can best be described as conceptions of normality in relation to the body, femininity and (dis)ability. The research she conducts in the areas of sociology of the body and disability studies aims to improve our understanding of the role played by conceptions and constructions of the body in constructing identities.

42

SELF-SURVEILLANCE IN RELATION TO GENDER AND (DIS)ABILITY NORMS

E

References Ahmed, Sara. 2011. Vithetens hegemoni [Whiteness Hegemony]. Hägersten: Tankekraft. Barron, Karin. 2008. ‘Kön och funktionshinder’ [Gender and Disability], in Lars Grönvik and Mårten Söder (eds), Bara funktionshindrad? Funktionshinder och intersektionalitet [Only Disabled? Disability and Intersectionality]. Malmö: Gleerups, pp. 28–46. Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. New York and London: Routledge. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2007. Consuming Life. London: Polity Press. Bengs, Carita. 2000. Looking Good: A Study of Gendered Body Ideals among Young People. PhD dissertation. Umeå: Umeå universitet. Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books. Björk, Nina. 1999. Sireners sång: tankar kring modernitet och kön [Sirens Song: Thoughts about Modernity and Gender]. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. Björnsdóttir, Kristin and Rannveig Traustadóttir. 2010. ‘Stuck in the Land of Disability? The Intersection of Learning Difficulties, Class, Gender and Religion’, Disability & Society 25: 49–62. Bordo, Susan. 1998. ‘Reading the Slender Body’ in D.W. Malden (ed.), Body and Flesh: A Philosophical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 291–304. Brook, Barbara. 1999. Feminist Perspectives on the Body. London and New York: Longman. Darmon, Muriel. 2009. ‘The Fifth Element: Social Class and the Sociology of Anorexia’, Sociology 43(4): 717–33. DOI: 10.1177/0038038509105417. Foucault, Michel. 1978. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 2nd edn. New York: Vintage Books. Formark, Bodil and Annelie Bränström Öhman. 2013. ‘Situating Nordic Girls’ Studies’, Girlhood Studies 6(2): 3–10. DOI: 10.3167/ghs.2013.060202. Frost, Liz. 2001. Young Women and the Body: A Feminist Sociology. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Garland Thomson, Rosemarie. 1997. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Simon and Schuster. Harpur, Paul. 2012. ‘Embracing the New Disability Rights Paradigm: The Importance of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’, Disability & Society 27(1): 1–14. Johansson, Thomas. 2006. Makeovermani: Om Dr Phil, plastikkirurgi och illusionen om det perfekta jaget [Makeovermania: About Dr Phil, Plastic Surgery and the Illusion of the Perfect Self ]. Nørhaven: Natur & Kultur. 43

D

KAMILLA PEURAVAARA

Johnson, Kelley and Rannveig Traustadóttir. 2000. ‘Finding a Place in the World’, in Rannveig Traustadóttir and Kelley Johnson (eds), Women with Intellectual Disabilities. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, pp. 9–23. Kumari Campbell, Fiona. 2009. Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. McRobbie, Angela. 1991. Feminism and Youth Culture: From ‘Jackie’ to ‘Just Seventeen’. London: MacMillan. Meurling, Birgitta. 2003. Din smala lycka. Varför flickor? Ideal, självbilder och ätstörningar [Why Girls? Ideal Self-images and Eating Disorders]. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Morris, Jenny. 1991. Pride Against Prejudice: Transforming Attitudes to Disability. London: The Women’s Press. Palmgren, Ann-Charlotte. 2014. Göra ätstörd: Om flickskap, normativitet och taktik i bloggar [Doing Eating-disordered: On Girlhood, Normativity, and Tactics in Blogs]. PhD dissertation. Åbo: Åbo Akademis Förlag. Peuravaara, Kamilla. 2015a. ‘Reflections on Collaborative Research: To What Extent, and on Whose Terms?’, Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research 17(3): 272–83. ———. 2015b. ‘Som en vanlig tjej’: Föreställningar om kropp, funktionalitet och femininitet [‘Like an Ordinary Girl’: Conceptions of the Body, (Dis)ability and Femininity]. PhD dissertation. Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, Acta Universitatis. Skeggs, Beverley. 1999. Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. Skolverkets lägesbedömning, 2011, Del 1 – Beskrivande data, Förskoleverksamhet, skolbarnsomsorg, skola och vuxenutbildning [Descriptive Data, Preschool Activities, School Childcare, School and Adult Education]: 363. Available 2014-09-09 at http://www.skolverket.se/om-skolverket/publikati oner/visa-enskildpublikation?_xurl_=http%3A%2F%2Fwww5.skolverket.se%2Fwtpub%2Fws%2Fskolbok%Fwpubext%2Ftrycksak%2FRecord %3Fk%3D2692. Thomas, Carol. 1999. Female Forms: Experiencing and Understanding Disability. Milton Keynes, Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press. Walmsley, Jan and Kelley Johnson. 2003. Inclusive Research with People with Learning Disabilities. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Wendell, Susan. 1996. The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability. New York: Routledge. Zarb, Gerry. 1992. ‘On the Road to Damascus: First Steps Towards Changing the Relations of Disability Research Production’, Disability & Society 7(2): 125–38.

44

D CHAPTER 3

Youth Consumptions, Agency and Signs of Girlhood Rethinking Young Italian Females’ Lifestyles Geraldina Roberti

Analysing the Role of Consumption from a Girlish Perspective: An Introduction Any analysis of the growth and development of current generations of young people has to take into consideration the gradual liquefaction of social norms and institutions highlighted by Bauman (2000) at the end of the twentieth century. As Beck (1992) also argues, collective sources of meaning no longer appear capable of offering individuals sufficient existential security to enable them to orient their personal biographies firmly. Today precariousness and uncertainty seem to characterize the life trajectories of young people (Bauman 2007) to such an extent that they interfere with the mechanisms of personal identity construction. Jenkins (2008) states that we may no longer even be sure about ourselves, as a consequence of contemporary concerns about identity: ‘these concerns reflect the uncertainty produced by dramatic changes: reorientations of work, gender and family, class and status mobility, migration, . . . , the reNotes for this section can be found on page 61.

D

GERALDINA ROBERTI

drawing of political borders, the intrusive reality of global media’ (Jenkins 2008: 31). In such a shifting scenario consumption practices adopted by social actors have also ended up assuming unprecedented significance, inasmuch as they offer individuals a range of symbolic resources that can be used to construct and give meaning to their personal biographical path. Purchased products give expression to culturally connoted universes of meaning which consumers can draw upon to define their self, lifestyle and social belongings. In line with the viewpoint of many scholars (Belk 2013; Douglas and Isherwood 1979, among others), the significance of products and consumer practices cannot be reduced to economic criteria such as exchange value alone, but need to be seen in the wider social contexts from which they derive symbolic and cultural value. As stated by Ferraro, Escalas and Bettman (2011: 169), ‘material possessions are often much more than their functional properties; for example, possessions may be used to construct one’s self and thus become a symbolic manifestation of who one is. Possessions with such properties become an extension of the self ’. The products purchased become identity markers, elements incorporated into everyday life practices, capable of signalling a social actor’s position in the world (Douglas 1996) and his/her story. In this perspective, researchers have pointed out how, nowadays, the consumption process can be interpreted both as: 1) a complex piece of consumer behaviour, which takes concrete form in a multifaceted act of purchase and/or use; and 2) an expressive practice, one that is capable of communicating to others information about the identity, gender and cultural/value system of the individual. To illustrate both these aspects, in this chapter two specific consumer experiences exhibited by a sample of female university students are analysed, in order to highlight their principal semantic dimensions. In the first study, concerning the purchase of convenience goods,1 the objective is to bring out the symbolic value of the acts of consumption, that is, their significance as emblems of the cultural and/or aspirational universe to which the social actors recognize themselves as belonging. Consumer behaviour is here seen as having the ability to produce social meanings, transforming bought products into goods bearing non-material value. In the second study, instead, tattooing will be analysed as a specific consumption experience capable of expressing the subjectivity, the personal agency and the meaning horizon of individuals. Today researchers have ascribed a communicative and/or expressive character to tattoos and body modification practices (Atkinson 46

YOUTH CONSUMPTIONS, AGENCY AND SIGNS OF GIRLHOOD

E

2004; Sweetman 1999), reclaiming the body as a tool for the creation of a subject’s individuality, or as a ‘canvas’ upon which individuals write their own stories. As has become readily apparent, in contemporary society any individual aspiring to achieve economic, cultural, and educational autonomy has to deal with growing social, cultural and financial difficulties. This is especially the case for young women, despite the fact that, as scholars have highlighted, girls can play a positive role in bringing about development and change that benefit society in general (Lughi 2002). Amongst the many challenges that postmodernity presents to young women, one of the most significant relates to how girlhood is conceptualized today and to the construction of girls’ personal agency. To give a short definition, we can say that agency is the ability of a social actor to act in the world and to make free choices (see Archer 2003; Côté and Levine 2002). An individual who exercises their agency, therefore, establishes their behaviour autonomously – initiating and effectuating actions (even if these actions may also involve other agents). Kabeer (1999) describes agency as the ability to define one’s goals and act upon them, whereas Bhattacharjee, Berger and Menon (2014) depict it in terms of autonomy, freedom of choice, locus of control or self-determination. However, in the changing social, economic and cultural context of contemporary society, agency needs to be re-theorized in relation to gendered issues and discourses too, also bearing in mind the role played by the heightened processes of individualization to which social actors are subjected in this age of second modernity (Beck 1992; Giddens 1990). According to McRobbie (2008), the exaltation of an individualized feminine subjectivity to be found in a large part of post-feminist literature is accompanied by a celebration of values like free choice and female empowerment, and thereby it risks obscuring the power relations which, still today, impede certain categories of women from exercising their agency. Indeed, as revealed by the intersectional approach, for many young women the possibility to exercise their personal agency depends on them dealing with a series of structural variables (among which are age, social class, ethnicity and sexuality) that, combining with each other, often end up producing further forms of discrimination (Gill 2016; McCall 2005). From the nefarious interlinking of such dimensions modes of oppression can arise that intersect with those related to gender, indicating that oppression is not a singular process, but comprises multiple, converging, or interwoven systems (McRobbie 2009). 47

D

GERALDINA ROBERTI

Against the background of the considerations outlined above, the research reported here aims to explore the link between consumption practices and female agency, seeking to establish whether the consumer behaviour displayed by the young women in the sample was effectively an instrument they could use to assert themselves, their gendered identity and their agentic capacities. Assuming that for the individuals in the sample there were no severe structural limitations due to the social or economic context,2 I started from the hypothesis that the choice on the part of the young women to purchase a specific product or acquire a particular consumer experience might arise from their wish to exercise their agency in an explicit manner, thus highlighting in a tangible and immediate way the power which individuals are capable of wielding. Referring to a sample of American consumers, Bhattacharjee, Berger and Menon (2014: 305) also noted that consumer agency is a fundamental basis for identityexpressive purchase; as they say, ‘our results indicate that perceived agency is a key factor in enabling consumers to view their behaviour as meaningful expressions of their identity’ (see also Borgerson 2005). In this perspective, the semantic and symbolic richness of which consumption practices are carriers could enable girls in the sample to express specific aspects of their self, with them using such practices to actively ‘stage a performance’ of their own conception of girlhood. Viewed in this light, young women’s consumption choices allow them to exhibit a greater control over themselves, giving concrete and tangible form to their desires and aspirations.

Methodology In order to investigate the link between consumption, gendered identity and personal agency, two research projects (hereafter referred to as I-MoC and II-PoC) were set up, both of them qualitative, on a sample of female students enrolled on sociology courses of the Department of Human Sciences at the University of L’Aquila. The University of L’Aquila is a medium-sized university located in Abruzzo, a Region of Central Italy. Using an interpretative paradigm, the author’s main objective was to reconstruct the meaning attributed by the students to their consumption choices, seeking to gain an understanding of how consumer experiences might reflect their identity, objectives, desires and value system. The decision to focus on a sample composed of the youngest cohort of the Mil48

YOUTH CONSUMPTIONS, AGENCY AND SIGNS OF GIRLHOOD

E

lennials generation3 – that is, girls born between 1992 and 1996 – was aimed at investigating in greater depth the biographical paths of these young women on the threshold of adulthood, and to analyse the manner in which they redefined and gave a specific meaning to the concept of girlhood. In addition, young people of this age often exhibit behaviour that is highly exploratory, both in terms of the construction of identity dynamics, and in terms of consumption (Roberti 2011). Indeed, according to scholars of Pew Research Center (2019), generations are a lens through which to understand societal change: young people frequently anticipate social and cultural trends that will go on to spread more gradually through the rest of the society.4 For the first study, which was focused on identifying the Models of Consumption (I-MoC) adopted with greatest frequency by the young women, I set up five focus groups and carried out fifteen semi-structured individual interviews, for a total sample of forty-six female students who were living alone or with friends/partners while attending their university courses. All forty-six students were enrolled on the same sociology course. The overriding objective of the study, therefore, was to establish whether the consumer behaviour of the students, once they had left their parents’ household, had been influenced by the consumption patterns learned in their families, and whether it was possible to identify in their definition of their personal model of consumption (MoC) some kind of continuity with respect to the maternal/paternal pattern. The material for the study was collected over a six-month period in 2014, at a time when Italy was undergoing a severe economic crisis. Approximately 85% of the interviewees had been born between 1993 and 1994, and therefore at the time the data were collected they were aged between 21 and 22 years old. The race/ethnicity of the interviewees was white/Caucasian and the majority of them (about 80%) came from lower middle-class or working-class families. In consideration of the improved economic situation of the country, I returned to the field in 2018 to follow up on questions regarding themes that had emerged from an analysis of the first stage of research and carried out a further ten semi-structured interviews with a sample of female students having the same sociodemographic characteristics (i.e. sex, age, race/ethnicity, education and living conditions) as those of the initial phase. The second study, focused on investigating the significance of particular Practices of Consumption (II-PoC) adopted by the young women, was carried out between 2017 and 2018 and consisted of sixteen semi49

D

GERALDINA ROBERTI

structured interviews conducted with a sample of female students born between 1992 and 1995, and aged, therefore, somewhere between 22 and 25 years old. In this case, too, the race/ethnicity of the students was white/ Caucasian, with a clear majority of girls coming from lower middle-class or working-class families. For this second study (II-PoC), it was decided to use the concept of ‘practice’ as the semantic category capable of giving meaning, in concrete daily situations, to the subjects’ consumer activities, also in relation to the wider social structure (Bourdieu 1990). As Shove and Pantzar (2005) underlined, in everyday life practices are made by and through their routine reproduction (see also Warde 2005). All focus groups and interviews were audio recorded digitally with students’ permission and then transcribed. Subsequently the transcripts were coded and classified (Corbetta 2003), identifying the main themes characterizing the students’ accounts. Transcripts of the focus groups and interviews were read repeatedly and then analysed in order to gain indepth understanding of responses, and to bring out the most significant elements with regard to the research questions (Glaser 2001). In the sections that follow I will provide the results, using quotations and verbatim accounts to illustrate my findings.

Main Findings Consumption and Girls’ Agency As pointed out above, the symbolic value of consumption choices contributes to the self-definition of an individual’s identity, thereby becoming one of the instruments that a social actor can use to communicate their biographical project to others and assert their agentic capacity: ‘selves are interactively communicated and negotiated through “presentation” or “performance” (including through clothing) to particular audiences’ (Pilcher 2011: 129) – performances and practices, one might add, since consumption practices help individuals to give concrete expression to their decisional autonomy. It was precisely in this sense that Saltmarsh (2009) highlighted the performative dimensions of consumption practices, underlining how these, too, contribute to the constitution of an economically oriented social subject. Somehow, the choice as to what to consume enables an individual to exercise their agency, or their power, in a present-day context where one’s individuality is realized by seeking out a lifestyle that is becoming ever more personalized and identifiable. 50

YOUTH CONSUMPTIONS, AGENCY AND SIGNS OF GIRLHOOD

E

The results of the first study (I-MoC) show how starting university and living without their family for the first time had meant assuming a new voice and taking on social roles and responsibilities the young women had never previously experienced, wielding their personal agency in a concrete manner. The decisions the young women made as to how and what to buy can be read in terms of a consumer model that is more agentic and aware. Being independent, living on my own, has made my character stronger than before, when I was just an appendix of my family. I know it’s just a trivial thing, but at home we used to load up the washing machine all together, using the washing detergent my mother chose. But I don’t like the smell of that detergent and I don’t like washing my things with other people’s things. Now, I do a machine wash for myself, I choose the detergent I like, I use a fabric softener – they never use one at home – and I feel independent. Now, I follow my own rules, not the ones everyone had to follow at home. Now, I’ve got my individuality, it’s my own place and I decide. Now, I’m free to have the products I choose in my own home, the fridge filled the way I want. For me this has been a battle won. (Costanza, I-MoC, I17)5 When you go to live on your own, you realize that everything depends on you, you know you’ve still got obligations, duties, even if there’s no-one there to tell you what to do. You become responsible for yourself. Because of this, when you decide to buy something, you’re independent. You don’t make loads of problems for yourself, you decide on your own without having to feel guilty about it because it’s your money and you’re spending it as you want. (Clarissa, I-MoC, I16)

These comments by two of the interviewees put the emphasis precisely on this ability to make decisions for themselves, as they explicitly lay claim to their right to adopt a lifestyle modelled on their own view of the world, even if it was different from the one they had learned in their respective families. This approach reflects the process of interior growth they had had to undergo as a consequence of living outside their family home, and that had fostered in these young women the ability to really make their own choices, as well as to live their lives more freely. In this perspective, the change in their consumption models was an outcome of their desire to test themselves as adults, exercise their agency and define their lifestyle for themselves in an independent way. What is interesting to note here is how, in both the narratives, the consumer practices take on a deeper significance, becoming an instrument that enables the exercise of individual agency and allowing these young women to experience an unprecedented sense of autonomy and decisional capability. 51

D

GERALDINA ROBERTI

Another element to emerge from the young women’s comments was that some of their purchase choices were being influenced by the sharpening of the economic crisis that had hit affluent Western societies between 2008 and 2014. According to a study carried out by Buzz & Company in 2010, the tough and prolonged recession led to changes in consumer spending and behaviour lasting beyond the end of the crisis, suggesting that this ‘new frugality’ may have become a learned behaviour, making many consumers more cautious and discerning in their future purchases.6 Lately, because of the economic crisis, I always try to avoid [going out to eat]. Even if my group is going out for dinner, I tell them ‘I’ll come along after dinner’, because I know I can’t go and ask my parents for more money just to go out with my friends. (Nicoletta, I-MoC, F2)

As Nicoletta observes, going through a period of financial hardship also means having to grow and adopt a more mature and aware attitude, even if it means giving up the chance to go out and enjoy oneself with friends. Compared to last year, things have changed: now I don’t buy water; I drink that from the tap. Coca cola I’m trying to eliminate. I get milk, eggs, basic products, instead of buying snacks or inessential things like chocolates or sweets. . . First, I get the fundamental things, then, if my budget allows it, I buy other stuff. (Elisabetta, I-MoC, F4)

The interview data collected show that many of these young women’s life choices, consumption models and paths to enter adulthood had been profoundly shaped by the recent recession: in Elisabetta’s case, too, changes to her choices as to which products to buy derived from her desire to rethink her style of consumption to take greater care of how much she was spending. Thus, owing to the global economic crisis, many students had found themselves forced to revise their lifestyle by reducing purchases, or at least modifying some of their previous purchase habits. However, the experience of going to live by themselves had in itself caused many young women to reconsider their personal model of consumption: I’ve noticed that living on my own I save much more. Before, when I was at home with my parents, I was always saying ‘mum I need this, let’s go and buy that …’ Now I try to buy everything [that I need] with the money they give me each week, and to save some, so that I can use it the next week. I’m more careful about saving now that I’m living on my own, compared to before, when I had mum who gave me money. (Barbara, I-MoC, F2)

Barbara’s account illustrates how the change in mental attitude demanded by living away from the family home for the first time led young women to 52

YOUTH CONSUMPTIONS, AGENCY AND SIGNS OF GIRLHOOD

E

adopt a more adult and mindful consumption pattern, transforming them into responsible consumers capable of managing their own budget in an autonomous and sensible manner. According to Moore, Wilkie and Lutz (2002: 31), ‘beyond new social interactions, the move away from home can also bring significant alterations in daily living. For many daughters, income constraints and the need to manage money now dictate shifts in choice criteria and brand purchases’. ‘Made from the Same Mould’: Maternal Models of Consumption Thinking in a more nuanced way about the consumption styles displayed by students in the sample, other interesting features are apparent that are worth reflecting on a little further. From what they said in the interviews, it would appear that the consumption models (MoC) of these female students echo, in part, the more traditional models practiced by their mothers. As social researchers have pointed out on several occasions (e.g. Tanturri 2011), in Italy there is still a marked differentiation between the consumer behaviour of men and women, with the persistence of a traditional gendered model for the management of household purchasing activities; even for the selected girls, purely feminine tasks and more masculine duties continue to persist at home: Dad has always been pretty coddled since he lived with four women at home. He’s done the men’s jobs, like changing a light bulb or fixing a tap. I don’t think mum had ever even touched a drill. There was men’s work, and women’s work. Mum was a housewife, it was her who decided what to buy, which products to choose. Nobody touched a thing in the house without her ok. Since mum died, I’ve done the cleaning for dad. I pop into the house almost every day and give it a quick clean, do the ironing, or do a machine wash for him. (Costanza, I-MoC, I17)

Through Costanza’s narrative a gendered model emerges very clearly, as she describes how, in the family setting, the custom of dividing roles strictly according to whether an individual is male or female persists strongly, with the result that a somewhat stereotyped and traditional female model gets transmitted from mother to daughter. As regards the way in which the family organizes its routines of household management, mother and father still perform distinctly different roles, resulting in practices characterized by an unequal division of labour (Coulter 2018; Lindsey 2016). It is given that much female conduct around consumption activity is heavily influenced by an unquestioning adherence to social norms, conventions and gendered role expectations, as well as by an adaptation to the social 53

D

GERALDINA ROBERTI

and practical situation (Warde 2017). In fact, many of the interviewees revealed – even if indirectly – how clear the differences between male and female behaviour were in their family: I am exactly like mum, made from the same mould. She is careful about saving, about everything. If you go shopping with dad, it is completely different, because dad starts buying one piece of rubbish after another, he spends all the money. Both me and my sister we’re made from the same mould as mum. (Stefania, I-MoC, F3)

Such a conception of womanhood is traditional and tied to the past, and it is still today accompanied by a logic of sacrifice and going without on the part of mothers: My mother is really good [to us]. I have a sister who’s 17; my mother has always gone without the things she wanted for herself so as to be able to buy them for us, always. You see her always wearing the same pair of shoes, always wearing the same jumper. She invariably thinks of me and my sister before herself, as if she didn’t matter at all. . . . This is her way of managing the household economy. (Alberta, I-MoC, F2)

Indeed, as can also be inferred from Alberta’s experience, significant numbers of girls have grown up in a family context where their mothers are bearers of a female ethic of sacrifice. They thereby unwittingly accustomed their daughters to consider the task of adopting a sober and responsible approach to consumption intrinsic to womanhood and to the duties of motherhood, even when it means denying their own personal needs and desires. Dads are spendthrifts, while my main role model was my mum, she’s been my guiding light for everything. It was always with her that I went to do the shopping. It was always her who helped me choose most of the products, even if I have to admit she’s a very capable saver, whereas I’m not so good as yet. But I’m very careful about shopping, I always buy cheaper off-brands and not the famous brands. (Emma, I-MoC, F5)

As Emma’s account exemplifies, the transmission of such a model within their family led the young women to adopt gendered shopping strategies – especially regarding convenience goods – and these were much the same as those of their mothers. While in general there is agreement among researchers that individual agency has become increasingly important in the construction of the personal biography of subjects, many nevertheless point out that the so-

54

YOUTH CONSUMPTIONS, AGENCY AND SIGNS OF GIRLHOOD

E

cial position of individuals (in terms of gender, class and ethnicity) can, in practice, limit the opportunities and scope for action of social actors and of young people, in particular. As Karen Evans (2002) states, in contemporary society numerous boundaries or barriers still circumscribe and sometimes prevent the expression of agency among young people; such limits have structural foundations as much in ascribed features (such as gender and social/educational inheritance), as in acquired characteristics of education and qualification. In order to express this, Evans (2002) formulated the concept of ‘bounded agency’ as a form of young persons’ agency that is limited by the social context within which individuals find themselves: ‘bounded agency is socially situated agency, influenced but not determined by environments and emphasizing internalized frames of reference as well as external actions. By examining bounded agency, the focus moves from structured individualization onto individuals as actors, without losing the perspective of structuration’ (Evans 2007: 93). This scenario may be interpreted as a mechanism that is in some ways similar to that of structural oppression (Cudd 2006), even if here we find it appearing more specifically in the area of consumer behaviour. Young (2009: 56) argues that the causes of structural oppression ‘are embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutional rules and the collective consequences of following those rules’. For this reason, she describes structural oppression as a vast and deep injustice some groups suffer in ordinary interactions, media and cultural stereotypes and market mechanisms of everyday life. In this perspective, consumption practices adopted within the family can also become oppressive for women, involving them in social relations that construct and maintain their subordinate and ancillary role in household life. Analysing the results obtained from a sample of American consumers as part of a research project on foodie culture, Cairns, Johnston and Baumann (2010: 593) write: ‘despite the prevalence of discourses of gender equality, women continue to do the majority of food work. . . . This disproportionate division of labour is rationalized through implicit gendered assumptions, such as women’s apparently natural proclivity for maintaining family health’.7 If, as argued by Judith Butler (1990), the gender in which individuals recognize themselves is constructed by way of a stylized repetition of acts and performances (such that it acquires a performative character), then specific acts/practices of consumption, too, can contribute to the formation of a gendered identity normatively defined (see also Tardy 2000).

55

D

GERALDINA ROBERTI

The Body as a Space for the Expression of Female Agency Notwithstanding this, however, the results of the second study (II-PoC), performed to investigate the significance of specific consumer practices adopted by the young women in the sample, suggest a different scenario from the one described above, especially in relation to certain types of product (those which, in the main, fall within the category of shopping goods) and consumer experiences (whose values are more expressly linked to identity). As we saw at the beginning of this chapter, in specific circumstances consumption can take on an emancipatory value, enabling an individual to exercise their agency. Indeed, from the narratives of the young women it emerged that some of their consumer choices – more likely those concerning self-care, clothing, or products of the culture industry – arose from their wish to exhibit some kind of empowerment and control over themselves, over their lives and/or their bodies. The experience of getting a tattoo, for example, with all the symbolic potential attached to the choice of image to be etched into the skin, is often motivated by an individual’s desire to freely express their most intimate identity, while at the same time asserting their personal agency. According to Mun, Janigo and Johnson (2012), adolescents may use tattoos to communicate specific attributes of themselves they already have, or that they desire to possess (i.e. ideal self ). In this view, individuals manage display of identities through their tattoos, using them as a form of visual self-expression. People use tattoos to declare who they are and to connect to their self, life events, relationships (Pitts 2003; Kosut 2000), assigning a range of culturally constructed meanings to their tattoos. Strübel and Jones (2017: 1230) state that ‘tattoos are most popular among college-aged students because the tattoo asserts their independence from authority figures such as parents, . . . making the first visit to a tattoo parlour a normative rite of passage in the United States today’. Indeed, this is what emerges from Stella’s account, who describes her decision to get a tattoo as soon as she had reached the age of majority in precisely these terms: If you’re a minor, one of your parents has to sign the authorization [for you to get a tattoo], whereas getting one for myself once I was 18 was like completing my power. Before, my freedom was very limited; now, you can criticize me because you don’t like my hair, or my piercing, or my tattoos, but it ends there, you’ve got to accept me because this is just how I am. Now I can be like this, I’ve got the possibility to be like this, and I act in such a way to be like this. I exercise my power. (Stella, II-PoC, I11) 56

YOUTH CONSUMPTIONS, AGENCY AND SIGNS OF GIRLHOOD

E

So, for young women like Stella, the body becomes, de facto, a space of meaning that is culturally defined (and thereby emancipated from its purely biological dimension). It becomes transformed into a symbolic place for the expression of an identity which the young women feel they can modify, while still living their femininity to the full. I like the idea of a tattoo, all the history that lies behind the choice. I like the fact of being able to choose to etch a design onto myself that represents me, represents my history, my character, a side of me. It has an identifying significance for me. . . . Without it, I felt I was lacking something capable of expressing my personality. (Rosy, II-PoC, I7)

What this is, in the final analysis, is a form of awareness firmly rooted in the worldview of these young women, which they lay claim to by means of an intentional use of their bodies, implicitly affirming their right to self-determination. It is important to underline here that these bodily modifications can be undertaken adopting a personal and independent model, one which does not conform to the cultural standards imposed by society, or by the dominant male culture. For me tattooing represents the freedom to manage my own body, to create it in the way I want. Nature has given me a body, and that body is like a blank canvas. I’m the artist and I cannot leave that canvas blank, because a blank canvas doesn’t represent who I am. A canvas represents me once I’ve covered it with symbols – because in the end tattoos are symbols – which have a meaning for me. That meaning is part of my life as a woman, it represents my life, those are ideas that are part of me, they enrich my body. Tattooing is an enrichment. (Stella, II-PoC, I11)

As we can see from Stella’s words, the investment in terms of agentic capacities and identity construction that young women make regarding their consumer choices provides them with an effective form of self-expression. At the same time, such consumer choices also represent an instrument by which they can take back control over their decisional power, so as to give concrete expression to their voice, just as Stella does. Some of their consumer practices amount to a form of communication in its own right, a concrete experience which enables the young women to openly construct and share their own autonomous model of femininity. Indeed, scholars have highlighted how social actors are able to draw upon on a variety of resources, such as style, behaviours and consumer activities (Buckingham 2011; Fabris 2013), in order to perform identity and gender. In the case of the sample of the young women investigated such 57

D

GERALDINA ROBERTI

dynamics were realized especially through a rediscovery of the centrality of the body as an instrument of self-assertion and expression of their own idea of femininity and beauty (the idea that the tattoo depicts). In fact, as Strübel and Jones (2017: 1230) suggest, ‘for younger people, tattoos are increasingly motivated by a desire to establish a stronger identity and self-image . . . , as well as a desire to assert control over oneself and independence’. Indeed, modifying their body with a tattoo represented for some of the young women interviewed the wish to live an empowering experience that enabled them to perform girlhood and femininity, conceiving the body as a fundamental aspect of the acting self. Historically, beauty was a special category of women’s experience (Reischer and Koo 2004) by means of which body ideals were used by male institutions as a mechanism of social power and control. Several feminist scholars rejected what they considered to be patriarchal and socially imposed standards of female beauty: as objectifying practices, these models were created by male culture for women’s subordination. According to Susan Bordo (2004), in developing and displaying an ideal body type, in some way, women signalled their cooperative participation in a culturally meaningful system of values. I believe that my body is my own property, my body is mine and I’m free to manipulate it as I want, just as I’m free not to manipulate it if I don’t want to. [When I decided to get a tattoo] it was as if I’d said to myself: I’ve grown up, this is my body and I can decide to modify it by putting something on it, make it distinctive, render it more beautiful, more agreeable. (Lucilla, II-PoC, I10)

Nevertheless, also in the light of Lucilla’s words, it is my opinion that modifying one’s body and thereby freely choosing one’s own ideal of femininity can today be seen as representing a symbolic rebellion against the dominant images of ideal girlhood (see also Davis 1993). This upends the idea of passive acceptance of a model of beauty imposed by society and turns tattoos into an empowering tool: ‘current tattoo usage by women is viewed as diverging from conservative gender ideals because tattoos challenge images of the weak, sexually objectified, passive woman’ (Strübel and Jones 2017: 1231). As another of the students explains: Getting a tattoo is a way of exercising your will, your power. My body is mine and I control it. In the past we girls were really subjugated by society, instead now is the time when the tide’s turning, because it’s we who decide what we want to do, we who govern ourselves. (Selene, II-PoC, I16)

58

YOUTH CONSUMPTIONS, AGENCY AND SIGNS OF GIRLHOOD

E

In this sense, choosing to get a tattoo ends up restoring power to women in a new form, permitting them to use their bodies to recount their personal stories as protagonists: the expressive potential of tattoos enables them to give visual representation to female empowerment, a way of exercising control over their personal identities. It is for this reason, too, that Mifflin (2013: 4) has defined tattoos as ‘badges of self-determination’. For some of these interviewees, therefore, the choice to get a tattoo amounted to a form of resistance to the dominant male culture, since postmodern conceptualizations of femininity do not rely just upon the overcoming of prescriptive gendered constructions, but also upon autonomous choices made by women.8 With tattoos you’ve never got to stoop to compromising with anybody, neither with the tattooist, nor with yourself. If you’re not convinced, do it in another moment. Because it’s yourself that you’ve got to represent. (Linda, II-PoC, I1)

Conclusions In this chapter I have sought to identify new perspectives through which to interpret the reality being experienced by young women in Italy today. In doing so, I have integrated more traditional methods of analysis with a novel approach, one which takes into account the complexity of the cultural practices of today’s younger generations. Throughout the research project I strove to place girls’ lives and actual consumption practices at the centre of the study, in an attempt to understand what the real meanings they gave to their habitual consumer experiences were, both regarding acts of purchase and in relation to specific expressive consumption practices. Viewed through the lens of the consumer behaviours they adopted, the image of girlhood displayed by the young Italian women in the sample is multifaceted and contrasting: it is one which leaves a fair margin for female agency, but which also retains elements of a model of womanhood that is more traditional and tied to the past. On the one hand, young women’s narratives demonstrate the possibility of producing forms of resistance through consumer practices, too, using consumer choices to assert/express themselves and advance an idea of femininity that is autonomous and liberated from traditional forms of subordination. On the other hand, the accounts of the interviewees reveal how aspects of their identities are also drawn from the set of culturally normed learnings that

59

D

GERALDINA ROBERTI

accompanied their personal biographies, rooting within them a system of ideas and values influenced by the socializing practices they had experienced in the families they had grown up in. These young women had partially assimilated and internalized socially expected feminine behaviours through gender role socialization, modelling their consumer system on the basis of the traditional division of roles between men and women. As I noted earlier, in the families of many of the students in the sample a gender-structured organization still results in the benefits and burdens of familial life being unjustly distributed between husbands and wives. In conclusion, nevertheless, it behoves me to make a final observation to put this analysis in a wider context: the social, economic and cultural changes that all the countries of the affluent West have experienced in recent decades have led to a redefinition of the concept of citizenship in terms of consumer power (Bauman 2007). In this sense, for young women especially – for whom the market recognizes specific attitudes and consumer skills (Harris 2004) – enacting citizenship means exerting their consumer activity. Girls are conceived as powerful actors in the global market, but such a consideration risks pushing into the background the profound social and economic inequalities that continue to exist in contemporary consumer society (McRobbie 2008) and the exploitation intrinsic to some features of consumer culture. Indeed, the gendered terrain within which those acts of re-negotiating of female subjectivities takes place is itself increasingly shaped by social and economic forces. Thus, consumer culture occupies a critical place in producing and reproducing the category of youthful femininity. If female agency today is exercised by being able to consume in a personal and independent way, then every young woman should be able to exercise this power, regardless of her social class, ethnicity or gender identity. And it is disparities such as these – as well as the intersectionality among structural variables – that we, as feminist researchers, are still called upon to investigate.

Geraldina Roberti is Associate Professor of Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes at the University of L’Aquila, where she teaches Sociology and Sociology of Consumption. She obtained her PhD in Communication Sciences from Sapienza University of Rome. Her interests have focused mainly on the fundamental aspects of consumption and youth issues, and her research has in particular explored the links between young people’s identity and consumption practices. Among her works on these topics is ‘The Sharing Economy and Young People: An Exploratory Research Project’, in I. Cruz, R. Ganga and 60

YOUTH CONSUMPTIONS, AGENCY AND SIGNS OF GIRLHOOD

E

S. Wahlen (eds), Contemporary Collaborative Consumption, Springer, 2018 (with A. Mortara).

Notes 1. In the field of marketing studies (see, for example, Kotler and Keller 2012), goods are classified into three categories: 1) convenience goods; 2) shopping goods; and 3) speciality goods. Convenience goods are items that are staple necessities, purchased quite frequently and with relatively little effort or forethought. Shopping goods, instead, are higher priced items, products which reflect the consumer’s identity and/or their system of meanings. The speciality goods, finally, are items of particularly high quality, generally with a low purchase frequency and high emotional investment. 2. As has become widely recognized within sociological studies, social structures can play a role in either facilitating or hindering attempts by an individual to act in an agentic manner (see Brannen and Nilsen 2005). 3. It has been argued that people who grew up together and faced the same historical issues can be defined by using the concept of ‘generational cohort’. The cohort concept keeps together people according to their birth year and with regard to the characteristics they share (Corsten 1999). As stated by researchers of Pew Research Center (2019), the term Millennials refers to young people born between 1981 and 1996. 4. To give just one example, data show that young age is the most important differentiating factor as regards innovative ICT consumption (such as buying films and music online) or the purchase of specific cultural goods (Eurostat Culture Statistics 2016, retrieved 22 April 2019 from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3217494/7551543/ KS-04-15-737-EN-N.pdf/648072f3-63c4-47d8-905a-6fdc742b8605). 5. The names of all girls participating in the studies have been changed, in order to respect their privacy. I=Interview; F=Focus group. 6. ‘Consumer “New Frugality” May Be an Enduring Feature of Post-Recession Economy, Finds Booz & Company Survey’, 2010, Businesswire website, retrieved 29 April 2019 from https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100224005301/en/ Consumer-’New-Frugality’-Enduring-Feature-Post-Recession-Economy. 7. On this topic see also the seminal work of DeVault (1991). 8. The third wave of feminist researchers, which corresponds to scholars belonging to Generation X (born between the mid-1960s and the late 1970s), argues that feminism should not devalue its own culture of femininity and peculiar symbols of feminine identity such as make-up, clothing and accessories: all these elements can become an empowering tool for girls and women (on this topic see Evans 2015).

References Archer, Margaret. 2003. Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Atkinson, Michael. 2004. ‘Tattooing and Civilizing Processes: Body Modification as Self-Control’, Canadian Review of Sociology & Anthropology 41: 125–46. 61

D

GERALDINA ROBERTI

Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2007. Liquid Times. Cambridge: Polity press. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society. London: Sage. Belk, Russell W. 2013. ‘Extended Self in a Digital World’, Journal of Consumer Research 40(3): 477–500. 10.1086/ 671052. Bhattacharjee Amit, Jonah Berger and Geeta Menon. 2014. ‘When Identity Marketing Backfires’, Journal of Consumer Research 41: 294–309. 10.1086/ 676125. Bordo, Susan. 2004. Unbearable Weight. Berkeley: University of California Press. Borgerson, Janet. 2005. ‘Materiality, Agency, and the Constitution of Consuming Subjects’, Advances in Consumer Research 32: 439–43. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Brannen, Julia and Ann Nilsen. 2005. ‘Individualisation, Choice and Structure’, The Sociological Review 53(3): 412–28. Buckingham, David. 2011. The Material Child. Cambridge: Polity Press. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble, 3rd edn. London and New York: Routledge. Cairns, Kate, Josee Johnston and Shyon Baumann. 2010. ‘Caring about Food: Doing Gender in the Foodie Kitchen’, Gender & Society 24(5): 591–615. 10.1177/0891243210383419. Corbetta, Piergiorgio. 2003. La ricerca sociale: metodologia e tecniche [Social Research: Methodology and Techniques]. Bologna: il Mulino. Corsten, Michael. 1999. ‘The Time of Generations’, Time & Society 8(2): 249–72. Côté, James E. and Charles G. Levine. 2002. Identity Formation, Agency, and Culture. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Coulter, Natalie. 2018. ‘Frappés, Friends, and Fun: Affective Labour and the Cultural Industry of Girlhood’, Journal of Consumer Culture: 1–14. 10.1177/ 1469540518806954. Cudd, Ann E. 2006. Analyzing Oppression. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davis, Kathy. 1993. ‘Cultural Dopes and She-Devils: Cosmetic Surgery as Ideological Dilemma’, in Sue Fisher and Kathy Davis (eds), Negotiating at the Margins. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 23–47. DeVault, Marjorie L. 1991. Feeding the Family. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Douglas, Mary. 1996. Thought Styles. Thousand Oaks, London and New Delhi: Sage. Douglas, Mary and Baron Isherwood. 1979. The World of Goods. New York: Basic Books. Eurostat. 2016. Culture Statistics [online]. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/euro stat/documents/3217494/7551543/KS-04-15-737-EN-N.pdf/648072f3-63 c4-47d8-905a-6fdc742b8605. Evans, Elizabeth. 2015. The Politics of Third Wave Feminisms. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 62

YOUTH CONSUMPTIONS, AGENCY AND SIGNS OF GIRLHOOD

E

Evans, Karen. 2002. ‘Taking Control of their Lives?’, Journal of Youth Studies 5(3): 245–69. ———. 2007. ‘Concepts of Bounded Agency in Education, Work, and the Personal Lives of Young Adults’, International Journal of Psychology 42: 85–93. Fabris, Giampiero. 2013. Societing. Milan: Egea. Ferraro, Rosellina, Jennifer Edson Escalas and James R. Bettman. 2011. ‘Our Possessions, Our Selves’, Journal of Consumer Psychology 21: 169–77. Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gill, Rosalind. 2016. ‘Post-postfeminism? New Feminist Visibilities in Postfeminist Times’, Feminist Media Studies 16(4): 610–30. 10.1080/14680777.2016 .1193293. Glaser, Barney G. 2001. The Grounded Theory Perspective. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press. Harris, Anita. 2004. ‘Jamming Girl Culture’, in Anita Harris (ed.), All about the Girl: Culture, Power and Identity. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 163–72. Jenkins, Richard. 2008. Social Identity. London: Routledge. Kabeer, Naila. 1999. ‘Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment’, Development and Change 30: 435–64. Kosut, Mary. 2000. ‘Tattoo Narratives: The Intersection of the Body, Self-Identity and Society’, Visual Sociology 15(1): 79–100. Kotler, Philip and Kevin L. Keller. 2012. A Framework for Marketing Management. Harlow: Person Education. Lindsey, Linda L. 2016. Gender Roles. New York and London: Routledge. Lughi, Carla. 2002. ‘La soggettività delle donne tra femminismo e sociologia’ [Women’s Subjectivity between Feminism and Sociology], Studi di Sociologia [Sociology Studies], XL, 2: 167–88. McCall, Leslie. 2005. ‘The Complexity of Intersectionality’, Signs 30(3): 1771– 800. McRobbie, Angela. 2008. ‘Young Women and Consumer Culture’, Cultural Studies 22(5): 531–50. ———. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage. Mifflin, Margot. 2013. Body of Subversion. New York: powerHouse Books. Moore, Elizabeth S., William L. Wilkie and Richard J. Lutz. 2002. ‘Passing the Torch: Intergenerational influences as a Source of Brand Equity’, Journal of Marketing 66: 17–37. Mun Jung M., Kristy A. Janigo and Kim K.P. Johnson. 2012. ‘Tattoo and the Self ’, Clothing and Textiles Research Journal 30(2): 134–48. Pew Research Center. 2019. ‘Defining Generations: Where Millennials End and Generation Z Begins’ [online]. Available at: http://www.pewresearch.org/ fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/. 63

D

GERALDINA ROBERTI

Pilcher, Jane. 2011. ‘No Logo? Children’s Consumption of Fashion’, Childhood 8: 128–41. Pitts, Victoria. 2003. In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Reischer, Erica and Kathryn S. Koo. 2004. ‘The Body Beautiful: Symbolism and Agency in the Social World’, Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 297–317. Roberti, Geraldina. 2011. Il senso dei giovani per il consumo [Young People’s Sense of Consumption]. Acireale and Rome: Bonanno editore. Saltmarsh, Sue. 2009. ‘Becoming Economic Subjects: Agency, Consumption and Popular Culture in Early Childhood’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 30(1): 47–59. 10.1080/01596300802643082. Shove, Elizabeth and Mika Pantzar. 2005. ‘Consumers, Producers and Practices: Understanding the Invention and Reinvention of Nordic Walking’, Journal of Consumer Culture 5(1): 43–64. 10.1177/1469540505049846. Strübel, Jessica and Domenique Jones. 2017. ‘Painted Bodies’, Journal of Popular Culture 50: 1230–53. Sweetman, Paul. 1999. ‘Anchoring the (Postmodern) Self? Body Modification, Fashion and Identity’, Body & Society 5(2–3): 51–76. Tanturri, Maria Letizia. 2011. ‘Diventare genitori’ [Becoming Parents], in Elisabetta Ruspini (ed.), Studiare la famiglia che cambia [Studying the Changing Family]. Rome: Carocci, pp. 87–120. Tardy, Rebecca W. 2000. ‘“But I Am a Good Mom”: The Social Construction of Motherhood through Health-Care Conversations’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 29(4): 433–73. Warde, Alan. 2005. ‘Consumption and Theories of Practice’, Journal of Consumer Culture 5: 131–153. 10.1177/1469540505053090. ———. 2017. Consumption: A Sociological Analysis. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Young, Iris M. 2009. ‘Five Faces of Oppression’, in George Henderson and Marvin Waterstone (eds), Geographic Thought. New York: Routledge, pp. 55–71.

64

D CHAPTER 4

‘Good Girl’ Israeli Ethiopian Girls Negotiate Their Blackness Sigal Oppenhaim-Shachar

Ethiopian Israeli Girls as Neoliberal Subjects In a neoliberal climate, schools serve and inculcate global capitalist values, while ostensibly conveying messages of empowerment. These messages are primarily directed at adolescent girls as being a promising resource and wise investment in a more financially and socially secure future (Gonick 2018a). These ‘empowering’ processes are reiterated by the media and purport to help the girls make the right choice, i.e. garner the courage and stamina needed to reinvent themselves as successful individuals. Media images (usually of white women) (Nunn 2018) and schools urge them to focus on personal responsibility to continuously reinvent themselves in creative ways, reinforcing the ‘Girl Effect’ (Switzer et al. 2016) contention that these neoliberal messages tend to ignore social vulnerabilities that stem from intersectionality, thus echoing an agentic femininity. Hence, girls in stigmatized communities must not only overcome deprivation of resources that may limit their future choices, but may also be accused of not reaching their potentials, i.e. succeeding (McRobbie 2009). Without extra assistance (Oppenhaim-Shachar 2014), these girls Notes for this section can be found on page 80.

D

SIGAL OPPENHAIM-SHACHAR

will most likely find it difficult to face this social demand, and will not be able to narrow the opportunity gap alone. For black girls living in a white society (or ‘white space’ – Moore 2007) this experience is even more complex, as for non-black women, the issue of colour is completely invisible, and therefore white women are less understanding about how blackness can act as a significant barrier that can mark women of colours’ otherness (Oppenhaim-Shachar 2019). ‘Extra assistance’ refers to all manner of extracurricular assistance and support for girls who may find it difficult to fully implement their capabilities toward financial independence (Gonick 2006), as well as equipping them with sociopolitical knowledge about the intersection of their marginal positions. Such knowledge may enable them to increase their symbolic and social resources and enable them to face social boundaries and discrimination (Oppenhaim-Shachar 2014). Without awareness of these complicities, any extra assistance may promote an individualistic solution encouraging empowerment instead of understanding that most of the barriers that the Ethiopian girls face stem from structural defects such as racism, sexism and even ageism1 that can pose a multifaceted challenge for girls living at the intersection of marginal identities. In this chapter, I examine how second-generation girls from families who immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia cope with the messages conveyed in a workshop that encouraged them to strengthen their occupational aspirations, as it aimed to provide them with ‘extra assistance’ that appeared to be merely another version of the hegemony-driven empowering narrative. This narrative promotes a sense of alienation toward the girls’ black bodies, eroding their belief in their power and abilities. The workshop content urges the participants to do boundary work in order to face mixed messages, while adopting a narrative based on resources (social and symbolic) that they believe, or are told, they own. To face the workshops’ mixed messages, Ethiopian girls employ three boundary work strategies, each of which differ in their levels of resistance and derive from their sense of personal and community power. The boundary work entails developing or maintaining a sense of self-worth vis-a-vis their ethnic and/or gender identity using three differing alternative narratives. To resist systemic marginalization, the girls employ an accessible image: the devoted daughter; the devoted pupil; or care and beauty: the proud Ethiopian girl.

66

ISRAELI ETHIOPIAN GIRLS NEGOTIATE THEIR BLACKNESS

E

Ethiopian Girls and Racism The main immigration waves from Ethiopia occurred in 1984 and 1991, and were fraught with acclimatization difficulties that manifest to this day. The 148,000 Ethiopian Israelis face bigotry and disregard for their culture. The main reason for the systemic exclusion of the Ethiopian community is that despite Zionism purporting to be blind to race and colour, Israeli society cannot break free of its prejudices. While the Ethiopian community has emphasized its Jewish identity, most Israelis relate mainly to Ethiopians’ black colour, associating it with inferiority and rendering Ethiopians the victims of discrimination (Shabtay 2001). Therefore, many Ethiopian families find themselves on the margins of society with both language difficulties and a sense of systemic alienation that hinders their members’ ability to obtain quality employment (Hisherik 2018; Salamon 2010; Shabtay 2001, 2003). Israeli Ethiopian adolescent girls often experience racism in their daily interactions and face challenges regarding their own feelings about their skin colour (Anteby-Yemini 2010; Oppenhaim-Shachar 2019). Having grown up in a Western milieu that pushes neoliberal messages, they are expected to self-actualize and become neoliberal subjects (McRobbie 2009). At the same time, without social, economic and symbolic capital, they will not be able to overcome the social barriers to finding a ‘quality job’, i.e. employment that provides economic security and social mobility (Gonick 2006; Oppenhaim-Shachar 2014). Lacking support and other resources, and contrary to their mothers who grew up in Ethiopia, these girls cope by either internalizing or resisting the stigma (Shenhav-Goldberg, Barentz and Ginsburg 2012; Walsh and Tuval-Mashiach 2012). Everyday racism stems first and foremost from the fact that Western culture largely encourages the image of success through a representation of white people (Moore 2007; Nunn 2018). Hence, living in a white society that is blind to the formative force of ‘whiteness’ influences Ethiopian girls’ present lives as well as their futures (Oppenhaim-Shachar 2019). Another factor contributing to the complexity wherein these girls live is the fact that the Ethiopian community is conservative and patriarchal. Consequently, girls are usually channelled into traditional gender roles (Oppenhaim-Shachar 2014). Thus, the Western hegemonic narrative encouraging independence is contradicted by the dominant messages that the girls receive at home and from their community.

67

D

SIGAL OPPENHAIM-SHACHAR

Resistance and Boundary Work Boundary work (Lamont 2000; Wimmer 2008) cites the experience of individuals who face social constraints that reinforce feelings of exclusion, alienation and sidelining. As a theoretical framework, boundary work examines the role of symbolic resources and how individuals and communities can use them to maintain or challenge social distinctions and boundaries (Lamont 2000). Some boundary work can be interpreted as resistance, or the way in which an individual tries to avoid stigmatic gaze or oppression (Robinson and Ward 1991; Solórzano and Delgado Bernal 2001; Torre and Fine 2011). Lamont (2000) sought to identify the strategies of boundary work that stigmatized individuals employ, so as to understand the circumstances under which individuals challenge the dominant culture. Wimmer (2008), who continued Lamont’s work, presented a typology of different ethnic ‘boundary work’ strategies, which can take the form of contraction boundary work, blurring, or assimilation and re-positioning ethnic distinction (ibid.). The various strategies derive respectively from the boundary worker’s degree of access to political and public arenas, and to social, economic and symbolic resources. This access determines the range of influence that individuals and communities believe themselves to have. Thus, to expand our understanding of inclusion and exclusion processes by examining the attempts of individuals or communities to resist exclusion, alienation and sidelining, we can observe how they do so, in order to discover how they perceive their resources. ‘Resistance’ is a reaction or strategy that women and girls adopt in order to elude oppression or to avoid oversight mechanisms and reduce their power. Such reaction can manifest in negotiating, challenging, disputing or bargaining (Robinson and Ward 1991; Solórzano and Delgado Bernal 2001; Torre and Fine 2011). In this context, resistance is defined as moving from passivity – or refraining from dialogue – to activity, or responding to the workshop’s messages. The more this movement rests on strength and resources, and the more it is conscious, the higher the participant’s likelihood of expanding her range of action, particularly when such action is tied to relevant knowledge and collaboration with others. Skills that are most important for girls who want to develop their occupational aspiration. Oppenhaim-Shachar (2019) proposed a continuum, at one end of which is resistance that seeks to preserve the status quo, or that is based on survival instincts, and hinges on random and occasionally even im68

ISRAELI ETHIOPIAN GIRLS NEGOTIATE THEIR BLACKNESS

E

pulsive individual acts, which tend to maintain or reinforce the individual’s stigma and exclusion, and can be defined as ‘resistance to surviving’ (Robinson and Ward 1991). At the other end of the continuum, we find resistance that aims at change and improvement, thereby expanding one’s range of options based on critical sociopolitical awareness and community resources in order to improve one’s situation or conditions, which can be labelled ‘resistance to liberation’ (ibid.). The latter type of resistance entails a transition between two states of consciousness: from that of a girl who experiences herself as alone, trapped in paradigms of survival, entirely solitary; to a girl who, when equipped with sociopolitical or other relevant knowledge or resources, can improve her situation. These two ways of resisting can draw upon strategies of contracting boundary work, or re-positioning boundaries. In between these extremes, we find conformist resistance (Solórzano and Delgado Bernal 2001), which can be directed at compliance processes that promote assimilation. Wimmer (2008) contended that social discourse encourages individuals to adopt assimilation as a proper way to face symbolic or social boundaries, based on the notion that assimilation depends upon access to resources – namely belief in one’s power and ability to construct social and symbolic boundaries, or to expand them. I examine below the three strategies of boundary work that Israeli Ethiopian girls use to resist the stigmatizing gaze.

The Present Study: The Empowerment Workshop These workshops invite ‘at-risk’ adolescent girls to voluntarily join an extracurricular programme. The term ‘at risk’ mainly refers here to girls who are vulnerable due to the intersection of marginal identities: race, ethnicity, income, gender and age. This chapter focuses not on the workshop content, but rather on the ‘resisting boundary work’ strategies of the twenty-two2 participants: Ethiopian Israeli adolescent girls. The workshop messages encouraged the participants to acquire critical sociopolitical knowledge, and trained them in creating ‘weak ties’ (Granovetter 1983) that play a special role in mobility based on relationships between individuals from various social groups. Such skills, while valuable to everyone, are especially so for girls from stigmatized communities who need to ‘thin’ social boundaries in order to cross them and broaden their 69

D

SIGAL OPPENHAIM-SHACHAR

symbolic resources, so as to gain access to suitable future employment (Oppenhaim-Shachar 2014). However, in light of the findings, it appears that most of the girls found it difficult, both in the workshop and thereafter, to adhere to what they perceived as a demand to adopt the empowering narrative and strive to achieve a successful career (Oppenheim-Shachar and Benjamin 2016). As mentioned above, through school and the media, Western culture affects girls by admonishing them to solve their own problems creatively, by themselves (Gonick 2018a, b), while adopting an agentic femininity (Switzer et al. 2016). Thus, the discourse in the workshop is perceived by the participants as echoing these messages, as aiming to enable them to become flexible neoliberal subjects who will become economically independent women (McRobbie 2009). The participants resist the message, as they cannot see themselves as able to act in their own interests to cross boundaries, even in the workshop itself (Oppenhaim-Shachar and Benjamin 2016; Oppenhaim-Shachar 2019). Thus, these young women can experience the workshop and its messages as just one more stigmatizing structure in their lives.

Data Collection and Analysis The study examines various narratives adopted by them as they simultaneously resist the workshop’s messages. To gain insight into the participants’ experience (DeVault 1999; Reinharz and Davidman 1992; Edwards 1993), observations were recorded in a field diary as a part of an action research study (Oppenhaim-Shachar 2014) that accompanied four workshops; and semi-structured interviews were conducted with the thirty-four workshop participants both before and after the twenty sessions of each workshop. The analysis of the findings on the twenty-two Ethiopian participants3 emerged after re-reading the findings and identifying the specific barriers related to race and diversity embodied in the black body. Although in the interviews themselves and in the workshop content I did not focus on the body issue at all, when re-reading the field diary, it was impossible to ignore the Ethiopian girls’ views revealed in recurring quotations reflecting their experiences with their blackness, which is often perceived as an impossible barrier, gnawing at the resources and occupational aspirations that they are asked to imagine in the workshop. 70

ISRAELI ETHIOPIAN GIRLS NEGOTIATE THEIR BLACKNESS

E

Data analysis was based on Gilligan’s (Gilligan and Eddy 2017) distinction between listening and content, and between listening to the voice and creating an inclusive picture while extracting recurring themes (DeVault 1999) that could be summed up in three dominant types of boundary work engaged in to resist the messages and content of the workshop. These messages embody or represent hegemonic social discourse that does not take into account the girls’ blackness when encouraging them to become successful neoliberal subjects, i.e. to take personal responsibility for their occupational future.

‘I Will Never Be Free of the Blackness’: Boundary Contraction Work Boundary contraction work (Lamont 2000; Wimmer 2008) can be adopted by individuals who do not have sufficient confidence in their resources and options, and doubt their ability to cross social boundaries – for example, being independent with agency to develop occupational aspirations to obtain a ‘quality job’. Girls who do not believe in their abilities, such as Ravìt and Hannah, have learned that they ‘cannot do anything’ about their situations: I . . . don’t work . . . I don’t know how to do anything . . . (Hannah, 17)

Hannah believes that this situation will not change in the future: We’re here in [name of an Ethiopian ‘ghetto’]. We don’t know how to do anything except cook and clean. I’m sure I’ll be a matávit 4. . . My mother is one. Maybe it’s our destiny. (Ravit, 18)

While Ravit considers her employment horizon, she views it within the circumscribed traditional gender roles. She has internalized that due to her ethnic origin and gender, she is destined to do domestic work: cleaning, care giving and cooking. Ravit provides us with important information about her narrow range of role models, leading her to conclude that her fate is destined to be like that of her mother, based on the connection that she makes between colour and occupational choices. Listen. When they say that you’re black, it doesn’t only point to your skin colour. It’s an insult. I feel that black is not as good, it’s dirty, and it’s bad. (Rahèl, 17)

When girls are convinced that black is dirty and inferior, they are ashamed of their origin and identity, and therefore give up at the outset with regard 71

D

SIGAL OPPENHAIM-SHACHAR

to integrating or assimilating into the ‘white arena’ (as they sometimes refer to it). This usually includes giving up on obtaining quality employment, and instead settling for finding their place in the familiar space: family, neighbourhood and community. Therefore, some of the workshop participants refused to cooperate with the programme content, rejecting it as irrelevant to their lives. Q: What do you know how to do? A: Wash the whole house . . . cleaning. . . babysit my baby sister. I’m good at calming her. And I’ve made rice and soup since I was 12 years old. In our Ethiopian homes, girls have to do everything. (Hannah, 16) A: I’ve never worked. I wanted to, but I don’t know how to get it [a job]. I don’t know how to do anything . . . well . . . [I know how] to babysit my brothers . . . and that’s it. (Gila, 16)

Ethiopian girls who believe that their domestic abilities are their only resources are surrendering to the model of the devoted Ethiopian girl who helps her family (Oppenheim-Shachar 2014). By doing so, they resist collaborating with the hegemonic narrative which appears to be promoted by the workshop messages. This phenomenon is further entrenched as some of the participants actually internalize the stigma that they so often encounter, perceiving themselves as lacking the ability to find their place in or be a part of the ‘white arena’: I don’t speak so well . . . I don’t know how to speak fancy language. (Viki, 17.5) I’m ashamed to speak . . . with non-Ethiopians. I always think that they think that because of the inj’ara [a spicy food which, like curry, evaporates through the sweat glands and creates an odour], my body smells bad. (Devora, 16)

Not only does their blackness represent to them a lack of knowledge and poor language skills, as well as a predetermined fate, these girls feel that their very bodies justify exclusion as embodied in their ‘deficiency’ and ‘unpleasant odour’. Thus, equipped with only domestic skills, a stigmatized girl may adopt an accessible and available image, and resist the workshop’s messages urging her to believe in the dominant narrative that seeks to empower her to be a ‘can-do girl’ (Gonick 2006). At the same time, their resistance strategy of self-inclusion and self-silencing can provide a temporary sense of relief precisely as it entrenches her marginalization in the long term (Robinson and Ward 1991; Oppenhaim-Shachar and Benjamin 2016). If and when Ethiopian girls believe that they cannot escape their fate, one strategy is to reaffirm it by internalizing ethnic and gender boundaries 72

ISRAELI ETHIOPIAN GIRLS NEGOTIATE THEIR BLACKNESS

E

and adopting traditional roles, thus validating their identity as the devoted girl who helps at home. By choosing to do so, they are then able to resist the message to integrate by developing ties and relationships outside their home and community. Q: Do you have friends who are not Ethiopian? A: No. I’ll tell you the truth: They [whites] see us as ugly. I also think I’m ugly because my hair is frizzy. (Ruhama, 17)

Over time, the experience of alienation, lack of belonging, and exclusion, combined with the stigmatized gaze, creates self-doubt that hinders a girl’s ability to connect with someone who does not resemble her. She perceives her dominant marker, embodied in her body as a burden that she must bear, and that she cannot overcome.

‘Not Black, Brown’: Blurring Boundaries or Assimilating Ethiopian Israeli girls who have strength and faith in their resources, abilities or physical qualities also believe in their capability to change their circumstances. Their resistance is based on the assumption that they cannot be both black and successful, a strategy that can be defined as assimilation (Solórzano and Delgado Bernal 2001). Having bought into the capitalistic game, girls who employ this resistance strategy seek to enhance their ability to win at this game and to become ‘neoliberal subjects’ (Gonick 2008a, b; McRobbie 2009) who play by its rules. Ethiopian Israeli girls who struggle to fit in to their family and community moulds have greater faith in their abilities than do the girls described above who accept the existing situation. Therefore, the former strive to change their social position: To tell you the truth, I invest in myself. I beautify myself [laughs]: hair, shoes, clothes – you know, to find a netchi [white] guy and get married, because he has status and money and I can live in Tel Aviv. Coffee shops all day long! (Liát, 18)

As exemplified by Liát, some of the girls try to ‘beautify’ themselves by attempting to change or blur their physical qualities, with the goal of marrying a man with social and economic capital, and who does not reside in Israel’s [literal or figurative] periphery. The transition to ‘the centre’ [of Israel] is not only a geographic concept, but a symbolic one for all Israelis, as it represents upward mobility and crossing social boundaries (Wimmer 2008). For the Ethiopian Israeli girl who lives in poverty and is socially 73

D

SIGAL OPPENHAIM-SHACHAR

marginalized, ‘the centre’ represents ‘opportunities’, among them spending time in ‘coffee shops all day long’. Social mobility through marriage is not new. When a girl believes in the neoliberal message that she can be anything she wants as long as she maintains her currency – in this case her body and beauty – then she will do what she perceives is necessary to make room for herself in the ‘white arena’. Others may find that they need to cultivate and emphasize resources other than physical characteristics. However, even if these Ethiopian adolescent girls have more symbolic resources than do their fellow workshop participants who engage in the aforementioned boundary contraction strategy, they are similar to them in the sense that they still buy into the ‘white external perspective’ (Moore 2007; Nun 2016). They perceive and feel that there is something wrong with overt blackness, that it is a negative or devalued attribute to be corrected through ‘whitening’. Therefore, in order to fit in, they try to ‘blur’ this attribute: I straighten and lighten my hair all the time. I almost burnt my hair. Q: Why do you lighten and straighten your hair? A: If I’m not white in body, at least [I will be] in my hair (Sari, 16)

Sari straightens and lightens her hair in order to conform with her (and society’s) image of a successful, liberated, young (white) woman. In addition to the strategy of body work and hopes for marriage as the path to security, investing in education is another route via which Ethiopian girls believe they can integrate into white society based on the hegemonic narrative: persisting and investing in their studies, so that their educational qualifications and diplomas will enable them to achieve quality employment leading to a successful career. I learn that if I invest and am hard working as my teacher says, I can be a lawyer or a manager, and I’ll have a lot of influence. (Yochi, 17) I invest in studies because that’s how I’ll get a job at . . . and I’ll make a lot of money. I want to be a success story. (Mira, 17)

The desire to achieve professional success as reflected in high-status positions is based on another aspect of the portrayed image of a sophisticated, successful woman. The phrase ‘I want to be a success story’ highlights a problem: while Mira believes in her power, it appears that she may not be aware of the obstacles (Moore 2007) inherent in the social barriers that

74

ISRAELI ETHIOPIAN GIRLS NEGOTIATE THEIR BLACKNESS

E

she faces, and of the difficulties that she will encounter in her attempt to climb the ladder to success. She is doomed to resolve social problems alone (Gonick 2006), mainly because she learns to believe in agentic femininity (Switzer et al. 2016). When [white] friends tell me that I’m black, I tell them I’m brown. And I remind them that I am no less intelligent than they are. That I received an excellent report card full of A’s. (Yochi, 17)

The pride that Yochi takes in her successes and excellence makes it possible for her to befriend white girls, unlike those Ethiopian girls who do not believe in or choose this option. By converting her blackness to brown, Yochi feels that she can take part in the competition. The literature in Israel discusses the gap between how the Ethiopian community views itself as having brown skin versus how Israeli society views them: as blacks (Shabtay 2001, 2003; Shenhav-Goldberg, Barentz and Ginsburg 2012). Similar to African-Americans who sought to gain cultural membership under neoliberalism through educational attainment (Lamont and Fleming 2005), Ethiopian Israeli girls seek inclusion under this discourse (McRobbie 2009) by investing in improving themselves as a successful neoliberal project by excelling in their studies. I work hard now, and will work harder next year to get good grades [on her final exams] because I want to succeed like my brother. He’s my role model. (Geula, 17)

Believing the meritocracy discourse (Gonick 2008a), Geula seeks to expand her boundaries (Wimmer 2008). Furthermore, she has a role model in her brother. In doing so, she distances herself from the prevalent traditional conservative gender norm in the patriarchal Ethiopian community in Israel (Hisherik 2018). Aspiring to be modern, liberated and sophisticated, as neoliberal subjects (McRobbie 2009), these adolescent girls seek to change their circumstances as individuals, not collectively. They do so by acting to establish equivalence with their peers in the dominant majority group, emphasizing that they are more brown than they are black, and just as qualified and capable as their white peers. They emphasize that they can do everything that their white counterparts can do. Thus, their efforts are directed at changing the personal trajectory of their lives rather than the barriers facing their ethnic-racial group, despite the fact that their efforts are not sufficient to eliminate racism (Annamma et al. 2016; Moore 2007; Nunn 2018).

75

D

SIGAL OPPENHAIM-SHACHAR

Black Is Cool: Re-Positioning Ethnic Distinction The third resistance strategy used in order to contend with the stigmatizing gaze is ‘resistance for liberation’ (Robinson and Ward 1991). Thereunder, the girls take pride in their ethnicity, ignoring attempts to shame them because of it: You won’t believe how this hairdresser irritated me. I just went for a haircut, and she starts in: ‘Why don’t you straighten your hair? This frizzy hair doesn’t suit you; you have Ethiopian hair.’ I told her angrily: ‘So? What am I? Ethiopian from toe to the tip of my hair, and this is how it is: If you want to make money in this neighbourhood, learn how to braid our hair, and not to straighten it’. (Vered, 16)

Not only is Vered unashamed of her Ethiopian hair, she teaches the hairdresser the ‘rules’ of her Ethiopian neighbourhood: if she wants to earn money, she’ll have to change her attitude and ‘learn how to braid our hair’. As Shabtay (2003) showed, instead of a sense of alienation and not belonging, some Israeli Ethiopian youth utilize ethnic pride to resist exclusion. They do so, for example, by listening to and creating ‘black music’ as an expression of a dialogue with a global black identity, or by braiding their hair as per African culture. Thus, their extensive boundary work (Wimmer 2008) focuses on resisting affiliation with the majority society, which in any case does not really accept them as they are. Shwaye, for example, demanded to return to her Amharic name: I said to my mom, ‘If you want them to call you Rachèl or Rivka, that’s OK with me, but I want to be special, and if the ‘netchies’ [whites] find it difficult to pronounce my name, then don’t. I want to be called by my Ethiopian name’. (Shwaye, 17)

The names of most Ethiopian Israelis were changed to biblical names when they arrived in Israel, mainly because they were easier for Israelis to pronounce. Name changing is historically an offensive colonial act that labels the immigrant’s language (in this case Amharic) as deficient and therefore in need of fixing, much like their skin colour and hair. Once someone told me, ‘If you’re not dressed in white, at least smile, so that at night we can see your white teeth and not run you over.’ As if he really cared about me. So here I get ‘Are you smiling all the time, in order not to be run over?’ Why should I? I don’t smile, and I’m going to keep [wearing] my black clothes. (Vered, 16)

76

ISRAELI ETHIOPIAN GIRLS NEGOTIATE THEIR BLACKNESS

E

On Sabbath and holidays, the common practice among traditional community members is to wear white. So in Vered’s view, the expectation that she wear a white dress and smile is experienced as an attempt to push her into a traditional gender role, as if traditional femininity is the only way to feel safe, especially when she has to ‘cross the street’ literally and cross social boundaries figuratively. Her refusal to wear white can thus be viewed as resistance to this demand. Vered went on to recount how most of her teachers told her that she should wear bright clothes in order to emphasize the contrast with her skin colour, and be ‘nicer’ in order to seem ‘less intimidating’. These girls, who have acquired some understanding of Israel’s social structure, refuse to internalize the stigmatizing gaze. Their social awareness leads them to reconnect with their roots and Amharic heritage, to feel a sense of commitment to their ethnic background, and to embody a positive attitude toward their origin and ethnicity (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009). You don’t know how important it is that we have a family commitment to so many people [the Ethiopians count seven generations back as their immediate family]. This means there are many life cycles events, and lots of people that can support you! And yes, a lot of those you need to help you sometimes. (Kulum, 16)

For Kulum, family commitment is a source of power, while for Yona, her ethnic background is only one of many identities: Today I know that I’ll educate my kids – [whether] brown, white, or black – based on the perception that colour is only part of the whole picture. True, I’m Ethiopian, but not only Ethiopian. I’m a girl, I’m smart, I’m a student, and I’m a daughter. (Yona, 17)

Yona’s understanding of her multiple roles and identities that comprise the whole leads her to stress that she is much more than her Ethiopian identity. As such, she can find her place in the ‘white arena’, i.e. society at large without on the one hand obscuring and erasing her black identity, and on the other hand remaining behind the boundaries and barriers of her ethnicity. While making ethnic boundaries – which Wimmer (2008) calls ‘transvaluation’, which aims to establish equality in status and political power – Yona actually liberates herself to consider differing forms of belonging (Anthias 2016: 177) in the sense that ‘belonging “to” something, is always linked to belonging “with” particular others who also occupy the realm of belonging to that something’. 77

D

SIGAL OPPENHAIM-SHACHAR

Those like Yona who employ the third resistance strategy for liberation acquire critical knowledge and develop social awareness. However, instead of spontaneous, random and individual-level resistance, theirs is a collective, activist approach based on planned action and the notion of ‘us’ as a community that can provide support and enhance their sense of ability (Robinson and Ward 1991). By adopting this type of ethnic boundary-crossing strategy, they reposition their blackness and thus themselves, not only empowering themselves through black ethnic pride, but also through a sense of belonging. They understand that belonging is not only in terms of physical and symbolic places and boundaries (Anthias 2016).

Between Ethnicity, Gender and Tradition An Ethiopian Israeli adolescent girl living in a white society faces the challenge of positively experiencing her skin colour. Exposed to conflicting expectations and social shaming alongside her stigmatized, noticeable blackness, she must invest tremendous resources in contending with mixed messages, and even more so in a neoliberal social climate that can be confusing and alienating – ‘erasing’ her blackness on the one hand, and expecting her to fit into the traditional gender role on the other – all under conditions that do not take into account deficient economic resources. Such a combination can make it difficult for these girls to realize their capabilities and believe in their ability to enter worthy future employment, compels them to cope with the barriers, resisting the possible damage to their self-esteem. The devoted daughter has internalized her inability to narrow the opportunity gap, believing that she ‘can’t fit into the white arena’. She engages in contraction boundary work (Wimmer 2008) that limits her options to obtain a quality job, as she resists the neoliberal hegemonic narrative by adopting the good girl praxis, devoted to domestic work as per her traditional gender role. The devoted pupil and those engaging in ‘care and beauty’ practices have greater faith in their abilities and often do boundaries work in order to integrate (Lamont 2000). By blurring their ethnic identity, for instance, they are trying to resist the stigmatizing gaze that assumes that they cannot change their future. They are investing efforts in changing and ‘improving’ themselves: in order to fit in (Wimmer 2008), they buy into the 78

ISRAELI ETHIOPIAN GIRLS NEGOTIATE THEIR BLACKNESS

E

individualist discourse and its dominant values (Solórzano and Delgado Bernal 2001). The proud Ethiopian girls fight back, trying to liberate themselves from the stigmatizing gaze (Robinson and Ward 1991; Solórzano and Delgado Bernal 2001; Torre and Fine 2011), relying on a sense of both community and ethnic pride. Through their resistance, they re-construct their ethnic boundaries in such a way as to insist upon their self-definition. This transvaluation process (Wimmer 2008) as resistance strategy enables them to simultaneously acquire critical sociopolitical knowledge and understand how social structures can undermine the perception of blackness through the white lens. At the same time, they can leverage their sense of ethnic community as a powerful resource for shaping a collective identity (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009), rather than perceiving it as a burden and a barrier that demarcates their employment and overall life horizon. The third strategy indicates that girls whose ethnicity raises their social awareness are able to identify the racist structures and then refuse to accept the external definition of their Ethiopian ethnicity. At the same time, they reject the notion of using, changing or hiding their female body or femininity in order to fit into the ‘white arena’. They also reject the conservative Ethiopian traditional role that requires them to be devoted daughters and remain silent. By doing so, they can move toward translocational positioning of social actors (Anthias 2016), or the continuous negotiations in which women engage to manage their sense of belonging, employing diverse resources to reposition their identities. Translocational positioning may also serve as a catalyst to expanding gender boundaries for young girls growing up in traditional patriarchal communities. In summary, in engaging in boundary extension or contraction work, Ethiopian adolescent girls try to make room for themselves or to feel a sense of belonging (Anthias 2008) according to the level of their sense of power. Girls who are able to ‘liberate themselves’ can use the ethnic category as social support in order to establish a sense of belonging, and may also feel liberated to search for other ways to feel that they belong. Through this process they can move from transvaluation (Wimmer 2008) to translocation (Anthias 2016), focusing on social locations rather than on cultural differences and boundary making. The case of Israeli Ethiopian adolescent girls demonstrates that the ‘girl effect’ trend can manifest itself in various forms, based on elements other than the promulgated neoliberal narrative and interpretation. Girls 79

D

SIGAL OPPENHAIM-SHACHAR

can develop enough courage and social awareness to reinvent themselves as ‘successful young women’ – as the Ethiopian girls who are determined to reposition themselves – to resist the hegemonic discourse and to practice varying forms of agentic femininity. Moreover, perhaps their resistance strategies are more compatible with the resources of girlhood at the intersection of identities. Sigal Oppenhaim-Shachar teaches at Bar Ilan University and Ono Academic college, at the Gender studies programme and the school of Education. Her areas of research include the relationship between gender, education and sociology. Her work on the topic of adolescent girls, intersectionality and intervention processes has been published in British and American academic journals. Recently, a book on this topic has been published in Hebrew by Mofet Institute, Tel Aviv: We Were Counting on You: A Second Look at an Intervention for Girls from Stigmatized Communities (2019). In addition to her studies and research on girlhood, Dr Oppenhaim-Shachar also studies trust-based learning processes and pedagogical approaches.

Notes 1. The Ethiopian community is largely traditional and patriarchal and treats adults with respect. 2. Twenty-two participants out of thirty-four were Ethiopian; the rest were of diverse origins, all aged 16–18. 3, Some of the data were used in another article and in a differing context. 4. A popular nickname for a helper. Usually, for a person who does housework for the elderly. Israel’s National Insurance Institute allots the elderly and infirm weekly hours of housework, performed in nearly every case by unskilled women, the majority of them Ethiopian.

References Annamma, Subini Ancy, et al. 2016. ‘Black Girls and School Discipline: the Complexities of Being Overrepresented and Understudied’, Urban Education 54(2): 211–42. Anteby-Yemini, Lisa. 2010. ‘Visibility in Immigration: Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel’, in Edna Lomsky-Feder and Tamar Rapoport (eds), Nirut BahagiraGoof, Mabat, Yezug [Visibility in Immigration: Body, Gaze, Representation]. Jerusalem: Van Leer, pp. 43–68. [Hebrew].

80

ISRAELI ETHIOPIAN GIRLS NEGOTIATE THEIR BLACKNESS

E

Anthias Floya. 2008. ‘Thinking through the Lens of Translocational Positionality: An Intersectionality Frame for Understanding Identity and Belonging’. Translocations, Migration and Change 4(1): 5–20. Anthias, Floya. 2016. ‘Interconnecting Boundaries of Identity and Belonging and Hierarchy-Making Within Transnational Mobility Studies: Framing Inequalities’, Current Sociology Monograph 64(2): 172–90. Comaroff, John and Jean Comaroff. 2009. Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 2: the Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier. Vol. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DeVault, Margory. 1999. Liberating Method: Feminism and Social Research. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Edwards, Rosalind. 1993. ‘An Education in Interviewing: Placing the Researcher and the Research’, in Claire M. Renzetti and Raymond M. Lee (eds), Researching Sensitive Topics, Sage focus editions. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 181–96. Gilligan, Carol and Jessica Eddy. 2017. ‘Listening as a Path to Psychological Discovery: An Introduction to the Listening Guide’, Perspectives on Medical Education 6(2): 76–81. Gonick, Marnina. 2006. ‘Between “Girl Power” and “Reviving Ophelia”: Constituting the Neoliberal Girl Subject’, NWSA Journal 18(2): 1–22. ———. 2018a. ‘Our Canadian Girl: Technologies of Memory for Cartographies of Distress’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 43(3): 263–84. ———. 2018b. ‘Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Education’. Retrieved 12 September 2018, from Oxford University database. Granovetter Mark. 1983. ‘The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited Author(s): Reviewed Work(s)’, Sociological Theory 1: 201–33. Hisherik, Michal. 2018. ‘The Community’s Culture, Intervention Programs, and Public Policy’ [Hebrew]. PhD dissertation: Bar-Ilan University dissertation, Ramat Gan, Israel. Lamont, Michele. 2000. The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lamont, Michele, and Crystal Marie Fleming. 2005. ‘Everyday Antiracism: Competence and Religion in the Cultural Repertoire of the African American Elite’, Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 2(1): 29–43. McRobbie, Angela. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture, and Social Change. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Moore, Wendy Leo. 2007. Reproducing Racism: White Space, Elite Law Schools, and Racial Inequality. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Nunn, Nia Michelle. 2018. ‘Super-Girl: Strength and Sadness in Black Girlhood’, Gender and Education 30(2): 239–58.

81

D

SIGAL OPPENHAIM-SHACHAR

Oppenhaim-Shachar, Sigal. 2014. ‘Sense of Entitlement and Extra Feminist Assistance’, Hagar Studies in Culture, Policy, and Identities 11(2): 60–82. ———. 2019. ‘“. . . How Am I Going to Pass this Audition?” Shame and Respectability among Ethiopian Adolescent Girls – Dialogue with an Invitation to Expand Occupational Aspirations’, Gender and Education 31(8): 1077–92. Oppenhaim-Shachar, Sigal and Orly Benjamin. 2016. ‘Adolescent Girls’ Connectivity in an Occupational-Efficacy Workshop: Understanding Avoidance’, Journal of Woman’s Studies International Forum 57: 38–47. Reinharz, Shulamit and Lynn Davidman. 1992. Feminist Methods in Social Research. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robinson, Tracy and Janie Victoria Ward. 1991. ‘A Belief in Self Far Greater Than Anyone’s Disbelief: Cultivating Resistance among African American Female Adolescents’, Women and Therapy 11(3–4): 87–103. Salamon, Hagar. 2010. ‘Misplaced Home and Mislaid Meat: Stories Circulating Among Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel’, Callaloo 33(1): 165–76. ———. 2003. ‘Blackness in Transition: Decoding Racial Constructs through Stories of Ethiopian Jews’, Journal of Folklore Research 40(1): 3–32. Shabtay, Malka. 2001. ‘Living with Threatened Identities: The Experiences of Ethiopian Youth in Israel Living with a Colour Difference in an Ethnocentric Climate’, Megamót 41: 97–112. ———. 2003. ‘“RaGap”: Music and Identity among Young Ethiopians in Israel’, Critical Arts 17(1–2): 93–105, DOI: 10.1080/02560240385310071. Shenhav-Goldberg, Rachel et al. 2012. Al tigremu li lisno otcem: Gizanut nitpeset veichut haiim tarbutit bekerv nearot etipiot. [‘“Don’t Make Me Hate You”: Perceived Racism and Cultural Quality of Life among Ethiopian Adolescent Girls’], Social Issues in Israel 93–117. Solórzano, Daniel and Dolores Delgado Bernal. 2001. ‘Examining Transformational Resistance through a Critical Race and Latcrit Theory Framework: Chicana and Chicano Students in an Urban Context’, Urban Education 36(3): 308–42. Switzer, Heather, Emily Bent and Crystal Leigh Endsley. 2016. ‘Precarious Politics and Girl Effects: Exploring the Limits of the Girl Gone Global’, Feminist Formations 28(1): 33–59. Torre, María Elena and Michelle Fine. 2011. ‘A Wrinkle in Time: Tracing a Legacy of Public Science through Community Self-Surveys and Participatory Action Research’, Journal of Social Issues 67(1): 106–21. Walsh, Sophie and Rivka Tuval-Mashiach. 2012. ‘Ethiopian Emerging Adult Immigrants in Israel: Coping with Discrimination and Racism’, Youth and Society 44(1): 49–75. Wimmer, Andreas. 2008. ‘Elementary Strategies of Ethnic Boundary Making’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 31(6): 1025–55.

82

D CHAPTER 5

Fighting Like a Boy? Victimization and Agency in the Lives of Young Women Who Offend Susan A. Batchelor

Introduction Stories about young women and violence, and especially girls and gangs, have been a recurring feature of international news media since the mid1990s (Batchelor 2009; Carrington 2013; Chesney-Lind and Irwin 2008; Venäläinen 2016). Initially girls and young women were portrayed as ‘ladette thugs’, engaged in ‘vicious’, ‘booze fuelled’ violence and disorder. Typical news reports inferred that such ‘masculinization’ was an unfortunate by-product of women seeking equality with men, as well as a sign that gendered theories of violence must be mistaken (Batchelor 2001). Latterly, however, attention has shifted from a focus on girls’ and young women’s offending to an emphasis on their victimization, often at the hands of male gang members (Young and Trickett 2017). Such depictions correspond with findings from research with youth justice and related practitioners, which demonstrate that young women who offend are commonly constructed by staff as a ‘vulnerable’ population (Arnell 2019;

D

SUSAN A. BATCHELOR

Crowley 2021; Henriksen 2018; Sharpe 2012; Vogel 2017), suffering from poor mental health and difficulties regulating their emotions – stemming largely from traumatic histories of abuse. These constructs of young women and violence are linked to longstanding images of women as, on the one hand, inherently evil (emotional, irrational, out of control – and therefore in need of discipline) and, on the other, naturally passive (fragile, naïve, powerless – and therefore in need of protection) (Vogel 2017). They are also linked to contemporary concerns about women’s shifting roles and especially the positioning of girls and young women as ideal neoliberal subjects (Harris 2004). As highlighted by a growing field of girlhood studies, images of high-achieving, successful and sexually agentic young women are a further feature of contemporary global media (Gill 2008). Bolstered by educational debates that use girls’ superior achievements in school vis-à-vis boys to make sweeping claims about gender equity and ‘girl power’ (Aapola et al. 2005; Ringrose 2007, 2013; Walkerdine et al. 2001), girls and young women have been reconstituted as ‘exemplars of a new competitive meritocracy’ oriented around economic participation, consumer citizenship and self-regulation (McRobbie 2007). Of course, the flipside to this post-feminist, neoliberal discourse of personal responsibility, empowerment and choice is that young women who do not achieve such success become more emphatically condemned for their ‘bad choices’, disordered forms of consumption, and other failings (McRobbie 2009). The current chapter seeks to transcend these dichotomous representations of girls and young women, drawing on research conducted in Scotland to illustrate the interplay between victimization and agency in the lives of young women convicted of violent offences. It addresses the family and peer contexts of young women’s violence, highlighting some of the ways in which traditional understandings of femininities shaped young women’s experiences alongside neoliberal and post-feminist ideals of empowerment, independence and agency.

The Study The study on which this chapter draws was one of the first pieces of research to focus on violent young women in the UK (originally reported in Batchelor 2005). The title of the research was ‘Young women’s pathways through violence’, in recognition of the fact that young women 84

VICTIMIZATION AND AGENCY IN THE LIVES OF YOUNG WOMEN WHO OFFEND

E

who use violence have often experienced multiple forms of physical and sexual victimization. Informed by an engagement with feminist theory, the focus was on unpacking the ways in which violence was engaged in, experienced and explained by young women, acknowledging that we cannot fully depict ‘violent young women’ without reference to the material contexts within which they act and the discursive fields by which they are constructed (and construct themselves). Fieldwork was undertaken in 2001 at Her Majesty’s Prison and Young Offender’s Institute Cornton Vale, which at that time housed nearly all female prisoners and young offenders in Scotland. The main method used was in-depth oral-history interviews with twenty-one young women serving custodial sentences for a violent crime. All of the young women in the original interview sample were single and all were white, and ages ranged from 16 to 24 years. Whilst the data from ‘Pathways through violence’ are now rather dated, the study remains one of the few accounts of the experiences of young women sentenced to custody for violent offending outwith the North American context (but see Venäläinen 2017), addressing a range of persistent questions about the ways in which female offenders can be both victims of crime and agents who resist victim status. The analysis provided here builds on the findings of the original research by presenting previously unpublished data on the gendered contexts of young women’s violence, as well as drawing on subsequent developments in girlhood studies to examine the strategies used by young women to negotiate postfeminist and neoliberal ideologies of autonomy, empowerment, choice and personal responsibility.

The Gendered Family Context of Young Women’s Violence The research chimed with other studies of young women who offend which highlight the impact of familial relationships on current and future behaviour (Arnell 2017; Arnull and Eagle 2009; Sharpe 2012; Vogel 2018). Alongside strong family ties, many young women reported ‘problems at home’. More than half of the young women had experienced disrupted domestic arrangements as a result of parental separation, divorce and/or changes to their main caregiver. Two-fifths had suffered significant bereavements, including the death of a parent and/or sibling. Threequarters reported previous social work involvement and involvement in the Children’s Hearing System (usually relating to non-offence grounds) 85

D

SUSAN A. BATCHELOR

and more than half had been ‘looked after’ by the local authority. Twofifths had been sexually abused (usually by grandfathers, uncles or cousins), two-fifths had been victimized physically (usually by their parents), and two-fifths described witnessing regular incidents of domestic violence, often involving the use of weapons such as batons, bricks or belts. As discussed below, a common family dynamic in households characterized by domestic violence was a controlling, physically abusive father, attended by an addicted, emotionally withdrawn mother. Young women attempted to make sense of these experiences by reference to dominant gender norms, specifically those that construct men as physically aggressive and women as caring and self-sacrificing. Caring and Connectedness Most of the young women in the current study attached great importance to their family relationships and were very loyal towards family members. They regarded ‘good’ families as those where family members were ‘close’. Closeness in this context was demonstrated by unconditional love and unquestioning loyalty: ‘My family has stood by me through everything. They have. Every single thing, my family has stood by me. I couldn’t ask for a better family’. Almost all of the young women reiterated the loyalty of the biological bond over and above other non-kin ties, remarking that ‘blood is thicker than water’. Zoë, for example, explained that she would always put her sister before her friends: ‘I’m loyal, loyal to my family. I’ll always be loyal to my family, no matter what. I’m loyal to pals, but if it’s my pals and my sister, it’s my sister I’ll go behind’. Domination and Detachment While the young women often romanticized their relationships with their families, the notion that kin will ‘come through’ in times of hardship was not always borne out in practice. Many of the young women said that they did not feel ‘wanted’ at home or that their parents were emotionally distant or didn’t pay them enough attention. Sometimes this lack of attention was attributed to parents working long, unsociable hours, but more often the young women blamed parental drug and/or alcohol misuse, and/or the impact of domestic violence. Diane came from the former background (parents working unsociable hours). The fourth child in a family of five, she experienced a reasonably happy childhood until her parents’ separation, when she was aged 13. Both parents continued to reside in the family home, but rarely talked to one another: 86

VICTIMIZATION AND AGENCY IN THE LIVES OF YOUNG WOMEN WHO OFFEND

E

The house is just halved. . . . It is weird. Like, my mum will cook my dad’s tea and do all the washing, but they just don’t communicate. If my dad wants something off my mum, like the catalogue money for instance, it’s me that’s got to go through and ask for it.

Diane was clearly distressed by her difficult home circumstances but was unable to move out due to her age and limited financial income. She coped by avoiding the family home when both of her parents were present and going out, drinking, with her friends. Karen described a similar family context, but this time characterized by her father’s domineering behaviour and her mother’s detachment: I never got on with my dad. He is quite violent, so I ended up getting put into care. I used to get beaten up with the baton a lot, or the belt. It was if he was in a bad mood, like if you put too much sugar in his coffee or something, or you made a noise when he was trying to watch the racing. You know, something stupid. . . . I resented my mum for standing and watching it all happen and not doing anything. I still to this day don’t understand why she done that. . . . She doesn’t show any emotions of any kind. Even anger, she can’t really be angry. When she is angry, she just goes quiet. Never ever in my whole life has she told me that she loves me. Never. Not once.

This pattern was reiterated again and again in the young women’s accounts. They commonly described their step/fathers as ‘obsessive’ or ‘controlling’ and said that as children they had to ‘creep about so as not to annoy him’. As Lesley put it, ‘It was like living with a volcano. You didn’t know when he was going to erupt’. Mothers generally responded to this situation by acquiescing to their partner’s demands in an attempt to avoid further confrontation: My dad had disowned my sisters at that time because they had moved in with partners and he’s dead old fashioned and doesn’t agree with that. It just made things really difficult. Like, he wouldn’t let my mum see my sisters and he wouldn’t let me see them and it was just quite difficult. I don’t think he really bullied her, it was just more or less, he was telling her what to do and she had to do it. See, with my dad it’s whatever he thinks that’s right and nobody can say different and my mum just goes along with him to stop arguments and that. (Fiona)

Mothers, Daughters and the Nurturing Imperative While the young women reported difficult relationships with both parents, it was common to find greater anger directed towards mothers than fathers. Debbie, for example, said of her father: 87

D

SUSAN A. BATCHELOR

Ma dad is awful violent, but he’s a really nice man, but he used to stab my mum and batter her about. All my mum’s boyfriends have battered her. But, you couldn’t meet a nicer man than my dad, but he always batters people, he always fights with people. He’s got a really bad temper. But he’s brilliant. I love him to pieces.

Her feelings toward mother were far more ambivalent: I like her, but I don’t really. I hate her, but I love her as well. I hate what she done to me, but I love her. My papa, her dad, he was abusing me. He abused me from when I was three until I was eleven. And my mum knew all about it and didn’t tell anybody, because it had happened to her as well and she just let it happen. And she says she was scared and that’s how, but I’ve got two wee sisters and I am scared but I still wouldn’t let anybody do that to them.

The nature and tone of Debbie’s narrative speaks to the influence of traditional gender norms. Whilst she found her father’s violence unproblematic, she struggled to come to terms with her mother’s failure to protect her. Debbie’s bitterness towards her mother derived from deep-seated feelings of personal abandonment, but also broader cultural constructions of femininity linking motherhood with emotional closeness and self-sacrifice. Within the sample, idealized mothers were characterized as ‘being there’ for their children ‘24/7’. They were ‘caring’, would ‘sit down and spend time’ with their offspring, and ‘stopped anybody hurting you’. A small number of the young women said they had mothers who fell into this category. Judy, for example, said of her relationship with her mother: She’s like my best pal. She’s not that old, so we get on brilliant. She’s brand new with me. She doesn’t like the idea of me being in here, but she’s stood by me. She is up every week to see me [even though] it’s a good bit of travelling. . . . My dad used to batter my ma all the time. She just took all the kickings herself, but soon as he turned on us, that was it. So I’ve got heavy respect for my mum.

This description of a ‘caring’ mother was rare. Most young women viewed their mothers with a mixture of hurt and bitterness, often describing them as self-absorbed, irresponsible or otherwise unavailable. For example: I’m not that close to my mum. I’ve always blamed my mum for putting me in to care. Em, because my mum couldn’t cope with me. She was wanting to live her own life plus have me, you know, try to bring me up, but it didn’t work so she just put me into care. (Pauline) I never got on with my mum. We just argued all the time and my mam was never there for me. . . . She was always out working; she was out working all the time. I only saw her about an hour a day or something. (Jane)

88

VICTIMIZATION AND AGENCY IN THE LIVES OF YOUNG WOMEN WHO OFFEND

E

Pauline and Jane were both aware of the ‘right’ way to mother (the ‘good’ mother myth) and also knew that their own mothers failed to live up to this ideal (and were therefore, by definition, ‘bad’ mothers). Both expressed a fear of turning out like their mother, an anxiety that had real resonance because both young women had had their own children taken into care as a result of heroin addiction. With young women frequently describing difficult relationships between themselves and their mothers, it could be argued that the source of their violent behaviour lies therein. The problem with this explanation, however, is that it reinforces dominant discourses about mothers being solely responsible for the welfare, achievements and failings of their children, without attending to wider family dynamics that are often characterized by socioeconomic disadvantage and male violence against women. As Samantha’s story illustrates, distance between mother and daughter is more likely the result of violence, rather than its source: Whenever I went into the house it would just be constant arguing all the time. Like if my mum walked down the street and she was five minutes longer than she usually was he used to go off his nut and start hitting her. If he thought that she was favouring one of us over one of the other girls, then he used to go mental. It was just stupid things; he was just so obsessive. He was totally mental. . . . I didn’t realize how serious it was, because I was that young. He used to buy us off by taking us swimming and that. And then if mum tried to do anything like that he used to go mental and hit her. So it was like I always felt close to my dad, even although I knew he was doing that to my mum.

In summary, young women in the study had a series of complex, ambivalent and multifaceted relationships with their families. Some reported strong family ties; others described sexual and/or physical abuse; many discussed both. The extreme violence contained within many of the young women’s narratives not only contrasts markedly with dominant depictions of the family as a ‘safe haven’, it also challenges neoliberal depictions of a ‘post-feminist’ female offender, freed from traditional familial and gendered control. More generally, the findings demonstrate the continuing salience of gender at both a material and a symbolic level. It is within the family that most young women first experience violence, and that they are taught explicitly and by example that the world is a dangerous place. It is also within the family that they learn what is to be a man or a woman and are exposed to traditional gender norms that excuse male violence and enforce strict codes of behaviour on women.

89

D

SUSAN A. BATCHELOR

The Gendered Peer Context of Young Women’s Violence Spending time with friends was a prime social activity for most of the young women involved in the current research. Propelled out of their homes by difficult family circumstances, barred from local shopping centres and lacking the financial means to access commercialized leisure venues, they spent much of their teenage years ‘hanging about’ on the street, in parks, and on lots of vacant land. Their street-based peer groups were often fairly large, on the weekend consisting of twenty to thirty boys, girls and young adults. From Sunday to Thursday, however, these numbers dwindled – comprising six or seven core young people, most of whom were male. Interviewees reported that most local girls and young women ‘split off’ into smaller female cliques during the week, or they stayed at home helping out with domestic chores and caring responsibilities. Indeed, the sample varied in terms of the level of time spent with streetorientated peers: twelve claimed ‘core’ membership to the group, ‘hanging out with the guys’ on an almost daily basis; the reminder described more sporadic involvement, usually joining in with the ‘carry on’ on a Friday and/or Saturday night (n=5), or they stated that they were not involved with street-based peers at all (n=4). The discussion that follows relates primarily to the former group, that is those young women who saw themselves as ‘one of the lads’, although as will become evident, the findings have implications for all of the young women. Building on the argument set out previously, it will be demonstrated that gender inequality and gendered norms were central to the ways in which young women experienced and accounted for violence in their peer groups. Respect and Reputation The gendered status hierarchy present in young women’s families was replicated within their street-orientated peer groups. Status and prestige were ascribed to the ‘gemmie’ or ‘hard man’ image associated with Scottish masculinity, with an emphasis on physical aggression. According to Samantha, ‘Guys get more respect than lassies . . . because guys are not as twofaced and bitchy as lassies’. Zoë agreed: ‘You can sit and have a pure slagging match with the boys . . . You can say daft things to each other. But you don’t get bitchy’. The notion of ‘bitchiness’ generally referred to verbal abuse, talking behind backs and so on. When used to describe physical violence, however, it signified the use of stereotypically female fighting techniques, such as scratching, slapping, hair pulling and biting. 90

VICTIMIZATION AND AGENCY IN THE LIVES OF YOUNG WOMEN WHO OFFEND

E

Most of the young women regarded such techniques with contempt; for these interviewees, status was gained by emulating male fighting techniques as closely as possible. Almost without exception, the young women expressed the importance of being seen to ‘stand up for yourself ’, repeating the mantra: ‘Better a sore face than a red face’. In other words, it is better to fight and lose than have the embarrassment of backing down. As Kelly remarked, ‘You need to keep your guard up all the time, or people will just take the cunt’. Likewise, Lesley said, ‘If everybody sees that you’re just going to take it, then everybody’s going to try and have a shot’. Adopting a tough, aggressive approach was regarded as an unavoidable aspect of life growing up in a ‘rough’ area and was something that many of the young women said that they were taught by their parents from a very early age. As Joanne explained, ‘I was brought up no to let people boss me around or pick on me. Ken, if somebody hit me, then I’ve to hit them back; if I disagree with something, I’ve to express the fact that I don’t agree’. Rather than being positively reinforced for demonstrating passivity, such young women were socialized to stand up to anyone who ‘disrespects’ them and to be able to ‘hold their own’. In one sense, then, the motivations of the young women were similar to those of young men: they fought to gain status and respect, to strengthen their peer relations, and to project an image of fearlessness and invincibility. However, as the following section demonstrates, there were also some important differences. Fights over issues of public status, for example, were often highly gendered, involving assaults on the young women’s personal integrity as women, in particular their sexual reputation and their competencies as a mother. Respectability and Restraint When discussing their ‘reputation’, the young women were careful to distinguish between having a feminine ‘reputation’ (as someone who ‘sleeps about’) and a masculine reputation (as ‘a hard nut’). In one sense, then, respect was associated with the pursuit of respectability, which essentially meant ‘not sleeping around’. Accusations of sexual promiscuity were cited as common causes of fights, particularly between teenage girls. ‘Nipping someone’s boyfriend’ was also regarded as highly provocative, particularly when it took place in the presence of others. Cathy, for example, told me about an incident where she found her boyfriend in bed with another girl at a party: ‘I’ve went through to the room [laughs] and Darren’s been lying 91

D

SUSAN A. BATCHELOR

in bed with another girl! So I dragged her out the bed and battered her and slapped Darren. We [Darren and I] carried on partying and all the rest of it and I just kept battering her’. This excerpt is insightful because it highlights the general reluctance of research participants to blame men for gendered violence. The lesser punishment meted out to Cathy’s boyfriend, Darren, reflects her (almost cheerful) resignation to his repeated indiscretions. Later, at the same party, Cathy was informed that a different young woman had been saying that she was pregnant to Darren: I felt like shit. I felt like a pure piece of shit, man. My esteem had went to that and I was just so upset. And I went over and fucking I’ve been asking the lassie what she’s all about. And I’ve dragged her off the chair and I’ve been fighting with her. [Laughs] And that lassie decked me! So there’s been a blade lying on the table – Darren’s blade, he always carried this blade about with him – and I picked the blade up and stabbed her.

Cathy’s account reflects the prevailing force of the ‘sexual double standard’, which portrays male sexuality as uncontrollable and thereby makes women responsible for preventing their own victimization by behaving ‘decently’. It also alludes to the wider gender hierarchy, which shapes young women’s ability to confront dominant males. Another means of signifying respectability was through developing and monitoring a ‘good’ ‘caring’ self. A central theme of young women’s accounts was a sense of self as caretaker of others and participants often drew on their identities as sisters, daughters, girlfriends or mothers to justify violent acts. Jane, for example, had been engaged in a long-running dispute with a girl from school, but said that she only resorted to violence when the young woman referred to her as an ‘unfit mother’: She’d been walking up and down by my house saying I was an unfit mother and all that and I just went out and I just flew at her. I just started hitting and hitting her. I couldn’t stop hitting her. The police had to pull me off her. I was just that angry because everybody was saying I was an unfit mother. . . . I don’t know how she could call me that. Everybody could hear it. That’s what made me more angry: because she stood bawling it out at the top of her voice.

Protecting kith and kin was also often cited as a reason for involvement in violent behaviour, and in some cases offending more generally. The young women were particularly protective of vulnerable family members, and often saw it as their personal responsibility to stop other people from being harmed. As Stephanie, who had been convicted of assaulting her stepfather, explained,

92

VICTIMIZATION AND AGENCY IN THE LIVES OF YOUNG WOMEN WHO OFFEND

E

I used to see my dad battering my mum and I didn’t like it. My mum used to sit and take it from him. Then one day I’ve started fleeing about him, scratching his face and hitting him . . . He knew that she wouldn’t do nothing back. [Defiantly] But her daughter done something.

This desire to protect others can be linked to normative discourses of ‘emphasised femininity’ (Connell 1987) and is also allied with the notion of a female relational disposition. From an early age, girls are taught that being female is associated with care for others. Consequently, they not only develop a sense of self and self-worth via their emotional connections but also in terms of their ability to look after others. Caring, then, becomes a form of feminine cultural capital (Skeggs 1997) and is regarded as an important source of self-identity and self-worth. This demonstrates that, while young women may profess to ‘fight like a man’, a contextual reading of why they fight, under what circumstances they fight, and how they justify their fighting reveals that physical violence may actually validate rather than repudiate traditional gender norms. One of the Lads . . . but I Can Be Girly When I Want to Be Expressed attitudes towards and understandings of gender identity could be similarly ambivalent and contradictory. Some of the research participants explicitly identified themselves as ‘wan o’ the lads’. Karen, for example, rejected most aspects of emphasized femininity, and valued what she and her peers considered to be traditionally masculine traits, i.e. bravery, physical strength, toughness, risk-taking and emotional stoicism. Yet despite this, she denied that she was trying to be a guy, or that she considered herself as unfeminine. Indeed, she claimed that such interpretations were sexist: ‘I wasn’t trying to be like [my male friends]. It is just the things that I enjoy. Since the age of 10 or 11, I have done what I like’. Zoë’s narrative presented a similarly complex picture. Like Karen, she had committed a number of stereotypically masculine crimes (including car theft, serious assault, housebreaking, and attempted murder) and said that she identified more with boys because they were less emotional and less ‘bitchy’ than girls. Now that she was ‘getting a bit older’, however, she claimed to be making more of an ‘effort’ to appear more feminine, I went very girly last year and I’ve still kind of went a wee bit girly the now, but it’s because I’m growing up . . . When I was younger guys used to says to me, ‘Aw, Zoë, you lesbian!’ [Laughs] Because I’m always with the boys . . . I’m girly, don’t get me wrong, I am girly. But I’m only girly to a certain extent. But, like,

93

D

SUSAN A. BATCHELOR

when I go out the dancing and that, I’ll wear a skirt and I’ll wear my high heels and that. When I’m going out, aye, I’ll put make-up on and all that. But during the week it’s trainers, or my boots and that.

Zoë’s interview demonstrates that being ‘one of the guys’ was regarded as an identity (or perhaps more accurately a practice) that was undertaken (consciously or otherwise) as a form of resistance to the confines of emphasized femininity. At the same time, however, it was an identity that had to be carefully managed. Zoë made repeated asides throughout her interview that she was not a lesbian and could be ‘girly’ when she wanted to be. In this way, whilst aligning herself against a (rather stereotyped) version of traditional femininity, Zoë stressed that she was feminine nonetheless. Like Karen, she said that generally speaking she preferred ‘doing the things that boys do’ (having a laugh, looking after herself, being able to dress casually and not worry about her appearance), but that there were still times when she enjoyed doing ‘girly things’ too. This complex, and seemingly contradictory, relationship demonstrates that young women can ‘do’ femininity at the same time as they are attempting to resist it. Embedded in their stories is an understanding of ‘respect’ that transcends the masculine understanding of respect (as a personal and individual issue) found in the street culture of boys.

Conclusion This chapter has explored some of the gendered power dynamics within the families and street-orientated peer groups of young women convicted of violent offences, providing an examination of how young women collude with and resist dominant gender constructs. The material contexts in which the young women were brought up were characterized by: family breakdown and disruption; experience of local authority care; drug and alcohol (mis)use; poor educational experiences and outcomes; unemployment; and poverty. Family and peer environments were characterized by male domination (especially physical domination) and pervasive control over girls and women (particularly over their sexuality). These backgrounds severely limited young women’s choices and options and contributed to rigid, stereotypical views about men and women. Women were held to much higher standards than men were, and when they failed to live up to these standards interviewees reacted with an overwhelming sense of anger and betrayal. 94

VICTIMIZATION AND AGENCY IN THE LIVES OF YOUNG WOMEN WHO OFFEND

E

One way in which the young women sought to resist negative gender stereotyping, and thereby avoid feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness, was by taking up a subject position as ‘one of the lads’. This involved adhering to subcultural norms of solidarity, solidity and the sexual double standard. By appropriating dominant masculine gender performances, young women gained some of the credibility and power associated with hegemonic masculinity. However, they also sustained gender boundaries, for example by distinguishing themselves from their male peers through affirmations that they are ‘prudish’ or ‘proper’ in their sexual behaviour. Young women also drew on traditional feminine gender norms to justify their use of violence (as caring or self-sacrificing) and stressed that despite being ‘one of the guys’ they could ‘be girly’ when they want to be. These ambivalent and seemingly contradictory views of gender identity can also be explained by reference to the regulatory effects of neoliberal and post-feminist discourses, discussed by feminist girlhood studies scholars. The obligation to demonstrate personal responsibility and volition was widely accepted by participants, who went to great lengths to distinguish themselves from other ‘vulnerable’ women and girls, positioning themselves as the guardians of their own and others’ safety and reputations. This post-feminist sensibility deflected notions of difficulty and external constraint, with consequences for participants’ mental health and wellbeing – as well as their empathy towards similarly disadvantaged others. Within the broader field of youth studies, this disembedding of subjectivity is referred to as an ‘epistemological fallacy’, in which longstanding social divisions become increasingly obscured via a neoliberal ideology of personal responsibility and ‘choice’ (Furlong and Cartmel 2007). Within the context of youth justice, it is reinforced by the risk factor paradigm, which reframes structural disadvantage as individual criminogenic need or ‘risk’ (Phoenix 2006). This approach, which draws on concepts such as ‘empowerment’ to emphasize young people’s responsibility for their actions (Cox 2012), contributes to an erasure of the gendered, racialized and classed contexts of youth crime and criminalization (Phoenix and Kelly 2013). As feminist scholars such as Sara Goodkind (2005, 2009) and Gilly Sharpe (2016) have highlighted, justice for girls has been narrowly conceived as the delivery of gender-specific programming designed to address personal histories of trauma and abuse, enhance girls’ sense of self-efficacy and self-esteem, and help them develop and maintain healthy relationships. In this way, gendered abuse and exploitation are reconstructed as 95

D

SUSAN A. BATCHELOR

the outcome of young women’s own ‘risky choices’, rather than structural inequalities and injustice. By illustrating the ways in which young women can simultaneously collude with and resist oppressive gender structures, the current chapter undermines the pathologizing and homogenizing tendencies of dominant discourse on ‘ladette thugs’ and ‘vulnerable victims’, as well as highlighting important linkages between violence in the home and violence on the street. The ‘ladette’ of popular discourse tends to be presented as a care-free hedonist, driven by interests in partying and having fun. Yet, as the present study makes clear, young women’s involvement in criminal violence is often precipitated by an array of adverse life experiences. Despite these experiences, participants in the current study were keen to portray themselves as agentic actors, who engaged in violence instrumentally as a means of preventing future victimization. In doing so, they can be seen as drawing on neoliberal, post-feminist discourses that position them as active, empowered agents, as well as longstanding ideologies of respectable femininity, which position women as guardians of their own safety and reputation.

Susan A. Batchelor is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow, based in the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. Her research interests centre around the intersections of gender, generation, culture and crime and most of her publications relate to the views and experiences of girls and young women. She is currently leading Scottish Government funded research on repeat violent victimization.

References Aapola, Sinikka, Marnina Gonick and Anita Harris. 2005. Young Femininity: Girlhood, Power and Social Change. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Arnell, Linda. 2017. ‘Narrating Family: Talk about a Troublesome Girlhood Within the Swedish Context’, in Bodil Formark, Heta Mulari and Myry Voipio (eds), Nordic Girlhoods – New Perspectives and Outlooks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 161–178. ———. 2019. Tjejers våld. Våldets tjejer: En diskursanalytisk studie om våld, kön och femininitet [Violence of Girls. Girls of Violence: A Discursive Analytical Study of Violence, Gender and Femininity]. PhD dissertation. Umeå: Umeå Universitet. 96

VICTIMIZATION AND AGENCY IN THE LIVES OF YOUNG WOMEN WHO OFFEND

E

Arnull, Elaine and Susannah Eagle. 2009. Girls and Offending – Patterns, Perceptions and Interventions. London: Youth Justice Board. Baker, Joanne. 2010. ‘Claiming Volition and Evading Victimhood: Post-Feminist Obligations for Young Women’, Feminism & Psychology 20(2): 186–204. Batchelor, Susan. 2001. ‘The Myth of Girl Gangs’, Criminal Justice Matters 43: 26–27. ———. 2005. ‘Prove Me the Bam! Victimisation and Agency in the Lives of Young Women Who Commit Violent Offences’, Probation Journal 52(4): 358–75. ———. 2009. ‘Girls, Gangs and Violence: Assessing the Evidence’, Probation Journal 56(4): 399–414. Batchelor, Susan and Michele Burman. 2009. ‘The Children’s Hearing System’, in Jenny Johnstone and Michele Burman (eds), Youth Justice in Scotland. Edinburgh: Dunedin Press, pp. 14–26. Berrington, Elaine and Päivi Honkatukia. 2002. ‘An Evil Monster and a Poor Thing: Female Violence in the Media’, Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 3: 50–72. Carrington, Kerry. 2013. ‘Girls and Violence: The Case for a Feminist Theory of Female Violence’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 2(2): 63–79. Chesney-Lind, Meda and Katherine Irwin. 2008. Beyond Bad Girls: Gender, Violence, and Hype. New York: Routledge. Connell, Raewyn. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Cox, Alexandra. 2012. ‘Anchoring Identity: The Construction of Responsibility for and by Young Offenders in the US’, in Peter Kraftl, John Horton and Faith Tucker (eds), Critical Geographies of Childhood and Youth: Contemporary Policy and Practice. Bristol: The Policy Press, pp. 199–214. Crowley, Annie. 2021. Practitioner Perspectives on Working with Young Women in the Criminal Justice Sphere. A Scottish Justice Fellowship Briefing Paper. Glasgow: The Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. Furlong, Andy and Fred Cartmel. 2007. Young People and Social Change: New Perspectives, 2nd edn. Buckingham: Open University Press. Gill, Ros. 2008. ‘Empowerment/sexism: Figuring Female Sexual Agency in Contemporary Advertising’, Feminism & Psychology 18(2): 35–60. Goodkind, Sara. 2005. ‘Gender-Specific Services in the Juvenile Justice System: A Critical Examination’, Affilia 20(1): 52–70. ———. 2009. ‘“You Can Be Anything You Want, but You Have to Believe It”: Commercialized Feminism in Gender-Specific Programs for Girls’, Signs 34: 397–422. Harris, Anita. 2004. Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century. London: Routledge. 97

D

SUSAN A. BATCHELOR

Henriksen, Ann-Karina. 2018. ‘Vulnerable Girls and Dangerous Boys: Gendered Practices of Discipline in Secure Care’, YOUNG 26(5): 427–43. McRobbie, Angela. 2007. ‘Top Girls? Young Women and the Post-Feminist Sexual Contract’, Cultural Studies 21(4–5): 718–37. ———. 2009. In the Aftermath of Feminism: Gender Culture and Social Change. London: Sage. Phoenix, Jo. 2006. Doing Justice: Analyzing ‘Risk’ and ‘Need’ Assessments in Youth Justice Practice. Swindon: ESRC. Phoenix, Jo and Liz Kelly. 2013. ‘“You Have to Do It for Yourself ”: Responsibilization in Youth Justice and Young People’s Situated Knowledge of Youth Justice Practice’, British Journal of Criminology 53(3): 419–37. Ringrose, Jessica. 2007. ‘Successful Girls? Complicating Post-Feminist, Neoliberal Discourses of Educational Achievement and Gender Equality’, Gender and Education 19(4): 471–89. ———. 2013. Postfeminist Education: Girls and the Sexual Politics of Schooling. London: Routledge. Sharpe, Gilly. 2012. Offending Girls: Young Women and Youth Justice. London: Routledge. ———. 2016. ‘Reimagining Justice for Girls: A New Agenda for Research’, Youth Justice 16(1): 3–17. Skeggs, Beverley. 1997. Formations of Class and Gender. London: Sage. Venäläinen, Satu. 2016. ‘What Are True Women Not Made of? Agency and Identities of “Violent” Women in Tabloids in Finland’, Feminist Media Studies 16(2): 261–75. Venäläinen, Satu. 2017. ‘Conversations with Otherness: Violence and Womanhood in Narratives of Women Imprisoned for Violent Crimes’, European Journal of Women’s Studies 24(4): 366–80. Vogel, Maria Andersson. 2017. ‘An Endeavour for Autonomy – How Girls Understand Their Lived Experiences of Being Referred to Secure Care’, YOUNG: Nordic Journal of Youth Research 26(1): 70–85. Walkerdine, Valerie, Helen Lucey and June Melody. 2001. Growing up Girl. London: Palgrave. Young, Tara and Loretta Trickett. 2017. ‘Gang Girls: Agency, Sexual Identity and Victimization “on Road”’, in Keith Gildart, Anna Gough-Yates, Sian Lincoln, Bill Osgerby, Lucy Robinson, John Street, Peter Webb and Matthew Worley (eds), Youth Culture and Social Change: Making a Difference by Making a Noise. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 231–60.

98

D PART II

Transitions to Adulthood Girls’ Prospects of Education, Employment and Family

D CHAPTER 6

Poor Educational Attainment, Training Opportunities and Transitions to Adulthood The Case of Young Spanish Women Elena Quintana-Murci, María Tugores-Ques and Francesca Salvà-Mut

Introduction Spain, like other southern European countries, has suffered the consequences of the economic crisis, which has affected the transition of youths to adulthood. Youth school-to-work transitions in Spain are influenced by gender and educational attainment, with males having smoother transitions in all cases and females having more difficult transitions. All of these findings are framed in the context of the social and economic crisis (Acosta, Osorno and Rodríguez 2017). The level of young Spanish women’s participation in the labour market and in domestic and care work is closely related to motherhood and their level of education. Likewise, in the context of a family welfare model, these same determinants affect their income and personal autonomy and make young women with a low level of education especially vulnerable. Notes for this section can be found on page 118.

D

ELENA QUINTANA-MURCI, MARÍA TUGORES-QUES AND FRANCESCA SALVÀ-MUT

In addition, in the context of a continuously androcentric field of research, attention has mainly focused on the superior academic results of girls in relation to boys’ academic performances, overlooking girls with poor educational results, which hampers policy developments that allow them to improve their educational level and autonomy and limits their access to the basic rights of citizenship. In this context, the education and training options offered to girls who have obtained poor academic results in compulsory secondary education play a strategic role in their transition to adulthood. Given the poor education and training options offered to girls, the participation of girls in this type of training is rare, and the training that is currently offered is characterized by a strong gender segregation that perpetuates traditional gender roles. Gender inequality continues to be a fundamental challenge. Agenda 2030 (United Nations 2015) establishes among its objectives for sustainable development the need to guarantee inclusive and equitable education, eliminate gender disparities and ensure equal access for women and men to all levels of education and vocational training. Similarly, the need to promote the equality of women and men regarding access to decent work and equal pay for work of equal value is highlighted. This chapter1 aims to give visibility to the situation of girls who are studying basic vocational education and training (basic VET) courses aimed at young people who do not obtain their certificate in compulsory secondary education. More specifically, we present the results of a longitudinal study executed in one region – the Balearic Islands – with one of the highest Early Leaving from Education and Training (ELET) rates in the European Union (EU).

Early Leaving from Education and Training and Life Course: A Matter of Gender Prevention and reduction of early leaving from education and training is one of the main priorities of educational, social and labour policies in the European Union due to the strong impact it has both at the individual and societal levels. Spain has one of the highest ELET percentages2 in the EU; in 2019, this rate was 18 per cent, 4 per cent above the EU average, and was even higher in the Balearic Islands (24 per cent).

102

POOR EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT, TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES AND TRANSITIONS

E

Although the data show a higher prevalence of ELET in men (EUROSTAT 2019a; Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional 2019) the impact on the life course of young women is clearly worse than that on young men, as young women face greater difficulties in the process of transition to adulthood and experience greater difficulties in accessing employment, higher levels of unemployment, a lower participation level in training and a greater dedication to domestic and care work (Iannelli and Smyth 2008; Iannelli and Duta 2018; Struffolino and Borgna 2020). In this sense, with regard to ELET and labour status in 2015 in Spain, there was a lower share of women employed than men (5 per cent vs. 10 per cent), fewer women who would like to work (8 per cent vs. 12 per cent), and more women who did not want to work (2 per cent vs. 1 per cent) (EUROSTAT 2019b). According to research on young Spanish people aged between 26 and 28 years without any education credentials, it was observed that women represented 40 per cent of this group, but they were characterized, compared to men, by low participation in employment, high rates of unemployment, more dedication to care and domestic work as a main activity, and having more children (Salvà-Mut, Thomàs-Vanrell and Quintana-Murci 2015). In addition, qualitative research carried out to analyse girls’ transition to adulthood concluded that young women with a low level of education follow a pathway characterized by a greater persistence of traditional gender roles focused on domestic and care work, a weaker relationship with education and training, and a greater economic and emotional dependence on their environment (family and social services). Other characteristics of this group include early motherhood and emancipation (leaving parental home with or without being married), and a high fertility rate (Quintana-Murci, Salvà-Mut and Tugores-Ques 2019). In this sense, Esping-Andersen (2008) emphasizes the strong social polarization caused by the neglect of the ‘second half of femininity’ in women and couples with low levels of education, where the absence of economic independence causes a notable division of work along gender lines in addition to making these women sociologically invisible and especially vulnerable. At this point, it is important to note the internalization of women’s roles as caregivers, which is stronger in the case of women with low levels of education or who are unemployed (Moreno Colom 2007). All of these contributions highlight the great importance of education in shaping a girl’s transition to adulthood as well as the need to invest in

103

D

ELENA QUINTANA-MURCI, MARÍA TUGORES-QUES AND FRANCESCA SALVÀ-MUT

and develop positive actions for mitigating the consequences of ELET, with a special emphasis on girls and women.

Basic VET and Gender Segregation To reduce high dropout rates and ensure continued youth participation in the education system, basic VET was established in Spain in 2014–2015 and is geared towards students who have not completed compulsory secondary education. Basic VET lasts for two academic years. Those who attend basic VET will not receive their certificate in compulsory secondary education but will instead earn a Vocational Education and Training Level 1 credential, which allows them to continue in intermediate VET (IVET) courses. In a country with high dropout rates and where the impact of the economic crisis has been particularly severe on the young population, the development of vocational training is essential for the reduction of ELET and youth unemployment (Cedefop 2016, 2020; OECD 2019). Despite these recommendations, there is low participation in these programmes, especially in the case of women, and a growing concern about the high dropout rates in basic and intermediate VET because it is estimated that more than half of these students leave this training without the corresponding qualification (Cedefop 2016; Martínez-Morales and Marhuenda-Fluixà 2020; Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional 2019). Since the launch of basic VET in Spain, girls have been progressively less involved in these programmes. According to the data from the 2008– 2009 academic year (in programmes that preceded the basic VET but following the same objectives), 31 per cent of participants were girls, while the data for the last three school years (2014–2015, 2015–2016, 2016– 2017) indicate a reduction of two percentage points of girls participating in these programmes (Marhuenda-Fluixà, Salvà, Navas Saurín and Abiétar López 2015; Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional 2019). Another aspect to consider is the negative perceptions surrounding VET in Spain, as it is perceived to be an option for students who have failed at traditional educational pathways, which can lead to the early segregation of students. In this sense, Marhuenda-Fluixà, Salvà, Navas Saurín and Abiétar López (2015) defend the need for students in basic VET programmes to have more opportunities in the education system and not 104

POOR EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT, TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES AND TRANSITIONS

E

only the chance to follow an initial vocational pathway to stop the early occupational segregation of students. One of the continuing challenges facing contemporary gender studies is the invisibility of inequalities in formal egalitarian societies in which patriarchal values are espoused in a context of apparent equality as a consequence of both segregation and the differential socialization of men and women. Iannelli and Smyth (2008) and Sikora and Pokropek (2011) conclude that inequalities are already beginning to be repeated via the decisions made by young people in the education system (e.g. their choice of studies). Gender stereotypes are reinforced by a school system in which girls continue to study in fields traditionally considered feminine. This decision will have direct repercussions on the process of girls transitioning to adulthood. Thus, women tend to mostly be in economic sectors characterized by lower wages, less prestige and diminished career prospects (European Institute for Gender Equality 2018) and face unequal opportunities in access to the labour market and the increasing gender gap. In this sense, the European Commission (2013) and the World Economic Forum (WEF 2018) have warned of the persistence of occupational segregation in Spain as a result of the economic recession, which has affected wage equality and women’s economic participation. VET has been especially affected by gender-related self-selection processes due to its strong relationship with vocational identity (Imdorf, Hegna and Reisel 2015; Niemeyer and Colley 2015). The influence of gender is greater when pathways are differentiated at an early age (early tracking) than at a late age since adolescence is a period in which it is particularly difficult to transgress gender roles (Birr 2014; Charles, Buchmann, Halebsky, Powers and Smith 2001). It is also worth noting the medium- and long-term impacts of choices made at an early age, an issue that is not visible in information and career guidance campaigns and programmes (Lamamra, Fassa and Chaponnière 2014). It should be noted that in relation to basic VET, this choice is made at the age of 15. According to a study on gender segregation in intermediate VET in Spain, young women represented less than half of the students. A high degree of gender segregation was observed in more than three-quarters of young women in studies corresponding to feminized professions, 11 per cent in masculinized professions and 10 per cent in mixed professions. Although men were mainly represented in male-dominated professions, one-fifth studied female-dominated professions, and 6 per cent were enrolled in mixed professions. In addition, the training offered is focused 105

D

ELENA QUINTANA-MURCI, MARÍA TUGORES-QUES AND FRANCESCA SALVÀ-MUT

mainly on masculinized professions, while less than one-quarter is centred on feminized professions and less than one-fifth on mixed professions (Salvà-Mut, Cerdà-Navarro and Calvo-Sastre 2018). In this chapter, we focus our analysis on girls taking basic VET courses by taking an in-depth look at their sociodemographic profiles and academic background. The distribution of girls and boys in the different professional branches will be analysed as well as both gender segregation and the factors involved in choosing a study programme. Moreover, the academic results obtained three years after starting the training will be described, analysing the differences between girls and boys.

Methods and Sample The study was conducted using data obtained from questionnaires given to a representative sample of students in basic VET in Mallorca (Balearic Islands) who started their training in the 2015–2016 academic year. The study is longitudinal with data collected via in-class questionnaires or a telephone survey at three points in time: 2016, 2017 and 2018. The total population starting basic VET in Mallorca during the 2015– 2016 academic year was composed of 990 students. A representative sample was taken using stratified random sampling that considered gender, ten different professional branches, the type of centre (public or private), and location (main city or not). The original sample was composed of 354 students (111 women and 243 men) between the ages of 14 and 18 years old from 18 different education centres. This design gave a sample error of 4 per cent estimated at a confidence level of 95 per cent under the least favourable condition of p=q=0.5. However, in carrying out the longitudinal analysis during the three subsequent years, some observations were not reported. The final sample was composed of 238 students (72 girls and 166 boys). The questionnaire used was based on the Reschly and Christenson (2012) model of association among student context (family, parents, school, community), engagement and results, and on a review of different instruments for the measurement and operationalization of these factors. The final version of the questionnaire includes contributions from the Student Engagement Instrument (SEI), used in the Check & Connect project (Appleton 2012); the Potential Dropout Assessment Kit (Trousse d’évaluation des décrocheurs potentiels-TEDP) used in Quebec (Janosz, 106

POOR EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT, TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES AND TRANSITIONS

E

Archambault, Lacroix and Lévesque 2007); and a study on absenteeism in vocational secondary education in France (Lannegrand-Willems, Cosnefroy and Lecigne 2011). The questionnaire is made up of four large blocks of questions: a) socio-demographics;3 b) academic background;4 c) engagement (affective, cognitive, behavioural, and academic);5 and d) decision processes. The analysis of students’ decision processes was conducted using four specific questions related to the course they chose, which were based on the contributions of Callan (2005). The first two of these questions focus on the reasons for choosing the course: the first contains nine closed answer options6 and one open answer (other reasons), for each of which the degree of importance must be indicated; the second asks them to indicate which of these reasons was the main one. The next two questions focus on factors that influenced their decision-making: first, they were asked whether anyone had recommended taking the course, and if so, they had to answer a multiple-choice question about who had made that recommendation (guidance department, teachers, family or friends). Validity and reliability tests were performed by a panel of sixteen experts. Then, the questionnaire was administered to a pilot sample of 172 VET students. Based on the results obtained in this stage and on the application of Cronbach’s alpha, some of the initial questions were eliminated or rephrased. The questionnaire, its administration, and processes regarding the custody of the data obtained were approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of the Balearic Islands. The analysis of gender segregation in professional branches is based on the criterion adopted by the European Union for the study of horizontal occupational and sectorial segregation, which considers mixed professions as those in which there are between 40 per cent and 60 per cent men and women respectively; feminized professions are those in which there are over 60 per cent women; and masculinized professions are those in which there are over 60 per cent men (Burchell, Hardy, Rubery and Smith 2014).

Results The results are presented in three sections: one concerning sociodemographic characteristics and academic backgrounds, another covering the unequal distribution of girls and boys in basic VET, and, finally, one dis107

D

ELENA QUINTANA-MURCI, MARÍA TUGORES-QUES AND FRANCESCA SALVÀ-MUT

cussing the educational outcomes of students three years after starting their training. Sociodemographic Characteristics and Academic Backgrounds The age of girls in basic VET range from 14 to 18 years old, with an average age of 16. Exactly one-quarter of them are immigrants, and nearly one-quarter of them have an immigrant mother or father. As shown in Table 6.1, in more than half of the cases the father and/ or mother has a low level of education – mostly primary education – and very few students have a mother or father with a degree in higher education. In this sense, it is noteworthy that a considerable number of girls claim not to know the educational level of their parents, with this unawareness being higher for their fathers’ education than for their mother’s education. Related to economic and family situations, more than half of the girls claimed to have economic difficulties, and a very low proportion were employed. In addition, 3 per cent of the girls have children, a small percentage, but one that demonstrates the incidence of early motherhood in this group. The majority of girls attending basic VET courses did so in public education centres, and more than one-quarter went to privately owned schools (but which are supported by public funds). According to their academic backgrounds, the educational pathways of these girls are characterized by having repeated courses in primary education and compulsory secondary education. Thus, more than half of the girls repeated a grade in primary education and almost all in secondary education. At the same time, the rate of expulsion from an education centre is also high in the group, exceeding 50 per cent. Table 6.1. Level of education of girls’ parents.

Low level of education Medium level of education Tertiary studies Do not know Total

Mother Number Percentage 43 59.7 10 13.9 5 7.0 14 19.4 72 100

Father Number Percentage 8 52.8 5 7.0 5 7.0 24 33.3 72 100

Source: ‘Successful pathways and dropout in VET levels I and II’ project (ref. EDU201342854-R).

108

POOR EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT, TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES AND TRANSITIONS

E

If we compare girls’ situations with that of their male classmates, the chi-square analysis suggests that there are significant differences between girls and boys with respect to the type of education centre in which they take basic VET courses and with respect to the expulsion rate in either primary or secondary compulsory studies. Girls were more likely to attend a privately owned centre and had higher expulsion rates. Unequal Distribution of Girls and Boys in Basic VET In this section, we analyse horizontal segregation via participation in basic VET professional branches. In turn, we discuss the main reasons behind choosing a particular study programme and the factors that influence this process of decision-making. According to the literature, a course of study can be considered masculinized or feminized if girls or boys make up more than 60 per cent of the group. In this analysis, we also take into account whether those differences are statistically significant. Additionally, to analyse this question, the chi-square statistic of the contingency tables was analysed, and a Z-test was performed to compare proportions. Table 6.2 illustrates the inequal distribution of girls and boys in different professional branches. The analysis of the horizontal segregation demonstrates a high degree of segregation and a concentration of girls in a smaller number of professional branches than boys. In this way, almost all girls are concentrated into four professional branches: personal image (cosmetics and aesthetics), administration and management, hotel industry and tourism, and business and marketing. In the rest of the training options, girls either were a minority or did not participate at all. Boys, on the other hand, are enrolled in a greater variety of professional branches, with computing and communication being the most dominant, followed by transportation and vehicle maintenance, electricity and electronics, and mechanics and manufacturing. However, at least some boys are enrolled in all the other professional branches. In terms of gender-based differences, the chi-square statistic for Table 6.2 suggests significant differences between girls and boys with regard to the professional branches pursued (chi 104.67; gl=9; Sig=.000). As a result, the majority of the training offered is masculinized, with six masculinized programmes, two feminized ones and two mixed ones. The most feminized programmes are personal image – in which almost all participants are girls – and administration and management. In this 109

D

ELENA QUINTANA-MURCI, MARÍA TUGORES-QUES AND FRANCESCA SALVÀ-MUT

Table 6.2. Participation in professional branches by gender. Girls

Boys

Total

Percentage Percentage in proPercentage in proPercentage fessional in women fessional in men Freq. branch sample Freq. branch sample Freq.

Administration and Management Agriculture Business and Marketing Electricity and Electronics Mechanics and Manufacturing Hotel Industry and Tourism Computing and Communication Personal Image Wood, Furniture, and Cork Transportation and Vehicle Maintenance Total

19

65.5

26.4

10

34.5

6.0

29

4 12

30.8 50.0

5.6 16.7

9 12

69.2 50.0

5.4 7.2

13 24

0

0.0

0.0

24

100.0

14.5

24

1

4.3

1.4

22

95.7

13.3

23

14

48.3

19.4

15

51.7

9.0

29

3

6.5

4.2

43

93.5

25.9

46

19 0

90.5 0.0

26.4 0.0

2 4

9.5 100.0

1.2 2.4

21 4

0

0.0

0.0

25

100.0

15.1

25

100

166

100

238

72

Source: ‘Successful pathways and dropout in VET levels I and II’ project (ref. EDU201342854-R).

sense, more than half of girls are enrolled in one of these two feminized branches. In turn, more than one-quarter of girls are enrolled in mixed branches (i.e. business and marketing, and hotel industry and tourism) and a very low percentage in male-dominated specialties (mechanics and manufacturing, computing and communication). Of note, no girls participated in the two programmes most frequently chosen by boys (transportation and vehicle maintenance, and electricity and electronics). 110

POOR EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT, TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES AND TRANSITIONS

E

At this point, it is interesting to compare the data from the Balearic Islands with those from the Spanish state as a whole. First, it is necessary to highlight the scarce training offered in basic VET; thus, of the twentysix professional branches available in the Spanish vocational training system (including the entire vocational training offer: basic, intermediate and higher VET), only eighteen are offered for basic VET in Spain as a whole and ten in the Balearic Islands, and this training is mainly focused on traditional masculinized careers. Table 6.3. Basic VET professional branches offered in Spain and the Balearic Islands (%). Spain 2015–2016 Girls Boys Total Basic Vocational Training 28.9 71.1 Agriculture 20.1 79.7 Maritime Industry and Fisheries 0.0 100.0 Food Industry 39.6 60.4 Personal Image 86.3 13.7 Mechanics and Manufacturing 3.0 97.0 Installation and Maintenance 1.5 98.5 Electricity and Electronics 3.9 96.1 Transportation and Vehicle Maintenance 1.6 98.4 Construction and Civil Work 12.7 87.3 Glass and Ceramics 29.0 71.0 Wood, Furniture, and Cork 8.5 91.5 Textiles, Manufacturing, Leather and Fur 54.9 45.1 Graphic Arts 42.4 57.6 Computing and Communication 18.3 81.7 Administration and Management 49.2 50.8 Business and Marketing 52.7 47.3 Sociocultural and Community Services 80.6 19.4 Hotel Industry and Tourism 37.4 62.6 Total 2.145 3.595

Balearic Islands Girls Boys 30.3 69.7 30.8 69.2 no offer no offer no offer no offer 90.5 9.5 4.3 95.7 no offer no offer 0.0 100.0 0.0 100.0 no offer no offer no offer no offer 0.0 100.0 no offer no offer no offer no offer 6.5 93.5 65.5 34.5 50.0 50.0 no offer no offer 48.3 51.7 72 166

Source: Own creation based on data from Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional (2019) and ‘Successful pathways and dropout in VET levels I and II’ project (ref. EDU2013-42854-R).

111

D

ELENA QUINTANA-MURCI, MARÍA TUGORES-QUES AND FRANCESCA SALVÀ-MUT

As illustrated in Table 6.3, all the masculinized branches in the Balearic Islands are also masculinized at the country level, but we find differences in the feminized and mixed branches. On the one hand, the hotel industry and tourism branch appears to be masculinized in Spain but mixed in the Balearic Islands. On the other hand, administration and management goes from mixed in Spain to feminized in the Balearic Islands. These data can be explained by the large number of jobs offered in the Balearic Islands related to services and touristic economic sectors, as it is an economy based primarily on tourism. The comparison of segregation by professional branches reflects a higher share of feminized branches, a similar share of masculinized branches and a lower share of mixed branches in the Balearic Islands compared to those in the country-wide data. Once the distribution of students in the different training options is analysed, it is necessary to discuss the main reasons involved in the process of choosing studies. Specifically, this matter was analysed with a specific question containing nine items, which were to be answered according to the degree of importance attached.7 To facilitate the analysis of the main reasons involved in choosing studies, the variables were treated as metrics and means (up to 3), and the differences between them were calculated using the T-test for independent samples, as shown in Table 6.4. Table 6.4. Main reasons for choosing studies by gender. Girls

Boys

Because I like it

2.152

2.168

Because I couldn’t get into any other

1.180

1.343

Because there are job offers related to it

1.472

1.921

To improve my working conditions

1.888

2.469

Because some friends are doing it

0.861

1.379

Because the guidance counsellor recommended it to me

1.986

1.602

Because my family wanted me to

0.986

1.566

Because I was required to by my company

0.430

1.066

Because I couldn’t find a job

0.986

1.246

Source: ‘Successful pathways and dropout in VET levels I and II’ project (ref. EDU201342854-R).

112

POOR EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT, TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES AND TRANSITIONS

E

As far as gender-based differences are concerned, and according to the T-group mean comparison test, girls place significantly less importance than boys on the following items: ‘Because there are job offers related to it’, ‘To improve my working conditions’, ‘Because some friends are doing it’, ‘Because my family wanted me to’ and ‘Because I was required to by my company’. Table 6.5. Girls’ main reasons for choosing studies by the type of studies.

Because I like it Because I couldn’t get into any other Because there are job offers related to it To improve my working conditions Because some friends are doing it Because the guidance counsellor recommended it to me Because my family wanted me to Because I was required to by my company Because I couldn’t find a job Total

Feminized FrePerquency centage 30 79.0 11 29.0

Mixed FrePerquency centage 24 92.3 3 11.5

Masculinized FrePerquency centage 0 0.0 5 62.5

18

47.4

20

76.9

1

12.5

26

68.4

22

84.6

4

50.0

10

26.3

7

26.9

0

0.0

27

71.1

16

61.5

7

87.5

12

31.6

5

19.2

3

37.5

5

13.2

2

7.7

0

0.0

6

15.8

0

0.0

0

0.0

38

100.00

26

100.00

8

100.00

Source: ‘Successful pathways and dropout in VET levels I and II’ project (ref. EDU201342854-R).

113

D

ELENA QUINTANA-MURCI, MARÍA TUGORES-QUES AND FRANCESCA SALVÀ-MUT

At this point, it is interesting to focus the analysis only on girls and to explore how reasons for choosing studies vary depending on the type of course: masculinized, feminized or mixed. To analyse this question, a Z-test was performed to compare the proportion (significant differences in bold) of feminized courses with respect to the other two groups, as shown in Table 6.5. In the case of girls, those enrolled in a feminized study programme indicated the following reasons to a greater extent than girls in masculinized studies: ‘Because I like it’, ‘Because some friends are doing it’, ‘Because I was required to by my company’, and ‘Because I couldn’t find a job’. Moreover, girls enrolled in feminized studies indicated the reason ‘Because there are job offers related to it’ less than girls enrolled in mixed studies. Overall, it seems that girls who opt for feminized studies are less motivated by economic or job-related reasons, prioritizing expressive reasons instead (a personal interest in the chosen studies). Educational Outcomes Three Years Later To develop this section, we analysed three possible situations after three years of starting basic VET: those students who successfully completed training, those who were still in training due to the repetition of a year course and those who dropped out. In this case, the main reasons given for dropping out were also explored. As shown in Table 6.6, gender-based differences were found in the situation of students three years later. Although the dropout rates are very Table 6.6. Situation after three years by gender. Girls

Completion of studies Drop out Continue studying Total

Boys

Total

Frequency 31

Percentage 43.1

Frequency 59

Percentage 35.5

Frequency 90

Percentage 37.8

36 5

50.0 6.9

94 13

56.6 7.8

130 18

54.6 7.6

72

100.0

166

100.0

238

100.0

Source: ‘Successful pathways and dropout in VET levels I and II’ project (ref. EDU201342854-R).

114

POOR EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT, TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES AND TRANSITIONS

E

high for the total sample, the proportion is slightly higher in the case of boys. In contrast, girls have higher graduation rates, and a similar percentage of girls and boys are still in training. Dropout rates are also influenced by cultural origins and the characteristics of the education centre, with these influences being higher in the case of girls. Thus, girls presented higher dropout rates if they were immigrants or if they attended a public education centre. In the case of boys, these differences existed but were slightly lower. Regarding the reasons argued for dropping out, as illustrated in Table 6.7, girls gave more importance to family reasons (health-related or financial), personal reasons, learning difficulties and their dislike of the course. Boys, on the other hand, argued that the most important reasons for dropping out were the fact that the course was difficult, family reasons (healthrelated or financial), their dislike of the course and that they preferred to do something else. To analyse whether these differences were significant, a Z-test comparing proportions was performed. The results suggest that girls give greater importance to issues related to the non-school environment, as opposed to male dropouts, which is justified in greater measure for academic reasons. In this sense, we found that the reason ‘This course is too difficult’ was given significantly less by girls than boys.

Table 6.7. Reasons given for dropping out by gender (%). Girls

Boys

Personal reasons

81.3

62.5

Difficulties with classmates

75.0

90.6

Difficulties with teachers and trainers

75.0

84.4

Learning difficulties

81.3

68.8

I do not like these studies

81.3

75.0

This course is too difficult

75.0

96.9

Family reasons (health or financial)

87.5

90.6

I prefer to do other things

68.8

84.4

Source: ‘Successful pathways and dropout in VET levels I and II’ project (ref. EDU201342854-R).

115

D

ELENA QUINTANA-MURCI, MARÍA TUGORES-QUES AND FRANCESCA SALVÀ-MUT

Conclusions In this chapter, we used longitudinal research and a gender perspective to analyse the participation of girls in basic VET. The relevance of the topic derives from the confluence of several factors, among which we highlight the following: (a) the high rate of ELET in Spain which, in girls, is 4 per cent above the European rate (in the Balearic Islands the difference is greater, at 13 points above that in the EU) (Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional 2019); (b) that ELET has a more negative impact on the lives of girls than boys (Iannelli and Smyth 2008; Iannelli and Duta 2018; Salvà-Mut, Thomàs-Vanrell and Quintana-Murci 2015; Struffolino and Borgna 2020); (c) the fact that basic VET tends to be the educational route taken by students who do not obtain their certificate in compulsory secondary education, and one of its objectives is to prevent ELET; and (d) the high level of gender segregation in vocational training (Imdorf, Hegna and Reisel 2015; Niemeyer and Colley 2015; Salvà-Mut, Cerdà-Navarro and Calvo-Sastre 2018). Despite the high rate of ELET among girls and its particularly negative impact on the course of their lives, the participation of girls in programmes aimed at students with a low level of education has always been low, even more so in the case of basic VET, as they represent only just under one third of the students in this kind of programme. The sociodemographic characteristics of girls in basic VET show a higher prevalence of immigrant students in relation to compulsory secondary education courses as a whole (Salvà-Mut, Sureda-Negre, CalvoSastre and Oliver-Trobat 2019), and their family environments are characterized by low levels of parental education (i.e. in general, they have completed primary studies). The academic backgrounds of girls in basic VET reflect educational pathways characterized by the repetition of courses and expulsions in primary and secondary schooling, though this is characteristic of the profiles of all students participating in this kind of training. If we compare girls with their male classmates, expulsions are significantly higher among the females. Attending privately owned education centres is significantly more popular among girls, which could be related to the high gender segregation and the lower cost of infrastructure and materials related to education in feminized studies compared to those that are masculinized.

116

POOR EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT, TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES AND TRANSITIONS

E

The process of choosing basic VET courses is undertaken at an evolutionary stage when it is particularly difficult to transgress gender roles (Birr 2014; Charles, Buchmann, Halebsky, Powers and Smith 2001) and is characterized by a lack of unbiased academic guidance (Lamamra, Fassa and Chaponnière 2014). This influence is clearly reflected in the strong gender segregation observed in basic VET. First, the VET training offered is mainly masculinized, and second, girls are enrolled in a smaller number of professional branches and, in general, in traditionally feminized ones (more than half of girls). It is also worth noting the low level of participation of girls in masculinized courses and the low level of participation of boys in feminized courses, a significant aspect that can lead to future division of work along gender lines. In terms of the reasons given for choosing courses, we also found gender-based differences. Girls place significantly less importance than boys on items related to the labour market, as seen in the items ‘Because there are job offers related to it’, ‘To improve my working conditions’, ‘Because some friends are doing it’, ‘Because my family wanted me to’, and ‘Because I was required to by my company’. All things considered, it seems that girls have less interest in economic factors, especially those girls enrolled in feminized studies. Regarding the situation three years after beginning the training, the high dropout rate stands out, affecting half of the girls in basic VET. The dropout rates are higher in public education centres and among immigrants. The reasons for dropping out are primarily related to family issues. Other significant motives are personal reasons, learning difficulties, dislike of studies, relationship difficulties (with classmates and/or teachers and trainers), finding the studies too difficult, and preferring to do other things. Girls place greater importance on issues in the non-school environment, as opposed to males, who more often justify dropping out for academic causes. These results suggest that 1) greater investment in basic VET is needed; 2) more specialties should be promoted, considering a gender perspective; and 3) the negative perceptions, which persist in Spain, of VET as an educational pathway for low achievers must be eliminated. Now, it is important that we adapt our education system to students’ diversity to promote a comprehensive system and an effective response to individual needs to avoid the persistence of pathways leading to failure and high rates of early leaving from education and training.

117

D

ELENA QUINTANA-MURCI, MARÍA TUGORES-QUES AND FRANCESCA SALVÀ-MUT

Finally, we urgently need to adhere to existing European and Spanish laws on equality between women and men to offer early and effective educational guidance and counselling free of gender stereotypes and prejudices to prevent gender segregation and subsequent consequences in the processes of female labour market insertion and transitions to adulthood.

Elena Quintana-Murci has a PhD in inclusive education and is assistant professor in the Department of Applied Pedagogy and Educational Psychology at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). Her research focuses on transitions to adulthood, early school leaving, and gender. She has published in international journals and participates in national and international research projects based on early school leaving, vocational training, gender, and youth transitions and pathways. María Tugores-Ques has a PhD in economics and associate professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). Her research focuses on issues related to education and the labour market, industrial economics and tourism economics. She has published in several international journals and she has participated in different competitive research projects based on education, early school leaving, vocational training and gender. Francesca Salvà-Mut has a PhD in educational sciences and is associate professor in the Department of Applied Pedagogy and Educational Psychology at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). She has been a visiting researcher at several international centres. Her main line of research is the educational and work transitions of early school leavers. She has published in several international journals and has directed and participated in international and national research projects on early school leaving, second chance education, vocational education and training, training and work pathways, and gender.

Notes 1. This chapter is part of the ‘Success and dropout pathways in vocational training educational system levels 1 and 2’ (with reference EDU2013-42854-R) research and development project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, the Spanish National Research Agency (AEI), and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). All information about the project is available at: http:// www.itinerariosfp.org/es/index.html. 2. Early school leavers or early leavers from education and training (ELET) are defined as the percentage of people aged 18 to 24 who meet two conditions: (a) the highest 118

POOR EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT, TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES AND TRANSITIONS

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

E

level of education or training they have attained is ISCED 0, 1, or 2; (b) they did not receive any education and training in the four weeks prior to the survey (EU Labour Force Survey). https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title= Glossary:Early_leaver_from_education_and_training (EUROSTAT 2020). Gender, age, place of birth, year of arrival in Mallorca (in case of immigrants), whether they live with their parents or independently, whether they have children, their employment situation, their weekly working hours, and whether their job is related to their training, level of education, employment situation, and parents’ birthplace. Level of education, admission pathway to VET, whether they have ever repeated a school year, whether they have ever been expelled from their centre, and their situation during the previous school year (whether they worked, whether they studied, and what they studied). These questions were answered on a Likert scale according to the degree of agreement or disagreement: P1. Relationship with teachers and centre (9 items); P2. Relationship with classmates (5 items); P3. Relationship with studies (5 items); P4. Extracurricular activities (2 items); P5. Behaviour in class (4 items); P6. Relationship with their family (13 items); P7. School activities (10 items); and P8. Professional expectations (6 items). The answer options are: a) ‘Because I like it’; b) ‘Because I couldn’t get into any other’; c) ‘Because there are job offers related to it’; d) ‘To improve my working conditions’; e) ‘Because some friends are doing it’; f ) ‘Because the guidance counsellor recommended it to me’; g) ‘Because my family wanted me to’; h) ‘Because I was required to by my company’; and i) ‘Because I couldn’t find a job’. 0) ‘It was not at all important’; 1) ‘It wasn’t important’; 2) ‘It was important’; and 3) ‘It was very important’.

References Acosta-Ballesteros, Juan, María del Pilar Osorno-Del Rosal and Olga María Rodríguez-Rodríguez. 2017. ‘Gender Differences in the Quality of the Schoolto-Work Transitions in Spain’, Applied Economics 49(57): 5780–91. Appleton, James J. 2012. ‘Systems Consultation: Developing the Assessmentto-Intervention Link with the Student Engagement Instrument’, in Sandra L. Christentson, Amy L. Reschly and Cathy Wylie (eds), Handbook of Research on Student Engagement. New York: Springer, pp. 725–42. Birr, Lorraine. 2014. ‘Le choix de la formation: une affaire de sexe?’ [The Choice of Training: a Gender Matter?], Nouvelles Questions Féministes 33(1): 64–79. Burchell, Brendan, Vincent Hardy, Jill Rubery and Mark Smith. 2014. A New Method to Understand Occupational Gender Segregation in European Labour Markets. Luxembourg: Publication Office of the European Union. Retrieved 20 June 2018 from http://ec.europa.eu/justice/gender-equality/files/ documents/150119_segregation_report_web_en.pdf. 119

D

ELENA QUINTANA-MURCI, MARÍA TUGORES-QUES AND FRANCESCA SALVÀ-MUT

Callan, Victor. 2005. Why Do Students Leave? Leaving Vocational Education and Training with No Recorded Achievement. Adelaide, Australia: National Vocational Training Authority. Cedefop. 2016. Leaving Education Early: Putting Vocational Education and Training Centre Stage. Volume I: Investigating Causes and Extent. Luxembourg: Publications Office. Cedefop research paper, No57. Retrieved 10 February 2018 from https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/publications-and-resources/publica tions/5557. Cedefop. 2020. On the Way to 2020: Data for Vocational Education and Training Policies. Indicator Overviews: 2019 Update. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Cedefop research paper, No 76. Retrieved 15 March 2020 from http://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2801/62708. Charles, Maria, Marlis Buchmann, Susan Halebsky, Jeanne M. Powers and Marisa M. Smith. 2001. ‘The Context of Women’s Market Careers: A Cross-National Study’, Work and occupation 28(3): 371–96. Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. 2008. ‘Modelos de sociedad, economía y políticas públicas: un nuevo contrato de género’ [Society Models, Economy and Public Policies: A New Gender Contract], in María Pazos (ed.), Economía e Igualdad de Género: Retos en la Hacienda Pública en el siglo XXI [Economy and Gender Equality: Challenges for the Public Finance in the 21st Century]. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, Ministerio de Hacienda, pp. 31–43. European Commission. 2013. The Impact of the Economic Crisis on the Situation of Women and Men and on Gender Equality Policies. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. European Institute for Gender Equality. 2018. Study and Work in EU: Set Apart by Gender. Luxembourg: Publication Office of the European Union. EUROSTAT. 2019a. Database. Education and Training Statistics at a Regional Level. [online] Retrieved 16 July 2019 from http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/ data/database. EUROSTAT. 2019b. Database. Youth Unemployment. [online] Retrieved 16 July 2019 from http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database. EUROSTAT. 2020. Statistics Explained. [online]. Retrieved 16 January 2020 from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Gloss ary:Early_leaver_from_education_and_training. Iannelli, Cristina and Adriana Duta. 2018. ‘Inequalities in School Leavers’ Labour Market Outcomes: Do School Subject Choices Matter?’, Oxford Review of Education 44(1): 56–74. Iannelli, Cristina and Emer Smyth. 2008. ‘Mapping Gender and Social Background Differences in Education and Youth Transitions across Europe’, Journal of Youth Studies 11(2): 213–32. Imdorf, Christian, Kristinn Hegna and Liza Reisel (eds). 2015. Gender Segregation in Vocational Education. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 120

POOR EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT, TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES AND TRANSITIONS

E

Janosz, Michel, Isabelle Archambault, Martine Lacroix and Jonathan Lévesque. 2007. Trousse d’évaluation des décrocheurs potentiels (TEDP): Manuel d’utilisation [Potential Dropout Assessment Package (PDAP): User Manual]. Montréal: Groupe de recherche sur les environnements scolaires. Université de Montréal. Lamamra, Nadia, Farinaz Fassa and Martine Chaponnière. 2014. ‘Formation professionnelle: l’apprentissage des normes de genre’ [Vocational Education and Training: The Learning of Gender], Nouvelles Questions Féministes 33(1): 8–14. Lannegrand-Willems, Lyda, Olivier Cosnefroy and André Lecigne. 2011. ‘Prediction of Various Degrees of Vocational Secondary School Absenteeism: Importance of the Organization of the Educational System’, School Psychology International [e-journal] 33(3): 294–307. Marhuenda-Fluixà, Fernando, Francesca Salvà, Almudena Navas Saurín and Miriam Abiétar López. 2015. ‘Twenty Years of Basic Vocational Education Provision in Spain: Changes and Trends’, International Journal for Research in Vocational Education and Training (IRJVET) 2(2): 137–51. Martínez-Morales, Ignacio and Fernando Marhuenda-Fluixà. 2020. ‘Vocational Education and Training in Spain: Steady Improvement and Increasing Value’, Journal of Vocational Education and Training 72(2): 209–27. Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional. 2019. Sistema estatal de indicadores de la educación 2019 [State System of Education Indicators 2019]. [online] Retrieved 15 January 2020 from http://www.educacionyfp.gob .es/servicios-al-ciudadano/estadisticas/no-universitaria/alumnado/formaci on-profesional.html. Moreno Colom, Sara. 2007. ‘Un análisis de las transiciones juveniles desde la perspectiva de género’ [An Analysis of Youth Transitions From a Gender Perspective], in Pau Miret, Antoni Salvadó and Roger Soler i Martí (eds), Enquesta de la Joventut de Catalunya [Catalan Youth Survey]. Col·lecció Estudis, 24. Barcelona: Secretaria de la Joventut, pp. 187–218. Niemeyer, Beatrix and Hellen Colley. 2015. ‘Why Do We Need (Another) Special Issue on Gender and VET?’, Journal of Vocational Education and Training 67(1): 1–10. OECD. 2019. Education at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators. Paris: OECD Publishing. Quintana-Murci, Elena, Francesca Salvà-Mut and María Tugores-Ques. 2019. ‘Making Spanish Young Women’s Transition to Adulthood Visible: A Biographical Analysis in Times of Crisis’, International Journal of Adolescence and Youth 25(1): 329–42. Reschly, Amy L. and Sandra L. Christenson. 2012. ‘Jingle, Jangle, and Conceptual Haziness: Evolution and Future Directions of the Engagement Construct’, in Sandra L. Christentson, Amy L. Reschly and Cathy Wylie (eds), Handbook of Research on Student Engagement. New York: Springer, pp. 3–20. 121

D

ELENA QUINTANA-MURCI, MARÍA TUGORES-QUES AND FRANCESCA SALVÀ-MUT

Salvà, Francesca, Antoni Cerdà-Navarro and Ana María Calvo-Sastre. 2018. ‘Educational Pathways and Gender Segregation: The Case of Upper Secondary VET’, in L. Moreno, M. Teräs and P. Gougoulakis (eds), Emergent Issues in Vocational Education and Training. Sweden: Premissförlag, pp. 257–83. Salvà-Mut, Francesca, Jaume Sureda-Negre, Ana María Calvo-Sastre and Miquel Oliver-Trobat. 2019. ‘Educació i Formació’ [Education and Training], in CES-UIB. 2030. Estudi sobre la prospectiva económica, social i mediambiental de les societats de les Illes Balears a l’horitzó 2030 (H2030) [Study on Economic, Social and Environmental Prospective in the Balearic Islands Societies at Horizon 2030 (H2030)]. Balearic Islands: Consell Econòmic i Social de les Illes Balears, pp. 253–372. Salvà-Mut, Francesca, Caterina Thomàs-Vanrell and Elena Quintana-Murci. 2015. ‘School-to-Work Transitions in Times of Crisis: The Case of Spanish Youth Without Qualifications’, Journal of Youth Studies 19(5): 593–611. Sikora, Joanna and Artur Pokropek. 2011. Gendered Career Expectations of Students: Perspectives from PISA 2006. OCDE Education Working Papers, 57. Paris: OCDE Publishing. Struffolino, Emanuela and Camila Borgna. 2020. ‘Who is Really “Left-Behind”? Half a Century of Gender Differences in the School to Work Transitions of Low Educated Youth’, Journal of Youth Studies, published online. https://www .tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13676261.2020.1713308 United Nations. 2015. Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (A/RES/70/1). [online] Retrieved 10 June 2019 from sustainabledevelopment.un.org. World Economic Forum (WEF). 2018. The Global Gender Gap Report 2018. Geneva: WEF.

122

D CHAPTER 7

Transitions of Young Women from Education to Employment in Croatia Social Reproduction at Work Dunja Potocˇnik

Challenges of Transitions in Unstable Socio-Economic Conditions Young women are experiencing many challenges that accompany their way to adulthood and the process of taking on permanent social roles, which is primarily influenced by socially conditioned circumstances. These circumstances often determine the pace and quality of joining the world of adults; individual life choices take place within the framework of an existing social structure and socioeconomic as well as sociocultural defaults, which determine the opportunities and resources available to young people (Jarvis 2009; Ilišin and Spajić Vrkaš 2017). In the past few decades, the youth in Europe have been drifting, at an increasing rate, from the transition that had previously often been considered as ‘standard’ – a linear transition from school to work and family formation (Stone et al. 2014; see also Furlong and Cartmel 2007; Mills and Blossfeld 2005). This linear type of transition is being replaced by de-standardized and prolonged Notes for this section can be found on page 142.

D

DUNJA POTOCˇNIK

transitions that are increasingly becoming diversified (Alves and Korhonen 2016; Walther and Pohl 2005). Young women’s transitions from education to work are marked with intersections and disjunctions, which makes it untenable to use the traditional meaning of the transitions (Wyn et al. 2017). This framework is in line with the results to be presented in this chapter as the young women, despite their improved educational attainment, still face more difficulties in the labour market than young men do (Kupfer 2014). The most important transitions experienced by young women – from education to work, into partnership and residential independence, and to parenthood – are becoming ‘late, protracted and complex’ (Billari and Liefbroer 2010: 60). This is especially evident in the South Mediterranean and East European countries, where people often stay with their parents beyond the age of thirty. Young people in Croatia are severely struck by ‘de-standardization’ of life trajectories due to the economic crisis that has persisted for more than a decade, which is accompanied by sociopolitical instability. The burden of transitions is additionally weighted by economic uncertainty that affects the process of becoming an adult (Furlong and Cartmel 2007; Mills and Blossfeld 2005). Recent findings of youth research in Croatia (Gvozdanović et al. 2019; Ilišin et al. 2013; Ilišin and Spajić Vrkaš 2017) indicate an overall decline in the social position of young people in comparison to the position of generations that were growing up after the War of Independence. Social diversification experienced by youth in the last decade has led to a very sharp social stratification with an almost vanished middle social stratum and a very narrow stratum of the new elite (Sekulić and Šporer 2000). The consequences are an unequal approach to education and unequal chances in the labour market, with a prolonged situation of social instability. This situation increases the risk of youth becoming not a social resource and a link in a successfully functioning system of intergenerational solidarity,1 but rather a social problem, with long-term and serious effects on the development and growth of Croatian society and economy (Potočnik 2012). The youth status was shown to be especially vulnerable in this respect: ‘after the 2008 recession put an additional strain on the management of most citizens’ family resources, cutting back on basic life expenses went against female labour, which can contribute to or save family resources in various ways during such times of crises’ (Gvozdanović et al. 2019: 13). Due to scarce family resources and sometimes limited opportunities for advancement in education and finding a stable job, young 124

TRANSITIONS OF YOUNG WOMEN FROM EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT IN CROATIA

E

women’s vulnerability extends into their adult life when they face difficulties in reconciling work and family life. This is especially the case in countries where there is a lack of supporting structures for young women, such as state subsidies for raising children and taking care of the elderly members of the family.2 As if it wasn’t hard enough for a young woman to accomplish selfactualization and reach a desired social position in Croatia, recently the public space has repeatedly been contaminated by attacks on civil rights, especially on the family and reproductive rights, and the rights of women to actively express their attitudes and aspirations that are not in line with the conservative social and political agenda. ‘In line with the value- and ideology-related turmoil in Croatian society, a value polarisation has been identified between traditional and modernist orientations among youth’ (Gvozdanović et al. 2019: 3). This should be kept in mind when analysing the status, aspirations and prospects of young women in Croatia, as some authors consider that the attitudes structure of young people in Croatia may be more inclined to egalitarian gender roles (Bovan and Širinić 2016; Galić 2011; Kamenov 2011), while their everyday behaviour is heavily determined by gender discrimination (Kamenov, Huić and Jugović 2011). Value orientations are strongly influenced by the social background of young people, namely by their residence, gender, level of education and the educational degree of their parents. Notably, young men of lower social background and coming from rural areas are more prone to having traditional value orientations (Gvozdanović et al. 2019). Social scientists have recognized that education might be a helpful tool in fostering socialization that will make young people more inclined towards embracing open-minded ways of reasoning (Hyman and Wright 1979; Inglehart 1997). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report from 2018 suggests that the readiness of women for self-actualization, autonomy and building better career prospects increases with the accomplishment of higher education degrees. Moreover, embracing further education is frequently accompanied by a less frequent acceptance of the patriarchal social norms by the higher educated women. The beneficial influence of a better educational structure for the Croatian population on the social status of young women also arises from the fact that starting from the 1980s, young women have shown a tendency to have slightly better educational outcomes than young men.3 Taking this into account, the aim of this chapter is: 1) a comparison of the social status and aspirations of young women and men, and 2) an anal125

D

DUNJA POTOCˇNIK

ysis of variations in young women’s social status, educational aspirations and confidence in finding a job with regard to their sociodemographic characteristics.

Methodological Considerations The results that are to be presented are part of the international project coordinated by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) Youth in East Europe Studies, and this chapter will be dedicated to the nationally representative survey conducted in Croatia in 2018 (N=1,500, age 14–29). The chapter will present the results based on the subsample of the youth aged 20–29 (N=977). The analyses that will be presented focus only on the youth aged 20–29, in order to ensure, as much as possible, the completion of preuniversity education.4 The subsample of young women comprised 499 of the respondents, while the young men comprised 478 of the respondents. The survey sample was nationally representative and included all twenty-one Croatian counties.5 In order to ensure data clarity for a wider international public, this chapter will not deal with specifics of regional division. Instead, I employed division by residence, separating Zagreb (as the capital and the largest regional centre), large towns, small towns and villages.6 The data analysis includes descriptive and univariate (chi-square) analyses of some factors of the young women’s transitions to their adulthood with regard to obtaining an educational degree and finding a job. The data for young men will be presented only on a descriptive level, showing the main differences between young women and young men in some educational and employment indicators. These will demonstrate that young women in Croatia on average possess higher educational credentials than their male peers, which does not guarantee a better labour market position for the young women. Analyses on the subsample of young women will display variations among young women of different social status, thus adding to the previously noted trend of social reproduction in Croatia (Doolan et al. 2018; Potočnik 2014). Interpretation only took into account differences of statistical significance at the level of probability equal to or less than 0.05 (p ≤ 0.05). There are two main hypotheses: 1) young women are a heterogeneous social group in terms of their social status, aspirations and professional trajectories; 2) the major determinants shaping young women’s social status and prospects for professional accomplishment lie in their social background. 126

TRANSITIONS OF YOUNG WOMEN FROM EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT IN CROATIA

E

In line with these two hypotheses, the chapter seeks the answer to four questions: 1) what is the educational structure of the youth and their parents and accompanying intergenerational social mobility; 2) do the young women’s age, residence and parental educational degree present statistically significant predictors of the young women’s educational aspirations; 3) what is the relationship between the young women’s employment status and their age, educational degree, residence and parental educational degree; and 4) do the young women’s age, residence and parental educational degree present statistically significant predictors of young women’s confidence in successful employment.

Social Status and Educational Aspirations of the Young Women in Croatia In Croatia, partly in response to a heightened need for qualifications to compete in the job market in the economic recession period, and partly due to a trend of studying at higher education institutions as a means of social protection,7 enrolment in higher education has increased during the last two decades (Gvozdanović et al. 2019). A major increase in the probability of higher education enrolment success for children of highereducated parents, accompanied by a drastic decrease in the probability of higher education enrolment for children whose parents had lower levels of education, was registered by social scientists (Gvozdanović et al. 2019). These findings are supported by the similar results of the Eurostudent IV (Farnell 2011) and Eurostudent V surveys (Šćukanec and Sinković 2016). The Eurostudent surveys indicate a significant correlation between higher education levels of parents and higher educational aspirations of their offspring. Equally important, children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds more frequently complete upper-secondary general schools, whereas children of parents with upper-secondary vocational school or only primary education also fit into a pattern of social reproduction. FES Youth Study results from the Croatian sample show the families’ educational structure of the youth aged 20–29 (Figure 7.1). It is noticeable that there are more highly educated young women than young men, whereas fathers generally have a higher educational degree than mothers do. Mothers of young women are slightly better educated than their fathers, while young men’s fathers are better educated than their mothers are. These results are in line with the previously registered trends 127

Figure 7.1. Educational attainment of young women and men and their parents (%). © Dunja Potočnik.

D

128 DUNJA POTOCˇNIK

TRANSITIONS OF YOUNG WOMEN FROM EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT IN CROATIA

E

in the educational structure of the youth and their parents (Gvozdanović et al. 2019; Ilišin et al. 2013; Potočnik 2011, 2014). The statistically significant predictors of the young women’s level of education were age (two cohorts between the age of 20 and 29) and the educational level of their parents (Table 7.1). Table 7.1. Educational attainment of young women by their sociodemographic characteristics (%). Educational attainment

Sociodemographic variables

Vocational or technical upper-secondary school

Age 20–24 25–29 Educational attainment – mother Primary school Vocational or technical uppersecondary school General uppersecondary school University degree – BA or higher Educational attainment – father Primary school Vocational or technical uppersecondary school General uppersecondary school University degree – BA or higher Total

7.7 15.8

General uppersecondary education

University degree – BA or similar

χ 2 = 41.62; df = 3; p =.000 77.2 16.6 44.6 16.2

University degree – higher than BA

5.5 23.5

χ 2 =84.53; df = 9; p = .000 35.3 26.5

47.1 50.8

2.9 12.9

14.7 9.8

4.9

66.3

16.1

12.7

1.6

49.2

24.6

24,6

χ 2 =59.85; df = 9; p =.000 38.7 18.8

48.4 56.4

9.7 13.3

3.2 11.5

7.4

64.4

16.0

12.3

3.1

48.1

23.3

25.6

11.9

56.8

16.4

14.9 129

D

DUNJA POTOCˇNIK

Regarding the age, there are two major findings: 1) educational attainment increases with age, and 2) the proportion of young women with vocational or technical upper-secondary school education decreases with age, which is in line with the data on reduced numbers of new enrolments in the upper-secondary vocational or technical schools.8 The educational attainment of young women is statistically significantly related to the parental educational attainment, showing disproportionate educational chances of women coming from different social backgrounds. The most striking difference – the one between paternal educational attainment and educational degree of the female respondents – registered only 3 per cent of young women with a higher than BA degree descending from fathers with only a primary education versus 26 per cent of young women with the highest degree whose fathers had a corresponding education. The analyses showed that young men’s educational attainment was also influenced by the sociodemographic variables presented in Table 1, so there is no significant difference between young women and young men in this regard. These findings are supported by the previous studies on social mobility in Croatia (Baranović 2015; Hodžić 2014; Matković 2011; Potočnik 2011, 2014). Potential for higher educational attainment is also indicated by educational aspirations (Figure 7.2), which in the case of Croatian youth aged 20–29 show that young women on average have higher educational aspirations than their male peers. The results on educational aspirations are only partially consistent with previously noted trends in the educational structure of Croatian

Figure 7.2. Educational aspirations of young women and men – age 20–29 (%). © Dunja Potočnik. 130

TRANSITIONS OF YOUNG WOMEN FROM EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT IN CROATIA

E

young population, meaning there is a significant discrepancy between the share of obtained degrees higher than BA (Master and PhD) and declared aspirations. Notably, 15 per cent of young women and 11 per cent of young men hold a degree higher than BA, while such aspirations were registered in 45 per cent of young women and 35 per cent of young men. Social reproduction, especially in times of economic uncertainties, has a tendency to negatively affect educational aspirations. Therefore, it is interesting to see how the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents influence their educational aspirations (Table 7.2). Based on the data presented in Table 7.2, it can be concluded that young women show a high level of heterogeneity with regard to the predictors of their educational aspirations. At the same time, it has to be noted that the educational aspirations of young men are influenced by the same predictors, and the nature of their relation is the same as in the case of their female peers. It is evident that the older cohort of young women show lower educational aspirations than the young women aged 20–24, which can be explained by the fact that part of the older cohort has already fulfilled their educational goals. However, we should not neglect the fact that a share of these young women has already faced hard life reality, coping with financial insecurity, the difficult transition from education to work, and hurdles in reconciling their work and family life. Young women from macro-regional centres and Zagreb showed greater aspirations in striving towards a university education in comparison to the respondents from a rural setting. In addition, young women whose mothers and fathers had an upper-secondary general or university degree had significantly greater prospects of striving towards a university education in comparison to those whose mother had only completed a primary education or less, which again indicates social reproduction. In this respect, it should be added that the father’s educational attainment indicates a stronger influence towards the highest aspirations than the mother’s degree. Only 5 per cent of young women whose mother has a PhD wish to earn the same degree, in comparison to 20 per cent of young women whose father has a PhD. Another facet of educational aspirations is confidence in the realization of the set goals. According to the survey data, 85 per cent of young women aged 20–29 are convinced they will easily obtain a desired educational degree, compared to 81 per cent of young men. The percentage of indecisive young women and men (11 per cent vs 15 per cent) differs 131

132

14.9 48.4 0.0 0.0

76.6

0.0

0.0

0.0

Vocational or technical upper-secondary school General uppersecondary school University degree – BA or similar University degree – higher than BA

21.2 11.1 28.4 36.8

6.1 5.6 9.9 8.0

Zagreb Macro-regional centres Other towns Village Educational attainment

27.3 31.4

General uppersecondary education

5.1 11.2

Vocational or technical uppersecondary school

20–24 25–29 Residence

Age

Sociodemographic variables

0.0

26.9

0.0

21.8

8.4

81.2

43.6

31.6

6.4

χ 2 = 504.75; df = 15; p = .000 2.1 0.0 7.6

45.4 52.8 37.0 33.9

χ 2 = 29.99; df = 15; p = .012 6.1 12.1 11.1 19.4 13.0 7.4 6.9 6.3

University education – MA

42.6 34.1

University education – Specialist

χ 2 = 13.59; df = 5; p = .020 6.9 10.6 11.7 6.7

University education – BA

Educational aspirations

Table 7.2. Educational aspirations of young women by their sociodemographic characteristics (%).

18.8

7.7

4.0

0.0

9.1 0.0 4.3 8.0

7.4 4.9

Postgraduate degree/PhD

D DUNJA POTOCˇNIK

Educational attainment – mother Primary school Vocational or technical upper-secondary school General uppersecondary school University degree – BA or higher Educational attainment – father Primary school Vocational or technical upper-secondary school General upper-secondary school University degree – BA 0.0 or higher Total 8.2

Sociodemographic variables

34.0

3.5

9.3

17.4 35.4

30.4 15.0

14.5

10.0 16.1

10.0

0.0 4.3

6.9

21.7 10.2

8.7

9.4

10.4

0.0 6.8

χ 2 = 71.43; df = 15; p = .000

29.4

24.2

1.6

3.1

33.9

3.3

11.1 8.6

χ 2 = 77.42; df = 15; p = .000

University education – Specialist

Educational aspirations University education – BA

9.4

33.3 34.5

General uppersecondary education

25.9 19.0

Vocational or technical uppersecondary school

38.3

57.8

38.2

26.1 30.6

38.7

37.8

25.9 31.9

University education – MA

6.2

20.3

6.9

4.3 2.0

4.8

5.0

3.7 1.7

Postgraduate degree/PhD

TRANSITIONS OF YOUNG WOMEN FROM EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT IN CROATIA

E

133

D

DUNJA POTOCˇNIK

Table 7.3. Young women’s confidence about obtaining the level of desired education by the father’s education – age 20–29 (%). Unsure Educational attainment – father Primary school Vocational or technical upper-secondary school General upper-secondary school University degree – BA or higher Total

Indecisive

Sure

χ 2 = 13.68; df = 6; p = .033 9.1 13.6 77.3 9.0 9.0 82.0 2.3 0.9 4.5

12.9 9.6 10.7

84.8 89.5 84.8

slightly more than in the previous case, while there is almost no difference between young women and men who are unsure whether they will complete their desired education. Above, Table 7.3 helps in demonstrating how the confidence in realization of young women’s educational aspirations in Croatia is formed. The only statistically significant predictor of the level of confidence that young women’s educational aspirations will be realized was the father’s level of education. Connections between confidence in realization of the desired educational degree of the young women and their fathers’ educational attainment reveal expected results; the higher the educational attainment of their fathers, the higher their confidence is. The presented results stipulate that young women from a more modest social background, who are already in a disadvantaged position compared to their peers with better-educated parents, face further deterioration or maintain a status quo concerning their educational and career aspirations. Young men are not in a better position than young women; their confidence in realization of their educational aspirations is confined not only by their father’s educational attainment but also by their own level of education as well as by their mother’s educational attainment.

Labour Market Status of the Young Women in Croatia: Precarity in the Making Uncertainty concerning life prospects, especially in relation to educational and employment outcomes, influences all aspects of young people’s lives, from health and wellbeing to leisure time and political and cultural 134

TRANSITIONS OF YOUNG WOMEN FROM EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT IN CROATIA

E

participation. For the youth in Croatia, the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century is marked by the persistence of unfavourable economic prospects, which forces an increasing number of young people to leave the country in search of better education and employment opportunities. Croatia ranks fourth last in the EU in terms of its youth employment, standing at merely a third of the population between 15 and 29 years of age in employment, compared to almost three-quarters in the Netherlands and two-thirds in Austria.9 Moreover, Croatia ranks top in Europe in terms of registered unemployment (over 30 per cent unemployed among the 15–29 age population), together with Greece, Spain and Italy. The most vulnerable youth subgroup is the so-called NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training), which makes up as much as one-quarter of Croatian youth between 20 and 24 years of age.10 Although the rates of both young women and men in NEET status have been on a constant decline since 2010, 18 per cent of young women of this age have registered NEET status, in comparison to 16 per cent of their male peers. As already noted, youth vulnerability is even more pronounced due to their precarious position on the labour market. According to the FES Youth Study, 40 per cent of youth in Croatia work more than the average forty hours a week and the overtime work is most often not paid. Instead, young people often invest additional working hours in the hope (often not realized) of professional advancement. The precarity of the youth labour market status in Croatia is also evident from data showing that only 8 per cent of employed youth in Croatia have a salary equal to or above the national net average of 870 euro. In other words, the majority of young people in Croatia do not earn enough to meet their needs and achieve independent lives. Moreover, professional ‘decay’ is a phenomenon that has seized a large number of young people: 37 per cent work in their profession and 25 per cent work on a job that is close to their profession, while more than one-third of young people do not have significant opportunities to employ their skills and knowledge acquired during formal education. When it comes to the young people aged 20–29, young women are in a slightly better position: 41 per cent of young women and 34 per cent of young men work in a job within their profession. Such results indicate a possible better placement of young women in the labour market. However, our data show that women still lag behind men when it comes to employment rate and job stability. Young men are in a better position with regard to the stability of a job: almost 9 per cent more young men than women have a permanent contract for a full-time job (Figure 7.3). 135

D

DUNJA POTOCˇNIK

Figure 7.3. Employment status of young women and men – age 20–29 (%). © Dunja Potočnik. The fragility of the female labour market position also stems from the fact that the number of young women searching for a job was greater, meaning there are more young women facing difficulties in reaching a desired labour market position. The statistically significant predictors of young women’s employment status were their age, level of education and educational attainment of their parents (Table 7.4). Employment prospects grew with the age and educational degree of young women, whereas the best prospects for stable employment were related to the offspring of the parents who have completed vocational or technical upper-secondary education. It is interesting to note that in the case of young men, beside the predictors listed in the table, the type of settlement where they lived was also shown to be a statistically significant predictor; living in Zagreb was increasing young men’s chances of having a stable job, whereas such significant differences were not registered in the case of young women. A very concrete moment of transition from education to the labour market – finding a job – seems to concern less than a third of young people aged 20–29: 30 per cent of young women and 31 per cent of young men feel they will face difficulties while looking for a job after completing formal education. The percentage of young women and men who are not sure whether they will easily find a job after completing their education is exactly the same (45 per cent), which is similar to the 16 per cent of young women and young men who think they will face no difficulties while 136

41.8

25–29

18.9

42.9

University degree – BA or similar

University degree – higher than BA

Primary school

27.0

29.0

General upper-secondary school

Educational attainment – mother

37.3

Vocational or technical upper-secondary school

Educational attainment

16.5

20–24

Age

Sociodemographic variables

Have a permanent contract

40.5

27.1

28.4

20.6

27.1

25.8

20.5

Have a temporary contract

0.0

χ 2 = 31.84; df = 12; p = .001

7.1

9.5

4.4

3.4

χ 2 = 33.78; df = 12; p = .001

3.9

7.6

18.9

18.6

13.5

17.3

20.3

18.0

17.0

They have no job, but they are actively looking for a job

χ 2 =69.15; df = 4; p = .000

Other (occasional jobs, self-employed or in occupational training)

Employment status

Table 7.4. Employment status of young women by their sociodemographic characteristics (%).

13.5

4.3

29.7

28.7

11.9

10.5

38.4

(continued)

They have no job and they are currently not looking for a job

TRANSITIONS OF YOUNG WOMEN FROM EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT IN CROATIA

E

137

138

27.0

22.4

General upper-secondary school

University degree – BA or higher

38.2

39.2

28.7

19.2

30.0

Primary school

Vocational or technical upper-secondary school

General upper-secondary school

University degree – BA or higher

Total

Educational attainment – father

42.1

Have a permanent contract

Vocational or technical upper-secondary school

Sociodemographic variables

Table 7.4. Continued

23.3

23.2

23.5

20.9

29.4

16.4

25.6

20.6

Have a temporary contract

5.6

7.2

6.4

5.1

0.0

17.5

24.0

12.1

17.7

14.7

22.4

15.6

15.9

They have no job, but they are actively looking for a job

χ 2 = 25.44; df = 12; p = .013

5.2

7.5

4.0

Other (occasional jobs, self-employed or in occupational training)

Employment status

23.5

26.4

29.3

17.1

17.6

33.6

24.2

17.4

They have no job and they are currently not looking for a job

D DUNJA POTOCˇNIK

TRANSITIONS OF YOUNG WOMEN FROM EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT IN CROATIA

E

searching for a job. Nor are the gender differences in the group of young people who have already found a job pronounced, as approximately 8 per cent of young women and young men have found a job before completing formal education. An analysis of the confidence in finding a job after graduation (Table 7.5) suggests that young women tend to be more confident in this respect at an earlier age, which can be explained by less labour market experience and a higher level of illusions about situating themselves on the labour market. To a certain extent, the data shows a correlation between the educational attainment and perceived easiness of finding a job: the higher the educational level, the more pronounced the perceived easiness of finding a job. There is, however, an ostensible deviation in the case of young women with an education higher than BA, which is explained by the 36 per cent of them who have already found a job. In other words, the higher the education, the easier it is to find a labour market position. The perceived easiness of finding a job after completing education is the observed area where the largest diversification between young women Table 7.5. Perceived easiness of finding a job by sociodemographic characteristics of young women (%). Sociodemographic variables

Difficult

Easy

They have already found a job

χ 2 = 13.38; df = 2; p = .001

Age 20–24

28.2

25–29

34.7

67.5

4.3

44.9

20.4

χ = 21.48; df = 6; p = .002

Educational attainment

2

Vocational or technical upper-secondary school

25.0

25.0

50.0

General upper-secondary school

29.7

65.8

4.5

University degree – BA or similar

30.0

60.0

10.0

University degree – higher than BA

27.3

36.4

36.4

Total

29.5

61.4

9.0 139

D

DUNJA POTOCˇNIK

and men aged 20–29 was registered. Young men seem to be more aware of or have a more pessimistic attitude towards the difficulties in finding a job. Contrary to the young women, young men do not display heterogeneity concerning their age, but do so in connection with their type of settlement. Type of settlement is especially interesting in this regard as there are statistically significant differences in the subsample of the young men (χ 2 = 12.87; df = 6; p = .045), while such differences were not registered in the case of young women (χ 2 = 6.80; df = 6; p = .339). More concretely, 35 per cent of young men aged 20–29 residing in Zagreb are sure they will find a job easily (vs 49 per cent of young women), compared to 50 per cent of their male peers from macro-regional centres (vs 58 per cent of young women), 79 per cent of young men from small towns (vs 71 per cent of young women) and 62 per cent of young men from villages (vs 59 per cent of young women).

Conclusions Young people nowadays in Croatia, especially young women, live in times of uncertainty and rising challenges that affect their everyday lives and future prospects. In the past three decades, Croatia has undergone profound changes; war and transition have brought about an altered sociopolitical context, changes to the social structure and an unfavourable economic situation. Gendered logic offers different frameworks of transition to women and men, putting more obstacles in front of young women. Unfavourable social background and the restraining social context are adding difficulties to the already limited prospects of young women for realizing their educational and employment aspirations. Those still, to a significant extent and especially in rural settings, prevent young women from expressing their educational and career aspirations and accomplishing their life goals. There is a statistically significant difference among young women’s confidence in the realization of their educational aspirations, with the greater rate of confidence related to the higher educational attainment of the fathers. As anticipated, the level of education increases with age and educational attainment of the parents. The link between parental levels of education and those of their offspring is most clearly seen in the social reproduction of the more highly educated strata of the population, and in the reduced mobility of children whose parents have lower- or upper-secondary vocational education. In other words, social reproduction is still a trait of 140

TRANSITIONS OF YOUNG WOMEN FROM EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT IN CROATIA

E

Croatian society, especially for the daughters of lower and vocationally educated parents. Such findings can be extrapolated, to a certain extent, to the area of employment. Higher educational degrees of the young women and their parents were also related to the more pronounced perception of easiness of finding a job. The employment prospects grew with the age and educational degree of the young women; however, the best prospects for stable employment were related to the daughters of the parents who have completed vocational or technical upper-secondary education. Croatia isn’t alone in these bleak conclusions on the social status of young people; the 2018 FES Youth Study results indicate that adverse social circumstances influence the social positions and aspirations of youth across both the Western Balkan and some new EU member countries (Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania). Slovenia is the most prominent country among the East European countries in providing young people with the social conditions and opportunities necessary to foster social mobility, advancement in education and finding a stable job. The data suggests that higher education is a desirable goal across the majority of observed countries; the enrolment rates are high in Slovenia, Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania, but also in non-EU countries – Serbia, Albania and Montenegro (Lavrič et al. 2019). However, desires are sometimes very different from reality. The analyses suggest there is a sharp imbalance between rates of university enrolment for young people with higher educated parents and those whose parents have finished upper-secondary education. The biggest difference was registered in Bulgaria, where the offspring of highly educated parents are ten times more likely to enrol into university. This compares to six times more likely in Romania, five times in Albania, four times in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, three times in Montenegro and twice as likely in the Republic of North Macedonia (Lavrič et al. 2019). The employment status of youth in the ten analysed countries displays to a certain extent less heterogeneity than the educational status. In most countries of Southeast Europe, young people have difficulties in finding a stable job, while precarious labour market positions represent young people’s everyday reality (Lavrič et al. 2019). Similarly to the young people in Croatia, youth in the whole of Southeast Europe struggle to find a job that corresponds to their level of education and provides them with prospects for career advancement. Gender continues to play a crucial role in shaping many aspects of the transition pathways and young women in Croatia are more frequently less 141

D

DUNJA POTOCˇNIK

successful than young men in their striving towards a stable and fulfilling job. Young women are more likely to be in full-time education than young men, while young men are more likely to be in full-time employment than young women. Additionally, young men do not have to fight disadvantages that are incorporated in traditional value settings and the patriarchal system. Traditional social settings, which are a characteristic of Croatian post-War of Independence society, additionally enforce unfavourable conditions faced by many young women. Social reproduction is adding to the adverse long-term effects experienced both at the individual and societal level. There is a bleak outlook for the improvement of employment prospects for young women in the current Croatian socioeconomic and political context. This deeply affects the quality of life, potentially opening up a vicious circle of social marginalization and poverty for a significant share of Croatia’s young women.

Dunja Potonik has a PhD in sociology, and is a Higher Research Associate at the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb. Her expertise covers research on youth, gender, social structure, labour market, migrations as well as information and communication technologies. She has taken part in more than thirty research and expert projects, co-authored five and edited five books, and published over seventy scientific and expert papers. She has been a member of the Pool of the European Youth Researchers, coordinated by the Youth Partnership between the European Commission and the Council of Europe, since 2010.

Notes 1. At the level of society intergenerational solidarity can be understood as a mutually beneficial investment maintained by taxes. Generations of previous employees and employers have contributed to investments in infrastructure, environmental protection and innovation, whereas people currently active in the labour market contribute to the pension funds and the system of care for the retirees. 2. In Croatia, only 75 per cent of children under the age of seven [Eurostat, educ_uoe_ enra10] take part in pre-school education and there is a permanent problem with a lack of homes for elderly people. 3. The last Census data (2011) shows that 16.7 per cent of women and 16 per cent of men hold a university degree. 4. Primary education in Croatia is obligatory, starting at the of age six or seven and lasting for eight years. Upper-secondary education (starting at the age of 14 or 15) is not obligatory and children can choose between upper-secondary three- or four-year

142

TRANSITIONS OF YOUNG WOMEN FROM EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT IN CROATIA

5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10.

E

vocational schools, or upper-secondary general education (grammar schools). Only graduates of upper-secondary four-year schools are eligible to enrol in higher education (polytechnic or university). A county designates the largest unit of local government in the political division of Croatia. Croatia is divided into twenty-one counties. ‘Large towns’ encompass macro-regional centres: Osijek, Rijeka and Split. Small towns include all settlements smaller than Zagreb and macro-regional centres and inhabited by more than 2,000 people, whereas villages represent territorial units inhabited by fewer than 2,000 people. University students in Croatia have access to certain social rights and services that exclude unemployed or employed youth (e.g. public transport subvention, subsidized meals, accommodation in student dormitories, working through ‘student contracts’, free supplemental health insurance). Therefore, many young people in Croatia opt to enrol in university education and access these ‘student’ rights, while working parttime or without a contract. Source: Croatian Bureau of Statistics. Source: Eurostat [yth_empl_010]. Source: Eurostat [edat_lfse_20].

References Published Sources Alves, Mariana Gaio and Vesa Korhonen. 2016. ‘Transitions and Trajectories from Higher Education to Work and Back – a Comparison between Finnish and Portuguese Graduates’, European Educational Research Journal 15(6): 676–95. Baranović, Branislava (ed.). 2015. Koji srednjoškolci namjeravaju studirati? Pristup visokom obrazovanju i odabir studija [What Do High School Students Plan to Study? Access to Higher Education and Choice of Study]. Zagreb: Institute for Social Research. Billari, Francesco Candeloro and Aart Cornelis Liefbroer. 2010. ‘Towards a New Pattern of Transition to Adulthood?’, Advances in Life Course Research 15(2– 3): 59–75. Blossfeld, Hans Peter, Erik Klizjing, Melinda Mills and Karin Kurz (eds). 2005. Globalization, Uncertainty and Youth in Society. London and New York: Routledge. Bovan, Kosta and Daniela Širinić. 2016. ‘(Ne)demokratski stavovi maturanata u Hrvatskoj – prisutnost i odrednice’ [(Non)democratic Attitudes of Croatian High-School Seniors: Presence and Determinants], in Marko Kovačić and Martina Horvat (eds), Od podanika do građana: razvoj građanske kompetencije mladih [From Subjects Towards Citizens: Youth Civic Competence Development]. Zagreb: Institute for Social Research / GONG, pp. 73–89.

143

D

DUNJA POTOCˇNIK

Doolan, Karin, Saša Puzić and Branislava Baranović. 2018. ‘Social Inequalities in Access to Higher Education in Croatia: Five Decades of Resilient Findings’, Journal of Further and Higher Education 42(4): 467–81. Farnell, Thomas (ed.). 2011. Socijalna i ekonomska slika studentskog života u Hrvatskoj. Nacionalno izvješće istraživanja EUROSTUDENT za Hrvatsku [The Social and Economic Profile of Student Life in Croatia: National Research Report]. Zagreb: Institute for the Development of Education. Furlong, Andy and Fred Cartmel. 2007. Young People and Social Change. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Galić, Branka. 2011. ‘Društvena uvjetovanost rodne diskriminacije’ [Social Conditionality of Gender Discrimination], in Željka Kamenov and Branka Galić (eds), Rodna ravnopravnost i diskriminacija u Hrvatskoj [Gender Equality and Discrimination in Croatia]. Zagreb: Vlada RH, Ured za ravnopravnost spolova, pp. 9–27. Gvozdanović, Anja, Vlasta Ilišin, Mirjana Adamović, Dunja Potočnik, Nikola Baketa and Marko Kovačić. 2019. Youth in Croatia 2018/2019. Zagreb: Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Hodžić, Alija. 2014. Konoba u svjetskom kasinu [Tavern in the World Casino]. Zagreb: Razlog. Hyman, Herbert Hiram and Charles Richard Wright. 1979. Education’s Lasting Influence on Values. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ilišin, Vlasta, Dejana Bouillet, Anja Gvozdanović and Dunja Potočnik. 2013. Youth in a Time of Crisis. Zagreb: Friedrich Ebert Foundation/Institute for Social Research in Zagreb. Ilišin, Vlasta and Vedrana Spajić Vrkaš (eds). 2017. Generacija osujećenih: Mladi u Hrvatskoj na početku 21. Stoljeća [Generation of Disillusioned Youth in Croatia at the Beginning of the 21st Century]. Zagreb: Institute for Social Research. Inglehart, Ronald. 1997. Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Changes in 43 Societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jarvis, Peter. 2009. Learning to Be a Person in Society. Abingdon: Routledge. Kamenov, Željka. 2011. ‘Stavovi, predrasude i uvjerenja o uzrocima rodne diskriminacije’ [Attitudes, Prejudice and Beliefs About Causes of Gender Discrimination], in Željka Kamenov and Branka Galić (eds), Rodna ravnopravnost i diskriminacija u Hrvatskoj [Gender Equality and Discrimination in Croatia]. Zagreb: Vlada RH, Ured za ravnopravnost spolova, pp. 92–111. Kamenov, Željka and Branka Galić (eds). 2011. Rodna ravnopravnost i diskriminacija u Hrvatskoj [Gender Equality and Discrimination in Croatia]. Zagreb: Vlada RH, Ured za ravnopravnost spolova. Kamenov, Željka, Aleksandra Huić and Ivana Jugović. 2011. ‘Uloga iskustva rodno neravnopravnog tretmana u obitelji u percepciji, stavovima i sklonosti 144

TRANSITIONS OF YOUNG WOMEN FROM EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT IN CROATIA

E

rodnoj diskriminaciji’ [The Effect of Gender Discrimination |Within Family of Origin on the Perception of Gender Inequality, Attitudes Towards Gender Roles and the Tendency to Discriminate Based on Gender], Croatian Journal of Social Policy 18(2): 195–215. Kovačić, Marko and Martina Horvat (eds). 2016. Od podanika do građana: razvoj građanske kompetencije mladih [From Subjects Towards Citizens: Youth Civic Competence Development]. Zagreb: Institute for Social Research / GONG. Kupfer, Antonia. 2014. ‘The Interrelation of Twenty-first-century Education and Work from a Gender Perspective’, International Studies in Sociology of Education 24(1): 113–25. Lavrič, Miran, Smiljka Tomanović and Mirna Jusić 2019. Youth Study Southeast Europe 2018/2019. Berlin: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Matković, Teo. 2011. ‘Obrasci tranzicije iz obrazovnog sustava u svijet rada u Hrvatskoj’, [Patterns of Transition from Education to the World of Work in Croatia], PhD dissertation. Zagreb: Faculty of Law. Mills, Melinda and Hans Peter Blossfeld. 2005. ‘Globalization, Uncertainty and the Early Life Course: A Theoretical Framework’, in Hans Peter Blossfeld, Erik Klizjing, Melinda Mills and Karin Kurz (eds), Globalization, Uncertainty and Youth in Society. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1–24. OECD. 2018. Education at a Glance 2018: OECD Indicators. Paris: OECD Publishing. Potočnik, Dunja. 2011. ‘Međugeneracijska mobilnost u Hrvatskoj (1984–2004): Usporedba socijalističkog i tranzicijskog razdoblja’ [Intergenerational Mobility in Croatia (1984–2004): Comparison of the Socialist and Transitional Period], PhD dissertation. Zagreb: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. ———. 2012. ‘Intergenerational Educational Mobility in the Transitional Period in Croatia: 20 Years Later’, Subkulture: Prispevki za kritiko in analizo družbenih gibanj 11: 91–108. ———. 2014. ‘Socijalni status studenata’ [Social Status of Students], in Vlasta Ilišin (ed.), Sociološki portret hrvatskih studenata [Sociological Portrait of Croatian Students]. Zagreb: Institute for Social Research, pp. 57–96. Šćukanec, Ninoslav and Matija Sinković (eds). 2016. Socijalni i ekonomski uvjeti studentskog života u Hrvatskoj. Nacionalno izvješće istraživanja EUROSTUDENT V za Hrvatsku za 2014 [Social and Economic Conditions of Student Life in Croatia: National EUROSTUDENT Research Report for 2014]. Zagreb: Ministarstvo znanosti, obrazovanja i sporta. Sekulić, Duško and Željka Šporer. 2000. ‘Formiranje poduzetničke elite u Hrvatskoj’ [The Formation of the Entrepreneurial Elite in Croatia], Croatian Sociological Review 31(1–2): 1–20. Stone, Juliet, Ann Berrington and Jane Falkingham. 2014. ‘Gender, Turning Points, and Boomerangs: Returning Home in Young Adulthood in Great Britain’, Demography 51(1): 257–76. 145

D

DUNJA POTOCˇNIK

Walther, Andreas and Axel Pohl. 2005. Thematic Study on Policy Measures Concerning Disadvantaged Youth: Final Report. Tübingen: IRIS. Wyn, Johanna, Hernán Cuervo, Jessica Crofts and Dan Woodman. 2017. ‘Gendered Transitions from Education to Work: The Mysterious Relationship between the Fields of Education and Work’, Journal of Sociology 53(2): 492–506.

Web Sources Croatian Bureau of Statistics, https://www.dzs.hr/default_e.htm (accessed on 9 April 2020). Eurostat, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database (accessed on 27 August 2019 and 11 February 2020).

146

D CHAPTER 8

Study Counselling Experiences and Educational Choice-Making of Girls with Migrant Backgrounds in the Context of Finnish General Upper Secondary Education Linda Maria Laaksonen, Anna-Maija Niemi and Markku Jahnukainen

Introduction Finland’s education system promotes a universalistic transition regime (Walther 2006) in which study counselling is institutionalized and integrated into the education system. The aim of study counselling is to secure a study place for all comprehensive school leavers in upper secondary education. Despite this aim, educational routes, transitions and experiences of study counselling of students with migrant backgrounds in Finland have often been found to be disjointed and varying (Kurki 2019; Souto 2016). Regardless of their plans, students with migrant backgrounds have encountered contradictory expectations and stereotyped presumptions in that they have been seen as being ‘more suitable’ for vocational education Notes for this section can be found on page 159.

D

LINDA MARIA LAAKSONEN, ANNA-MAIJA NIEMI AND MARKKU JAHNUKAINEN

because of their migrant background or ethnicity (see e.g. Ball, Reay and David 2006; Kurki 2019). Previous research has highlighted that girls in particular have been seen as being suitable for the caring professions by their nature. In this chapter, we discuss the educational choice-making and study counselling experiences of girls with migrant backgrounds and how these relate to gender and migrant background. The context of the chapter is general upper secondary education and the programme preparing migrant students for general upper secondary education (LUVA) in Finland. The chapter draws on an ethnographic study of educational choice-making, support practices and societal inclusion of young people in upper secondary education in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. We analysed the ethnographic data1 produced at a general upper secondary school during the 2016–2017 school year and focused in particular on school biographical interviews (see Henderson et al. 2007; Niemi and Laaksonen 2020) conducted with female students (N=23). To contextualize the interviews, we used them to reflect on the fieldnotes and interviews with teachers and study counsellors (N=7). The focus of our analysis is on the girls’ interviews and how they spoke about the study counselling they had received and their educational choice-making, during both compulsory basic education and during their upper secondary education. More specifically we asked: 1) how do the girls talk about their experiences of educational choice-making and study counselling; and 2) how do their interview narrations concerning educational choice-making and study counselling relate to tmigrant background?

Finnish Upper Secondary Education as a Context The Finnish education system offers an interesting context for the European debate on the education of girls with migrant backgrounds. In relation to the discussion on educational equality, along with other Nordic countries, Finland’s education system has been seen as an example of a system promoting equal educational opportunities. Yet the differences between learning outcomes of students with migrant backgrounds and students who speak Finnish as a mother tongue are one of the biggest in all OECD countries (OECD 2018). Earlier research from Finland has also shown that students with migrant backgrounds are less likely to end up 148

STUDY COUNSELLING EXPERIENCES AND EDUCATIONAL CHOICE-MAKING

E

studying in general upper secondary education, take longer to complete secondary education and are more likely to drop out of education than their counterparts (see e.g. Jahnukainen et. al. 2019; Kilpi-Jakonen 2011). Finnish basic education consists of nine years of comprehensive school provided free of charge to all children. After nine years of relatively uniform basic education, upper secondary education is sharply divided into separate routes of (academic) general upper secondary education and vocational education and training. Vocational education prepares students primarily for the workforce whereas general upper secondary education is described as providing students with extensive general knowledge, and the principal objective of the education is to enable further studying in higher education (MINEDU 2018; see also Niemi and Laaksonen 2020). Officially, there are no dead-ends in the Finnish education system, which means that the system also allows for progression from vocational education to all higher education, though this route is uncommon (Vipunen 2019). For this reason, students who are accepted into general upper secondary schools have traditionally been seen as being more academically oriented in comparison to the students in vocational education. The aim of European education policy in the 2020s is to make educational transitions smoother and more straightforward. In Finland, after basic education approximately 95 per cent of young people in each age cohort (ages between 16–17 years) continue with upper secondary education: about half to general upper secondary education and the other half to vocational education (STAT 2017). Support practices, such as special education, are offered widely in vocational schools, whereas at general upper secondary schools there is little official educational support (Niemi and Laaksonen 2020). As we mentioned in the introduction, regardless of their own educational hopes, students with migrant backgrounds have often been guided towards vocational studies rather than general upper secondary school (see also Kurki 2019; Niemi and Kurki 2014). Explanations given for this phenomenon have ranged from the ‘learning by doing’ study culture of vocational institutions and the better support systems they offer to students experiencing difficulties in mastering academic study in the Finnish language (see Kalalahti et al. 2020; Kurki 2019). One recent attempt to promote the educational transitions of students with migrant backgrounds is a year-long preparatory programme for general upper secondary education (LUVA). LUVA is targeted at migrants and students with a native language other than Finnish who wish to apply for admission to general upper secondary education. Similar programmes 149

D

LINDA MARIA LAAKSONEN, ANNA-MAIJA NIEMI AND MARKKU JAHNUKAINEN

also exist in other Nordic countries (see e.g. Arreman and Dovemark 2018; Hilt 2017). The aim of the programme is to promote educational equality by providing students with the skills needed to apply for admission to general upper secondary education and to succeed in their subsequent studying. These programmes focus especially on Finnish language proficiency (FNAE 2017). The requirement of proficiency in Finnish is particularly a challenge in the educational transitions of students who are newly arrived and have moved to Finland between the ages of 15 to 19 – at the age when they are expected to make educational choices regarding upper secondary education and their future (Kalalahti, Varjo and Jahnukainen 2017).

Migrant Background and Gender Relating to Educational Choice-Making When considering those young people who either have themselves or whose parents have migrated to Finland, it is a challenge to find an appropriate term to define this ‘group’. It is a question of categorization, and the researcher must carefully assess the terms they choose to use in their research (see e.g. Kurki 2019). In many studies, the expression ‘with a migrant background’ is used either to describe a person who has migrated to the country or a person whose parent or parents have migrated (Martikainen and Haikkola 2010: 9–10). In this chapter, we have used the expression ‘with migrant backgrounds’ to mean either those young people who have moved to Finland or those with at least one parent who has moved to Finland, and who speak a language other than Finnish or Swedish2 as their mother tongue. Students with migrant backgrounds form a diverse group of people with a wide range of social, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. This heterogeneity calls into question the dichotomy between ‘migrants’ and ‘Finns’ as clearly defined separate groups (see e.g. Lundström 2017: 80–81). Given the language, the biggest foreign language groups in Finland are Russian, Estonian, Iraqi, Somali and Chinese, and most of the students that we interviewed belonged to these groups (STAT 2018). For this chapter, we analysed specifically girls’ educational choicemaking and study counselling experiences. We see gender as a category which intersects with other dimensions of difference such as ethnicity, social background, age and sexuality, and taking them into account allows more comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon (e.g. Phoenix 2009). 150

STUDY COUNSELLING EXPERIENCES AND EDUCATIONAL CHOICE-MAKING

E

When discussing girls with migrant backgrounds, we are talking about a heterogenous group of young women who come from many backgrounds, and have different mother tongues, religions and family situations (Lundström 2006: 205). In the current neoliberal education policy discourse, educational choice-making has mainly been considered to be an individual’s ‘free choice’. In this chapter, we consider the girls’ choice-making as always being related to societal and school cultural aspects, such as practices of study counselling, but also to their socioeconomic status, their parents’ educational background, their friends’ educational choices, and practical factors such as the location of schools (Souto 2016: 48). Therefore, choice-making can never be considered purely as an individual process and young people’s own responsibility, as it takes shape within diverse relations of girls’ hopes, resources and societal structures (Ball, Reay and David 2006). When exploring educational choice-making, we applied Karen Evans’ concept of bounded agency (2002 and 2007) which seeks to consider both structural elements and individual viewpoints and possibilities. By utilizing bounded agency, we elaborate girls’ agency and look at how it is socially positioned and constantly negotiated in the school’s practices (e.g. Evans 2007; Niemi and Mietola 2017).

Data and Methodology The study from which this chapter has been drawn is ethnographic research contextualized in education policy, meaning that we consider the ethnographic field expanding from what happens in the school’s everyday life towards current education policy discourses (see Lahelma et al. 2014; Niemi and Laaksonen 2020; Troman, Jeffrey and Beach 2006). The research data was produced in a general upper secondary school and a preparatory programme class in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area during the 2016–2017 school year. During the fieldwork, we participated in the lessons, breaks and meetings, wrote fieldnotes, and conducted individual and group interviews with the students and staff members. For this chapter, we narrowed down the data to focus on the educational experiences of twenty-three female students with migrant backgrounds (aged 16 to 20) and the emphasis of our analysis was on their school biographical interviews. Six out of the twenty-three girls studied in the preparatory programme (LUVA) and seventeen studied in general upper secondary 151

D

LINDA MARIA LAAKSONEN, ANNA-MAIJA NIEMI AND MARKKU JAHNUKAINEN

education, and all the girls spoke a language other than Finnish as their mother tongue. Ten of them had migrated to Finland and thirteen were born in Finland with a parent/parents who had migrated. In most cases, at least one of the parents or the girls themselves had moved to Finland from outside Europe. To contextualize the interviews, we used them to reflect on using selected fieldnotes (forty schooldays) and interviews with teachers and study counsellors (N=7). Our analysis is qualitative ethnographic analysis in which the data were analysed in a dialogue with theoretical concepts (see e.g. Coffey and Atkinson 1996; Koski 2011). To begin, the data was coded by using ATLAS. ti software in the process of thematic reading. After that, we continued with a more analytical reading, focusing on mapping out the narratives and episodes resonating with the key concepts. Our focus was on the concept of educational choice-making and we used that as an analytical category, meaning that we read the data by concentrating on the themes and meanings connected to it. In addition to educational choice-making, we analysed study counselling from the perspective of how the girls talk about it and how it relates to their educational choice-making. In the following analytical sections, our aim is to describe how the girls recounted their experiences of study counselling and educational choice-making and to address the school’s practices and wider societal structures that frame the reality in which their educational choices become formulated.

Advice on and Resistance to ‘Suitable and Safe’ Choices The aim of study counselling from basic education to general upper secondary education is to form a continuum that supports students at different stages of their studies. At secondary school, the role of study guidance is significant since it determines the choices of upper secondary education, where there is a dichotomy between ‘practical’ vocational education and ‘academic’ general upper secondary education. In general upper secondary education, the role of study guidance is no longer to ensure the educational transitions of the whole age group, but more to support young people in finding their own paths. In educational discussions, the question of what is a ‘suitable’ educational choice is often presented as related only to person’s self-knowledge on their own strengths and weaknesses, but we propose that it is also strongly related to categorization: what is seen as suitable for whom also 152

STUDY COUNSELLING EXPERIENCES AND EDUCATIONAL CHOICE-MAKING

E

differs on the basis of social positions (Ball et al. 2006). The girls’ narratives pointed out the categorizing element in guidance which has also emerged in previous studies concerning the educational choice-making of students with migrant backgrounds (see e.g. Kurki 2019; Souto 2016). The girls described how they had faced situations in which they had to negotiate their educational choice-making in relation to gender, migrant background and low expectations of education professionals, in addition to their own hopes and educational orientation (see Mirza and Meetoo 2018: 229; Phoenix 2009). Ten out of twenty-three girls in our data had migrated themselves. Nevertheless, at the school most of the girls became classified as girls with migrant backgrounds based on their mother tongue, their parents’ home country, skin colour, or other visible signs, such as wearing a hijab or because they studied in the LUVA programme or participated in Finnish as a second language classes (e.g. Kurki 2019: 46–47; Mirza and Meetoo 2018: 228; Phoenix 2009: 12–13). In the interview extract below, educational choice-making and transitions to upper secondary school were discussed: I told my study counsellor that I wanted to go to general upper secondary school. I knew that I wanted to go to a certain school, but my grades were just in between [below the entrance requirement]. I remember that my study counsellor said to me that yeah, for you it wouldn’t be worth applying to a general upper secondary school. And then kept repeating that yeah, vocational school is your thing and so on. And I remember that s/he was saying that a practical nurse programme is better for you. I was like I don’t want to go there, I said that I want to go to general school and then s/he was like yeah, a practical nurse – to me it seems like discrimination. Why wouldn’t somebody who has a migrant background succeed in general upper secondary education? (Girl, 2nd year student in a general upper secondary school)

Despite her study counsellor’s advice to seek admission to a vocational education, the girl quoted above resisted the guidance and decided to apply for admission only for general upper secondary education, for which she was accepted and continued to study. Many of the girls described situations in which study counsellors in comprehensive schools had encouraged them to apply for entry to vocational institutions, especially to the practical nurse programmes, rather than general upper secondary school since it would be a more ‘suitable and safe choice’ for them. In the extract above, the interviewee had to negotiate her educational choice-making in the context of what the study counsellor thought was suitable for her – despite her own educational aspirations to apply to undertake general 153

D

LINDA MARIA LAAKSONEN, ANNA-MAIJA NIEMI AND MARKKU JAHNUKAINEN

upper secondary education and possibly in the future to pursue an academic career. The boundedness of the girls’ agency emerges when they have been guided to make educational choices based on their family and ethnic background (e.g. Evans 2007). Having a migrant background was sometimes interpreted in study counselling as a deficiency causing a lack of academic skills despite the girls’ own sense of capability and grades that were high enough to get into the upper secondary schools they wanted. Some of the girls described how they had strongly resisted the guidance they received and applied for entry into the education they wanted (see e.g. Mirza and Meetoo 2018; Phoenix 2009: 11–13). In relation to educational choice-making, the problem of categorizing and stereotypical presumptions as a phenomenon were recognized and brought up several times, not just by the students but also by the teachers and study counsellors. However, not all of the girls we interviewed had met with prejudiced views and some had been encouraged to apply, in accordance with their ‘own hopes’, for entry into general upper secondary education. One factor linked to educational choice-making and experienced agency is knowledge about the Finnish education system. Knowledge about the system might be limited regardless of whether someone was born in Finland or not. However, it was mentioned several times in the interviews that since these girls and their families did not have personal experience of the Finnish educational system, some issues related to school were harder to come to grips with. One of the girls described this in the extract below: My parents are not familiar with Finnish general upper secondary schooling or any other Finnish schooling. All they know is what is happening in my life at the moment. Because I’m the oldest child, I’m also the first one in our family to experience these things. . . . I understand that you need to be more independent here (at general upper secondary school), but sometimes I feel like I don’t even know what to ask, because I know so little. (Girl, 1st year student, general upper secondary school)

As noted earlier, in accordance with the goals of the curriculum, making educational choices requires independent decision-making and knowledge of the educational system. But if the educational system is not familiar to a student, as in the extract above, the role of study counselling and support from other significant people around becomes more important (see e.g. Kalalahti, Varjo and Jahnukainen 2017). It is evident that not all the girls’ parents did know the Finnish school system equally well, and this relates to how they could support their children in navigating through the field of education system (see Peltola 2014). However, in many interviews, 154

STUDY COUNSELLING EXPERIENCES AND EDUCATIONAL CHOICE-MAKING

E

the support from family and friends was emphasized, and this shows the importance of social relationships and networks in supporting educational choice-making (Holmberg and Niemi 2019). As reported in previous studies, the girls in this study also emphasized the importance of ethnicity in choosing which general upper secondary school to apply to for admission. Some of the girls had criteria such as that there should be ‘other students with migrant backgrounds’ or ‘students who come from the same culture as I do’ (Ball et al. 2006: 233; Tamboukou and Ball 2006). In the extract below, one of the girls reflected on her thoughts about being different from the majority and how there are some things in her everyday life she felt only some people could relate to: The biggest question I get asked is always something like ‘do you wear a headscarf at home’, ‘what is your hair like’ or ‘how do you look without the scarf ’ . . . Before I was at a different school and I was the only ‘different one’ there among all the Finns. I used to think that maybe I could get more attention from boys or people would like me more if I didn’t wear a scarf. (Girl, 2nd year student, general upper secondary school)

As in the extracts above, studying at a school where you are not the only ‘different one’ was seen as a positive thing and the students valued the opportunity to identify with and relate to students who they felt were alike and by whom they felt understood. When examining educational choice-making, it is impossible to draw a clear distinction between individual and social factors since they are always firmly bound together (Niemi and Kurki 2014). Within the Finnish education system, all students are seemingly free to choose their own educational path, but at the same time, their choices are bounded by several structures that shape educational choice-making. In this case, for example, there were assumptions and stereotypes that categorized students as ‘migrant girls’ (e.g. Evans 2002). However, the girls also highlighted their own agency in choice-making and explained that they had resisted the guidance they had been given with an ‘I will prove you wrong’ attitude, as one of the girls verbalized it.

Heading for Upper Secondary Education: Question on Language Proficiency As mentioned earlier, six of the twenty-three girls that we interviewed were studying in the preparatory programme for general upper secondary 155

D

LINDA MARIA LAAKSONEN, ANNA-MAIJA NIEMI AND MARKKU JAHNUKAINEN

education (LUVA). The main objective of the programme is that after one year of study, the students would be able to apply for admission to general upper secondary education and be accepted (MINEDU 2018). This objective determines both the content of the programme and the target group: academically oriented students with a migrant background. When asked about the purpose of the preparatory programme, one of the teachers described it as follows: the programme has been developed because in the past, there had been presumptions that after comprehensive school students with immigrant backgrounds were guided only towards vocational education. . . . We should also encourage students with a migrant background to study at general upper secondary school and to go to university so that they do not always have to settle for a vocational school nursing career.

The teachers mentioned that when discussing today’s general upper secondary education, one of the major themes related to students with migrant backgrounds is the question of their Finnish language proficiency, and this is an issue the preparatory programme tries to tackle. In the extract below, a student from the preparatory programme described how she had ended up applying for entry to the programme: I had applied to a few general upper secondary schools as my first choices and to LUVA as my last choice. I was accepted only into the preparatory programme, but I thought that maybe it is for the best: if I can’t speak Finnish well enough, why should I go to a general upper secondary school? . . . The preparatory programme provides a chance for those students who do not speak much Finnish, but want to apply to general upper secondary schools. (Girl, student in a preparatory programme)

At the time of the interview, she had lived in Finland for three years and like all the girls studying in the preparatory programme, she described learning Finnish as being her primary motivation to study there. In the girls’ narratives, the preparatory programme was often depicted as strengthening the sense of agency by allowing them to still keep pursuing their educational dreams despite the challenges related to the Finnish language proficiency. However, a year is still a short time to learn to study in a foreign language, and both students and teachers acknowledged this. The dilemmas around language proficiency were also brought up in the narratives of the girls who had already studied at the general upper secondary level. The extracts below were narrated by one of the girls and a special education teacher: 156

STUDY COUNSELLING EXPERIENCES AND EDUCATIONAL CHOICE-MAKING

E

There are so many things I just don’t understand in Finnish. When the teacher tells me the right answer, I think I would have known it, but just not in Finnish. Language is the reason I can’t get my answers in exams correct. (Girl, 2nd year general upper secondary school) If there is only one final exam [in a course] and the students writes it in English it is bit difficult. You don’t always know . . . we sometimes have discussed this with teachers, that what should we do? Can a student pass a course if s/he knows the course subjects and can prove it, but the language is just bit wrong. . . (Special education teacher)

As we stated earlier, Finnish upper secondary education is strongly attached to the Finnish language and success usually requires a good knowledge of Finnish. Although the girls we interviewed all spoke several different languages, these skills were not recognized at school as the main purpose was to learn to study in Finnish. Multilingualism and encouraging students to study their mother tongue is emphasized in the national curriculum, but according to our analysis it seems that there is a struggle in general upper secondary education to recognize its full value. It is discussed often as more of a challenge than as a resource.

Conclusions Our analysis shows that when talking about the experiences of educational choice-making and study counselling, there were many intersecting themes that were repeated in the girls’ narratives concerning categorizing guidance practices and being categorized as a ‘girl with a migrant background’. We identified intertwining factors and categorizations, such as Finnish language proficiency, (lack of ) knowledge about the education system and visible signs (hijab, skin colour) linked to their migrant background and gender, which shaped the girls’ educational choice-making and options. When the girls talked about study guidance, especially during basic education, many of them described episodes in which their gender and migrant background had affected the guidance they were given and how they had had to negotiate those situations in order to resist being categorized and even ignored (see e.g. Kurki 2019; Mäkelä 2019; Souto 2016). Based on our analysis, it seems that being categorized as a girl with a migrant background may result in study guidance that is not sensitive to their own educational aspirations and emphasizes vocational education, especially the caring professions, as a ‘suitable and safe’ choice. The girls, 157

D

LINDA MARIA LAAKSONEN, ANNA-MAIJA NIEMI AND MARKKU JAHNUKAINEN

teachers and study counsellors we interviewed were aware of these stereotyped and even racist presumptions and brought them up when discussing study guidance practices. Today’s education policy emphasizes choice, yet these choices are influenced by societal practices and structures, such as the selection criteria for schools and the resources of families (Ball et al. 2006). In our analysis, we tried to find out how the girls created space for agency while negotiating their educational choice-making in situations in which they had been categorized as ‘girls with migrant backgrounds’. The boundedness of their agency was clear when the girls were guided to make educational choices contrary to their own hopes based on their backgrounds, and there also seem to be structural challenges that can affect girls’ choices and agency (see Evans 2007). The girls mentioned several episodes when their hopes and plans had been overlooked. When talking about these episodes, they told individualized narratives that emphasized how they had resisted the given guidance and applied for admission in accordance with their own hopes. The educational professionals also reflected on these topics and discussed the problematics of guidance and the possible categorization of girls with migrant backgrounds and were obviously aware of the underestimation of these girls’ capabilities that had happened in the past. However, they seemed to have very few resources to work with girls whose language skills were not considered ‘good enough’ for general upper secondary education. Our analysis illustrates that educational choice-making seems to be strongly attached to what appears to be a realistic alternative considering one’s language proficiency. Especially in the case of young people arriving in Finland late (aged 15–19), educational choices are strongly linked to language skills and what is considered ‘possible in this situation’ (Joki 2013; Souto 2016). However, students who have received their entire schooling in Finland and speak Finnish as a second language may also have challenges with language proficiency in upper secondary education and when making educational choices, language can easily put students with migrant backgrounds in a different position to native Finnish speakers. Another factor affecting the educational choice-making of students with migrant backgrounds is knowledge of the Finnish educational system. By providing information about the education system and study counselling that is sensitive to girls’ own educational hopes, it is possible

158

STUDY COUNSELLING EXPERIENCES AND EDUCATIONAL CHOICE-MAKING

E

to strengthen their sense of agency and enable them to make educational choices within the Finnish system. This could be carried out by arranging more sustainable preparatory education to provide girls with migrant backgrounds with the skills and knowledge needed to apply for entry to general upper secondary education. Our analysis suggests that many of the students benefitted from support measures targeted especially at students with migrant backgrounds; however, being a student in the LUVA programme or studying Finnish as a second language might also result in being categorized as a ‘student with a migrant background’ at school, which can produce experiences of stigmatization (see also Mirza and Meetoo 2018). The girls negotiated within these categorizations by questioning and restricting them but also adjusted to the options given in study counselling (see Evans 2002).

Linda Maria Laaksonen is a PhD student at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests focus on educational choices, sociology of education and educational policy. Anna-Maija Niemi is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests are in the fields of youth studies, education policy studies and disability studies. Markku Jahnukainen is Professor of Special Education at the Faculty of Educational Sciences in University of Helsinki, Finland. He is also Adjunct Professor at the University of Alberta, Canada and served as Visiting Professor in Comparative and International Inclusive Education Research in Humboldt University Berlin, Germany, 2013–2014. His recent publications are related to comparative education research in inclusive education as well as to longitudinal research on young people in vulnerable life situations. Dr Jahnukainen is the past President of the Finnish Educational Research Association (FERA).

Notes 1. This study was supported by the Academy of Finland, Strategic Research Council, No 303691. 2. Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish.

159

D

LINDA MARIA LAAKSONEN, ANNA-MAIJA NIEMI AND MARKKU JAHNUKAINEN

References Arreman, Inger Erixon and Marianne Dovemark. 2018. ‘Social Justice in Swedish Post-16 Education? New Preparatory Programmes’, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 62(4): 570–85. Ball, Stephen, Diane Reay and Miriam David. 2006. ‘“Ethnic Choosing”: Minority Ethnic Students, Social Class and Higher Education Choice’, in S. Ball (ed.), Education Policy and Social Class: The Selected Works of Stephen J. Ball. London: Routledge, pp. 333–57. Coffey, Amanda and Paul Atkinson. 1996. Making Sense of Qualitative Data: Complementary Research Strategies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Evans, Karen. 2002. ‘Taking Control of Their Lives? Agency in Young Adult Transitions in England and the New Germany’, Journal of Youth Studies 5(3): 245–69. ———. 2007. ‘Concepts of Bounded Agency in Education, Work, and the Personal Lives of Young Adults’, International Journal of Psychology 42(2): 85–93. FNAE – Finnish National Agency of Education. 2015. Finnish National Agency for Education: National Core Curriculum for General Upper Secondary Schools. Helsinki: FNAE. ———. 2017. Lukiokoulutukseen valmistava koulutus [Preparatory Programmes for General Upper Secondary Education]. Retrieved 14 january 2020 from https://www.oph.fi/sites/default/files/documents/186996_luva_verkko.pdf. Henderson, Sheela, Janet Holland, Sheena McGrellis, Sue Sharpe and Rachel Thomson. 2007. Inventing Adulthoods: A Biographical Approach to Youth Transitions. London: SAGE Publications. Hilt, Line Torbjørnsen. 2017. ‘Education Without a Shared Language: Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion in Norwegian Introductory Classes for Newly Arrived Minority Language Students’, International Journal of Inclusive Education 21(6): 585–601. Holmberg, Liila and Anna-Maija Niemi. 2019. ‘Sinnikäs ja taipuisa toimijuus nuoren musliminaisen koulutuspolun kerronnassa’ [Resilient and Flexible Agency in Young Muslim Woman’s Narration of Her Educational Path], Nuorisotutkimus 37(2). Jahnukainen, M., M. Kalalahti and J. Kivirauma. 2019. Oma paikka haussa — Maahanmuuttotaustaiset nuoret ja koulutus [Looking for a Place: Youth With an Immigrant Background and Education]. Helsinki: Gaudeamus. Joki, Sirpa. 2013. ‘Opinto-ohjaus ja myöhään Suomeen muuttaneet nuoret aikuiset perusasteella’ [Study Guidance and Newly Migrated Young Adults in Finnish Basic Education], in V. Korhonen and S. Puukari (eds), Monikulttuurinen ohjaus- ja neuvontatyö [Multicultural guidance- and counselling work]. Jyväskylä: PS-kustannus, pp. 237–47. 160

STUDY COUNSELLING EXPERIENCES AND EDUCATIONAL CHOICE-MAKING

E

Jokinen, Eeva and Mikko Jakonen. 2011. ‘Rajaton hoiva’ [Unbounded Care], in E. Jokinen, J. Könönen, J. Venäläinen and J. Vähämäki (eds), Yrittäkää edes! Prekarisaatio Pohjois-Karjalassa [At Least Try! Precarization in North Karelia]. Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto, pp. 118–38. Kalalahti, Mira, Anna-Maija Niemi, Janne Varjo and Markku Jahnukainen. 2020. ‘Diversified Transitions and Educational Equality? Negotiating the Transitions of Young People with Immigrant Backgrounds and/or Special Educational Needs’, Nordic Studies in Education 40(1): 36–54. Kalalahti, Mira, Janne Varjo and Markku Jahnukainen. 2017. ‘ImmigrantOrigin Youth and the Indecisiveness of Choice for Upper Secondary Education in Finland’, Journal of Youth Studies 20(9): 1242–62. Kilpi-Jakonen, Elina. 2011. ‘Continuation to Upper Secondary Education in Finland: Children of Immigrants and the Majority Compared’, Acta Sociologica 54(1): 77–106. Koski, Leena. 2011. ‘Teksteistä teemoiksi – dialoginen tematisointi’ [From Texts to Themes – Dialogical Thematization], in A. Puusa and P. Juuti (eds), Menetelmäviidakon raivaajat: Perusteita laadullisen tutkimustavan valintaan [A Jungle of Methods: Criteria for choosing a qualitative research method]. Vantaa: Hansaprint Oy, pp. 126–49. Kurki, Tuuli. 2019. Immigrant-ness as (Mis)Fortune? Immigrantisation through Integration Policies and Practices in Education. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Kurki, Tuuli, Kiristiina Brunila and Elina Lahelma. 2019. ‘Constituting Immigrant Care Workers through Gendering and Racialising Practices in Education’, Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 1 (in press). Lahelma, Elina, Sirpa Lappalainen, Reetta Mietola and Tarja Palmu. 2014. ‘Discussions That “Tickle Our Brains”: Constructing Interpretations through Multiple Ethnographic Data-Sets’, Ethnography & Education 9(1): 51–65. Langørgen, Eli and Eva Magnus. 2018. ‘“We Are Just Ordinary People Working Hard to Reach Our Goals!” Disabled Students’ Participation in Norwegian Higher Education’, Disability & Society 33(4): 598–617. Lundström, Catrin. 2006. ‘“Okay, but We Are Not Whores You Know”: Latina Girls Navigating the Boundaries of Gender and Ethnicity in Sweden’, Young – Nordic Journal of Youth Research 14(3): 203–18. ———. 2017. ‘The White Side of Migration: Reflections on Race, Citizenship and Belonging in Sweden’, Nordic Journal of Migration Research 7(2): 79–87. Mäkelä, Marja-Liisa. 2019. Toiset tytöt? Suomalaisten maahanmuuttotaustaisten tyttöjen toimijuus peruskoulutusta toiselle asteelle siirryttäessä [The Other Girls? Agency of Finnish Migrant Background Girls During the School Transition from Comprehensive School to Upper Secondary Level Education]. Turku: University of Turku. Martikainen, Tuomas and Lotta Haikkola. 2010. ‘Sukupolvet maahanmuuttajatutkimuksessa’ [Generations in Migrant Studies], in T. Martikainen and 161

D

LINDA MARIA LAAKSONEN, ANNA-MAIJA NIEMI AND MARKKU JAHNUKAINEN

L. Haikkola (eds), Maahanmuutto ja sukupolvet: Nuorisotutkimusverkoston julkaisuja 106 [Immigration and Generations: Publications of the Youth Research Network 106]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, pp. 9–43. MINEDU – Ministry of education Finland. 2018. General Upper Secondary Education. Retrieved 30 October 2018 from https://minedu.fi/en/generalupper-secondary-education. Mirza, Heidi Safia and Veena Meetoo. 2018. ‘Empowering Muslim Girls? Post-Feminism, Multiculturalism and the Production of the “Model” Muslim Female Student in British Schools’, British Journal of Sociology of Education 39(2): 227–41. Niemi, Anna-Maija. 2015. Erityisiä koulutuspolkuja: Tutkimus erityisopetuksen käytännöistä peruskoulun jälkeen [Special Educational Paths? A Study on the Practices of Special Needs Education after Basic Education]. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Niemi, Aanna-Maija and Tuuli Kurki. 2014. ‘Getting on the Right Track? Educational Choice-Making of Students with Special Educational Needs in PreVocational Education and Training’, Disability & Society 29(10): 1631–44. Niemi, Anna Maija and Linda Maria Laaksonen. 2020. ‘Discourses on Educational Support in the Context of General Upper Secondary Education’, Disability & Society 35(3): 460–78. Niemi, Anna-Maija and Reetta Mietola. 2017. ‘Between Hopes and Possibilities: (Special) Educational Paths, Agency and Subjectivities’, Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research 19(3): 218–29. OECD – Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. 2018. OECD: PISA results 2018. Retrieved 13 April 2020 from https://www.oecd .org/pisa/publications/pisa-2018-results.htm. Peltola, Marja. 2014. Kunnollisia perheitä: maahanmuutto, sukupolvet ja yhteiskunnallinen asema [Respectable Families – Immigration, Generations and Social Position]. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Phoenix, Ann. 2009. ‘De-Colonising Practices: Negotiating Narratives from Racialised and Gendered Experiences of Education’, Race, Ethnicity and Education 12(1): 101–14. Souto, Anne-Mari. 2016. ‘Etnistyvät toisen asteen koulutusvalinnat’ [Ethnicity and Upper Secondary Education Choices], Nuorisotutkimus 4/2016, 47–59. STAT – Statistics Finland. 2017. Peruskoulun 9: luokan päättäneiden välitön sijoittuminen jatko-opintoihin 2000 – 2017 [Placement of Graduates of the 9th Grade of Comprehensive School in Upper Secondary Studies 2000 – 2017]. Retrieved 1 August 2019 from http://www.stat.fi/til/khak/2017/ khak_2017_2018-12-13_tau_001_fi.html. ———. 2018. Vieraskieliset [Foreign Language Speakers]. Retrieved 1 August 2019 from https://www.stat.fi/tup/maahanmuutto/maahanmuuttajat-vaestos sa/vieraskieliset.html. 162

STUDY COUNSELLING EXPERIENCES AND EDUCATIONAL CHOICE-MAKING

E

Tamboukou, Maria and Stephen Ball. 2006. ‘Nomadic Subjects: Young Black Women in Britain’, in M. Arnot and M. Mac an Ghaill (eds), The Routledge Falmer Reader in Gender and Education. London: Routledge, pp. 252–67. Troman, Geoff, Bob Jeffrey and Dennis Beach. 2006. Researching Education Policy: Ethnographic Experiences. London: Tufnell Press. Vipunen. 2019. Yliopistot – uusien opiskelijoiden aikaisempi koulutus [Universities – Earlier Education of Students in Universities]. Retrieved 1 August 2019 from https://vipunen.fi/fi-fi/_layouts/15/xlviewer.aspx?id=/fi-fi/Raportit/Yli opistot%20-%20uusien%20opiskelijoiden%20aikaisempi%20koulutus%20 -%20Yliopisto.xlsb. Walther, Andreas. 2006. ‘Regimes of Youth Transitions: Choice, Flexibility and Security in Young People’s Experiences across Different European Contexts’, Young – Nordic Journal of Youth Research 14:2: 119–39.

163

D CHAPTER 9

‘We Can’t Keep Her Here, She’s Too Bad’ Understanding the Role of Inclusion Programmes in Working-Class Girls’ Post-School Trajectories Hannah Walters

Since the mid-1990s, much has been made of the educational successes of girls (Ringrose 2007). In the UK, the performance of young women and girls across different educational settings continues to make news headlines. This ranges from young children – ‘Boys “twice as likely to fall behind girls” in early years’ (Richardson 2016) – to higher education – ‘Record proportion of women on university courses in UK’ (BBC News 2017). The constant reiteration of these successes has given rise to a new archetype, rendered as ‘Top Girl’ (McRobbie 2007), ‘Can-do girl’ (Harris 2004), ‘Successful girl’ (Ringrose 2007), ‘amazing girl’ (Rimer 2007), ‘alpha girl’ (Kindlon 2007), ‘achieving girl’ (Paule 2016) and so on, a figure now firmly embedded in our shared cultural knowledge regarding the contemporary state of education, and girls’ place within it. Feminist scholars have made crucial interventions into these narratives of the triumphs of the youthful female figure, complicating these accounts by demonstrating Notes for this section can be found on page 178.

UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF INCLUSION PROGRAMMES

E

the ways in which they feed into post-feminist and neoliberal discourses of individualized success (Pomerantz and Raby 2011). Such narratives also serve to gloss over the myriad complex negotiations that girls take during their educational lives (Pomerantz and Raby 2011). Others have pointed to the ways in which these ‘successful girl’ narratives serve to obscure the role of social class as a central structuring factor in the educational trajectories of girls (along with ethnic background) (Walkerdine et al. 2001; Ringrose and Renold 2012; Francis and Skelton 2005). In this chapter, I aim to contribute to this body of work through examining the educational experiences of working-class girls who, when I met with them, were enrolled on vocational beauty courses in the West of Scotland. This chapter will discuss the girls’ post-school transitions, the ways in which these were directed by their school experiences, and how schools responded to the personal and structural issues of working-class girls through referring girls to the Primrose Project,1 an inclusion programme designed for students deemed to ‘respond better’ to non-mainstream educational environments. In particular, my aim is to examine girls’ own perspectives on their journey to Primrose: their reasons for ‘choosing’ beauty education in their own words.

Background: Neoliberal Shifts towards Individualization and Marketization Transitions from school to further/higher education or work represent a key moment in the lives of young people, and youth transitions scholarship represents a major contribution to how we understand young people’s lives under neoliberal capitalism and contemporary job markets. A great deal of academic ink has been spilled in an effort to model these transitions in a way which speaks to the particular precarity associated with late modern times. While there are a number of factors involved in shaping young people’s transitions – including labour market trends, issues surrounding globalization, shifts in the make-up of the workforce, education policy landscapes, and so on – school represents one of the earliest stages at which these factors begin to come into play. Decisions made during school, such as subject choice, have the potential to influence a student’s future career, and towards the final years of secondary school, students become increasingly aware of available career options and vocational pathways (Harvey 1984). 165

D

HANNAH WALTERS

The policy landscape regarding post-school transitions in both Scotland and the UK relies heavily on ideas of individualized student choices, accompanied by support from institutions to achieve these goals. To this end, in Scotland the ‘16+ Learning Choices model’ relies on three ‘critical elements’: • The right learning or training, based on personalisation [sic], choice and progression. • The right support, including timely personal support and career information, advice and guidance. • The right financial support to help young people to participate in the option which is right for them (Scottish Government 2014). This policy approach is one which is increasingly commonplace, both across the UK and Europe. It also, however, fails to engage with the myriad structural factors which affect students’ post-school transitions. Indeed, in spite of numerous widening access policies enacted in recent years, research demonstrates the ways in which post-school ‘choices’ remain entrenched in the complex, structurally located positions of students (Furlong and Cartmel 2007; Reay et al 2001; Reay 2005; Archer et al. 2007). Choice-making processes of students from different backgrounds and identities are bound by specific ‘opportunity structures’ based on a range of different personal and external pressures (Roberts 1968; 2009). Feminist theorists of class have made important contributions to these debates through interrogating the ways in which ‘choices’ (including those pertaining to education) exist ‘beyond conscious, rational explanations’ (Lucey et al. 2003), and must be understood in terms of emotional and psychic responses to enduring class inequalities (Reay 2005). At the same time, these neoliberal shifts have given rise to a market model of education. In the UK, increasingly since the 1980s, schools have been entrenched in a neoliberal culture which encourages inter-school competition, as the marketization of education fosters a ‘supply and demand’ model of educating Britain’s young people (Wilkins 2012: 767). State schools across the UK compete for respectable places in national and local league tables, the result of a pervasive ‘A to C economy’ whereby a school’s success is judged based on the proportion of A, B or C grades achieved by their students (Gillborn and Youdell 2000). As Lucey (2004) points out, parents and students become ‘citizen-consumers’ in the ‘quasimarket’ of secondary school choice, as school ‘success’ comes to be more and more narrowly defined. These unprecedented levels of inter-school 166

UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF INCLUSION PROGRAMMES

E

competition have given rise to the development of so-called inclusion schemes, whereby students whose behaviour or attendance are deemed problematic by the school are referred to alternative learning environments – such as the Primrose Project, discussed in this chapter. This allows schools to avoid inflating their exclusion rates by referring students to inclusion programmes who would otherwise be expelled. Within schools, recent work has emphasized the ways in which school can represent a hostile space for girls. In the UK, sexism – including harassment, stereotyping and the use of sexist language – has been shown to be ‘everywhere’ in schools (National Education Union and UK Feminista 2017), and similar patterns have been witnessed across Europe (Biemmi 2015; Gådin and Stein 2019; Gouvias and Alexopoulos 2018). Elsewhere, scholars have long discussed the ways school represents a key site of the production and reproduction of gender (Gordon et al. 2000; Nayak and Kehily 2013), and a space in which dichotomizing gender cultures thrive (Maccoby and Jacklin 1987; Weis 2008). Researchers have demonstrated the ways that a cultural clash between students and school institutions can impact student-school relations and students’ broader attitudes towards education (Mac an Ghaill 1988; Ingram 2009). Others have noted that this clash can lead to working-class students developing anti-school cultures (Willis 1977; McRobbie 1991). These bodies of work provide crucial insights into the ways in which school is experienced by students occupying different structurally oppressed positions, how orientations towards or away from education develop, and how post-school ‘choices’ are formed. This chapter will explore school experiences, how they affect the post-school trajectories of working-class girls and, specifically, how these experiences contribute to the complex web of structure and agency which influences post-school transitions. In particular, I am interested in the various pathways the working-class girls I spoke with took to arrive at beauty education via the Primrose Project – how do they themselves view their journey towards beauty education, and what do they feel influenced this particular mode of transition? Of course, overall, there exists myriad complex and interwoven strands which contribute to the reasons a working-class girl might enter beauty education. Factors such as family background, individual interests, issues of geography and locality, school type, the policy climate, and broader cultural and societal issues relating to beauty, class and gender all play a part, as well as the enduring psycho-social influence of class, discussed above. This chapter, however, locates participants’ own perspectives 167

D

HANNAH WALTERS

on their journey to beauty education – their reasons for ‘choosing’ beauty in their own words.

Context: Further Education in the UK In the UK, further education usually refers to post-16 education where students gain qualifications lower than a university degree. For some students, this can involve staying at school (usually until they are 18) to gain academic qualifications (such as a Higher in Scotland or A Level in England), while others attend specific further education colleges. These colleges are largely distinct from universities, which tend to provide higher education rather than further education (though there can exist some overlap in terms of qualifications offered, in some cases). The participants of this study all attended vocational further education colleges, on courses designed to provide them with vocational qualifications and experience. In the UK, the merits of further and vocational education have been widely debated for decades, and there is a long tradition of further education being considered the preserve of working-class people, sometimes seen as a lifeline in an otherwise hostile educational landscape (Harris 2015). In spite of this, further education frequently comes under criticism. The real-world economic benefits of these kinds of courses were notably called into question in the Wolf Report of Vocational Education (Wolf 2011), which, at the time, made headlines in the UK for its claims that ‘[h]undreds of thousands of young people are doing vocational courses which do not lead to university or a job’ (Harrison 2011). A damning indictment, the report argued that many vocational qualifications were misleading and of limited to no real-world economic value, leaving young people vulnerable in a hostile job market and economic landscape postGlobal Financial Crisis (GFC). Of note, many of the harshest findings from the Wolf Report were clustered around the types of courses disproportionately taken by working-class women and girls. Through my time researching beauty education, I concluded that there were, in fact, a number of benefits of these types of courses, in spite of the findings of the Wolf Report (and further education’s generally low status). These include the provision of valuable forms of social capital for working-class young women and girls, as well as space in which meaningful work and cultural expression can take place. However, putting aside my own reservations about wholeheartedly taking on these criticisms, 168

UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF INCLUSION PROGRAMMES

E

beauty careers tend to be highly insecure, with generally low-pay and low-status jobs. Funnelling working-class girls into these roles thus carries significant ramifications for the entrenchment of gender- and class-based inequalities.

Methods This chapter presents the stories of Mary, Lydia and Ariana, three working-class teenage girls who were all enrolled in beauty education courses in further education colleges in the West of Scotland when I met them. They were part of the Primrose Project, an entry level programme designed specifically for young people who were considered to be more well suited to vocational learning environments than traditional school. While their course involved some academic subjects, it predominantly focused on beauty theory and practice. The empirical basis of the project on which this chapter is based is a series of interviews involving the feminist participatory visual method of the visual lifeline interview and inspired by the work of Thomson and Holland (2002). This entailed the co-construction of a visual ‘lifeline’ by me and the participant: on a large piece of paper, a lifeline was created (with coloured pens and pencils) on which participants were invited to plot their lives. This began with the year they were born and a drawing of their family and home life. This was followed with educational experiences en route to beauty education (primary school, secondary school, etc.), and beauty education itself. Finally, participants were invited to plot where they wanted or expected to be at certain points in their future lives (for example, at ages 25, 35 and 45). Discussions were designed to include educational, professional and personal experiences, perspectives and expectations, and a semi-structured interview took place verbally throughout the process. Lifeline interviews tended to end with my asking participants if there was anything else they would like to add before we finish the interview, in an attempt to empower them to direct the flow and content of the interview themselves. Throughout, participants were encouraged to include different drawings, words or emoji to capture their thoughts and feelings about each stage depicted on their lifeline. While historically this method has been used to access young people’s imagined futures, I extended the lifeline approach to incorporate students’ pasts and presents as well. This data was supported by observations in beauty learning spaces, such as practice salons and classrooms. Though lifelines 169

D

HANNAH WALTERS

covered pasts, presents and futures, for the purposes of this chapter, only the ‘past’ section of each lifeline interview will be discussed, with an emphasis upon school experiences in line with participants’ feelings on how school influenced their entry into beauty education. As will be discussed throughout, participants located school experiences as a key determinant of why they entered beauty education.

Contextualizing Behavioural and Attendance Issues at School A key finding of this study was that school-based issues arising from home or personal lives were not, from the perspectives of participants, taken into account by the institution of the school. Mary, Lydia and Ariana were all girls from working-class backgrounds whose lives were complex and punctuated with a number of significant personal issues. Mary’s mother died of an overdose when Mary was younger, which was followed by protracted experiences of familial estrangement and custody issues. Mary told me she ‘just hated high school’, and that her time in school was peppered with arguments and physical fights, some of which related to her familial situation and the death of her mum. She felt misunderstood and unfairly treated by teachers, and was keen to leave school early. Like Mary, Lydia’s homelife was complicated. She and her sister split their time between living with their mum and their gran, and did not have a relationship with their dad. Lydia described her mum as ‘housebound’ and living with numerous health problems. At the time of our interview, her mum was in talks with the local authority to negotiate a more suitable home, but Lydia felt her family were being treated unfairly, leaving her mum feeling ‘trapped’. Lydia told me that although she was engaged in school and academically successful, traumatic issues at home led to her school life and behaviour deteriorating, as well as to a number of serious mental health problems. She also experienced severe bullying, including cyber bullying, throughout school, and had been in several violent altercations with teachers. She said she felt she could not discuss these issues with others, and felt that her mental health issues were partly the result of ‘hiding everything’. During our interview, Lydia told me: ‘I didn’t like school; I hated school’. Compared with Mary and Lydia, Ariana’s homelife was relatively straightforward, living with her mum and stepdad at home, though she did not have much contact with her biological father. While the other two 170

UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF INCLUSION PROGRAMMES

E

participants’ homelives caused issues in school, Ariana linked her difficult time to living with a chronic illness which caused her a great deal of pain, affected her mobility, and prevented her from sleeping. She took medication and had good days and bad days, but her illness meant she was frequently absent from school. Ariana told me this led to some mental health issues, which made going back to school after long periods of absence difficult. She said her school experiences put her on a ‘downer’. All three girls expressed intensely negative feelings about school, reminiscent of anti-school cultures outlined by other scholars (Willis 1977; McRobbie 1991), and it is important to locate the school experiences of Mary, Lydia and Ariana in the structural realities of their home and personal lives. All three directly related their difficulties away from school to their behavioural and/or attendance issues. In spite of this, as will be demonstrated later in this chapter, their school’s response was not to try to keep them in mainstream education, but, rather, to refer them to a vocational programme. All three participants emphasized secondary school as a negative experience, all citing teachers as the main reason; all three linked these negative experiences to leaving school prematurely to enter beauty college.

‘Most of Them Act as If They Were Better Than You’: Teachers, School and Working-Class Girls As is noted earlier in this chapter, the increasingly neoliberal state of education emphasizes the importance of students’ individual choice and personalization of education, combined with educational and financial support to achieve their aspirations. At the same time, the neoliberal environment of marketized education and inter-school competition has given rise to a school culture in which so-called inclusion schemes are established to limit reputational damage caused to schools with low grades and high exclusion rates. For Mary, Lydia and Ariana, this is where the Primrose Project came in. The Primrose Project was heralded as an alternative to mainstream education for secondary school students deemed to ‘respond better’ to alternative educational settings. Students were referred to Primrose by a combination of educational professionals (teachers and school pastoral staff), social workers and psychological services. Referral to Primrose usually occurred following attendance or behavioural issues at school, ranging from violent outbursts to sustained periods of absence. As part of Primrose, students were permitted to leave school prematurely and 171

D

HANNAH WALTERS

enrol onto a vocational education programme offered in a local further education college. The girls I spent time with were all enrolled on Primrose’s beauty course. During our time together, students practised facials and make-up techniques, and made collages from magazines on make-up looks and products they liked the look of. As noted above, the girls who entered beauty education via the Primrose Project all had behavioural or attendance issues during their time at school. At the same time, none of them felt that the institution of the school responded sympathetically or fairly to the issues they were facing. Mary told me that she ‘hated secondary’ and left school prematurely at age 14. When I asked her why, she responded, ‘I didn’t like that because the teachers were just, like. . . I hated them’. In particular, she felt misunderstood by teachers, and treated unfairly. In the following extract, Mary discusses a time when some girls at school approached her to start an argument: The lassies came up to me but, obviously, I argued back and I got sent to the. . . like, the office and then I got sent home for it . . . ‘Cause I argued back. But this teacher was, like, I looked dead violent but they started it. So that was it.

Mary clearly felt unfairly blamed in this instance – getting in trouble for defending herself against someone else’s aggressive behaviour. I found her phrase, ‘I looked dead violent’ particularly revealing – Mary is imagining how the teachers perceive her, characterized as a violent student (perhaps echoing particular stereotypes of violent working-class women and girls). Mary echoed this elsewhere in our conversation, again indicating her feeling of being labelled by teachers and unfairly blamed for misbehaviour in class: Mary: ‘Cause, like. . . I’d, like, always argue with teachers and ‘cause, like, I’d argued with them before and, like. . . say somebody was talking they’d pure, like, blame me for it. So, I didnae really like any of them. HW: Why do you think they blamed you? Mary: Because, like. . . I didn’t mind, when it was me. I’d say it was me but sometimes it wasn’t actually me.

Again, Mary feels unfairly blamed for issues at school. Of note, she links this with her overall relationship with teachers – ‘So, I didnae really like any of them’. Like Mary, Lydia also felt unfairly labelled and singled out by teachers. She had a particular issue with the head teacher at one of the secondary schools she attended, noting: ‘she didn’t really understand me as a person and she blamed. . . like there’s 800 pupils in that school and 172

UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF INCLUSION PROGRAMMES

E

I got the blame for everything’. Not only did both Mary and Lydia express feeling unfairly singled out for issues at school, they both expressed a clear disconnect between themselves and their teachers – Lydia told me she felt ‘different’, noting ‘I didn’t think I fitted in’; Mary felt teachers ‘didn’t understand’ her, including regarding issues arising at school from her mum’s death. In the following extract, Lydia expands on her feelings about school, locating teachers as central to her negative experience: Well most of them act as if they were better than you and they would treat you as if you were nothing, like you were lower than them, like they’re high and they’re there, they are teaching you so you should be thankful. I was thankful that I was getting an education off these people, but it was coming round to their actual own lifestyle actually teach me in my life and I was thankful for it, but it was the way they acted. They acted very snobby and stuck up and the attitude like they were very sarcastic and I didn’t really like that because it was as if you were nothing and they were everything like it was terrible. I actually hated. . . they made me feel bad about myself by just being in their company.

In this passage, Lydia clearly holds strong negative feelings about her teachers, so much so that she started to feel bad about herself. She also speaks of a feeling of a clash between her and the teachers, and an accompanying attempt to inculcate her into different ways of being: as Lydia describes it, ‘coming round to their own actual lifestyle’. I see these feelings as partially class-based, and Lydia’s descriptions of teachers as ‘snobby’, ‘stuck up’ and ‘sarcastic’ suggests a clash between her own working-class identity and the more middle-class culture of teachers and the school. Indeed, this also resonates with both Lydia’s and Mary’s articulations of not feeling understood – suggestive of a chasm between the subjective experiences of these working-class girls and the broader culture of the school. Ariana also articulated a disjuncture between her and her teachers, though while Mary and Lydia emphasized a kind of active, unfair treatment, Ariana spoke of a more passive issue, feeling her teachers were unsupportive of her attempts to navigate school life. Her chronic illness and mental health problems meant she missed a significant amount of school, and returning after these periods of absence was difficult. She told me that ‘it took me quite a lot to go into school when I was late. I’d be walking into classes late and I didn’t like showing up late’. When Ariana was able to go into school, she found it difficult to continue with her studies: ‘you’d be trying your hardest to catch up and it’s just dead hard’. These times away from school led to Ariana feeling like she was lagging behind her classmates in her school work: 173

D

HANNAH WALTERS

Like, if I was like off for like a week at a time, two weeks at a time and you go back in, it’s like you don’t know nothing. People are, like, way ahead of you. You don’t know where. . . like sometimes the teachers don’t really. . .

Ariana trailed off here, but the inference is clear – she felt she was lagging behind in school work, and not supported to catch up with her peers. This was something which clearly caused her a great deal of pain and, in her view, exacerbated her mental health problems. Elsewhere in our interview, Ariana noted, ‘I didnae really speak to anybody at school, so it wasnae like I spoke to anybody to get support, if you get what I mean’. Mary expressed similar feelings about her teachers’ lack of support, emphasizing the disconnect between her and one particular teacher in reference to an upsetting incident that happend outside the school: Like, he pure didn’t care about what was said because it was outside school. He was like, ‘you never should have brought it into school.’ I was like, ‘but, I don’t care if it was outside school or no.’ He didn’t, like. . . he didn’t understand. I can tell you that.

As will be discussed next, these behavioural and attendance issues paved the way for Mary, Lydia and Mary’s entry into the Primrose Project and beauty education.

‘We Can’t Keep Her Here, She’s Too Bad’: The Pathway to Primrose All three participants did not feel teachers were fair or supportive. Indeed, they were often constructed as actively hostile and a key contributor to their negative experiences of school. A further outcome of this clash between participants and the school was the girls’ entry into beauty education via the Primrose Project. All three located their transition from school to college as rooted not in personal interest or aspiration, but their issues at school. During our interview, Mary and I discussed the different ways in which she did not enjoy school, including her involvement in a number of fights and arguments, and teachers’ responses to these. She directly related one fight to her entry into beauty education. I asked her, ‘so what made you go to [vocational education] then?’ and she told me about a fight she had with another girl in her school: Mary: Mmmhmm. But, like, pure nasty stuff and I was arguing with her. And I came to class and she’s like, ‘aw, what are you saying this for?’ And all this and all that . . . So I gave my bag to my pal and I ended up fighting with her 174

UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF INCLUSION PROGRAMMES

E

HW: Did you? Like a physical fight? Mary: Physical fight. *laughs* And ‘cause she was bleeding, they were like, ‘aw, why don’t we just put you into [vocational education]?’

Later in our interview, when this theme was re-visited, Mary stated: Oh, ‘cause I got in a fight, and they were like, “aw, why don’t you try to go to [Primrose]?”’. This resulted in Mary leaving secondary school prematurely. As can be seen from the above extracts, Mary does not feel this was her choice, but rather that of the school who ‘put’ her into vocational education. Lydia’s experience was strikingly similar, entering beauty education following a series of violent altercations at school: The head teacher in my old school was like we can’t keep her here, she’s too bad, we’re going to need to try and get her somewhere else and because [of my age] they put me in further education – so they put me here [in Primrose].

Again, choice does not seem to factor into this equation for Lydia’s transition from school to college. Like Mary, she felt the decision was taken out of her hands. By contrast, Ariana said she felt ‘invisible’ and ‘hated’ her teachers, describing her whole secondary school experience as ‘quite horrible’. These experiences led to Ariana’s attendance deteriorating, and she went into school less and less frequently. Echoing Mary’s and Lydia’s experiences, the school’s response was not to try and improve her time in school, but rather to encourage Ariana to pursue a vocational education route: So I was like, What’s the point of going in if people aren’t even gonna notice me anymore. So it started that I was going in and I’d be with less and less people. . . . So then I spoke to my pastoral care teacher and she told me about [the Primrose Project]. So I applied for that and got into that and that was just how I left . . . So that’s just how I left school.

Here, Ariana discusses the ways in which school led to her feeling isolated and alone – as she said elsewhere, ‘invisible’. Again, Ariana’s transition to college is rooted in her school’s response to her sustained absence, rather than an active choice. Her repetition of ‘that was just how I left . . . that’s just how I left’ serves to highlight the passiveness of this transition to college – this is not the story of how she pursued a career, but, simply, of how she left school. Mary, Lydia and Ariana all framed their entry into Primrose in terms of a web of negative school experiences. In particular, all three saw teachers’ reactions to their personal struggles – emanating from difficulties in their homelives, or mental and/or physical health problems – as unfair 175

D

HANNAH WALTERS

and unsupportive. A common refrain of these discussions was feelings of having been misunderstood, ignored, or unfairly blamed and singled out. As noted above, this speaks to an anti-school culture at work among the three girls, who all saw their entry to Primrose as the result of these issues. At this point, it is important to acknowledge that the girls themselves were not particularly interested in beauty or beauty culture, and prior to being referred to Primrose had no intention of pursuing such a career. Indeed, the process of Primrose referral is at odds with the emphasis upon personalization, choice, guidance and support at work in the ‘16+ Learning Choices model’. Both Lydia and Ariana had ambitions outside of beauty, to be a lawyer and to work with animals, respectively. In spite of these aspirations, the girls seemed to speak of them as distant and out of reach. From what I could tell, none of them had received any support in putting these ambitions into action. As Lydia noted, ‘I really do want to be a lawyer, but because I don’t go to school and stuff I’m not taking qualifications and stuff that I should be getting, like taking exams or anything that could get me into law school’. Of the three participants, Mary was perhaps the most clear in her discussion of beauty as not something she chose for herself: ‘Like, I didn’t even like beauty. Not. . . no, I didn’t like it. I didnae want to be beautician. I just did it because I wanted to get out of school’. For Mary, Lydia and Ariana, their entry into beauty education was punctuated not by personalization and support – as the ‘16+ Learning Choices model’ would suggest – but by a distinct lack of choice.

Discussion: From Exclusion to ‘Inclusion’? Schools, Neoliberalism and the ‘Primrose Project’ As part of this project, I was interested in understanding what influenced working-class girls’ educational journeys, and which factors shaped their transitions from school to college. While these narratives varied from person to person, a common theme related to a strong dislike of school, so much so that beauty education felt a better option: leaving school was the goal; beauty education was simply the by-product of this goal. Through further discussion about the nature of these negative feelings about school, flashpoints often revolved around school responses to difficulties girls were facing, and issues arising from these difficulties. These often involved behavioural and attendance problems, as well as issues directly related to participants’ home and personal lives. For some participants of this proj176

UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF INCLUSION PROGRAMMES

E

ect, including Mary, Lydia and Ariana, schools responded to these issues by recommending the girls for the Primrose Project, a vocational education inclusion programme. As noted above, neoliberal shifts towards the marketization of UK schools, ongoing since the 1980s, have produced a fierce culture of interschool competition, with schools competing for grades within a ruthless A-C economy. Gillies (2016) has demonstrated the ways in which these contemporary discourses of educational excellence place a relentless pressure upon schools to raise standards while simultaneously narrowing attainment gaps. This results in the production of a ‘troublesome underclass of pupils within mainstream schooling’, created through ‘mechanisms [which] operate in practice to manage the internal contradictions and tensions inherent in neoliberal market-led education reforms’ (Gillies 2016: 1). For Gillies, a central outcome of these tensions is a shift from policies of exclusion (i.e. where students are expelled) to one of ‘inclusion’; in Gillies’ study, ‘inclusion’ was in the form of in-school exclusion units designed to make disruptive young people ‘includable’, ‘justified as a progressive alternative to sending disruptive pupils home and isolating them from education’ (2016: 1). Gillies demonstrates the ways in which this exclusion-inclusion shift represents the result of the marketization of education, with schools eager to telegraph their low exclusion rates in order to remain competitive. Gillies’ insights into the shift from exclusion to inclusion provides a helpful framework within which to view the experiences of the participants of this study who entered beauty education via the Primrose Project. As Lydia herself said, her school’s response to her behavioural issues was: ‘we can’t keep her here, she’s too bad’. We might thus consider Primrose not as having developed as a means by which to support students deemed to ‘respond better’ to a vocational learning environment, but, rather, a mechanism by which to mitigate the reputational damage caused to schools by the ongoing absence and behavioural issues of their students. This market model of education can be seen to exert pressures on schools not to support students to make their own choices, but to ensure that disruptive young people do not impede a school’s league table performance. Overall, this chapter explores three working-class girls’ experiences and perceptions of their school experiences, and the ways in which these experiences represented a key determinant of the direction of post-school transitions. In particular, Mary, Lydia and Ariana all saw the challenges they faced at school – and, especially, the ways in which schools responded to their behavioural or attendance issues – as directly influencing their en177

D

HANNAH WALTERS

try into beauty education. The post-school options of working-class girls were severely limited and closely aligned to in-school issues rather than individual aspirations for particular career or educational futures. In Lydia’s case, for example, her personal aspiration to become a lawyer had to be abandoned due to her leaving school prematurely. Responding to working-class girls’ behavioural or attendance issues by encouraging them onto vocational beauty courses contributes to the enduring class and gender disadvantage in contemporary Britain. This response not only limits their educational choices, but severely impacts their future career options. It is important to interrogate the wider structural implications for these entry systems to beauty education. Advising young women and girls from deprived or challenging backgrounds to undertake vocational education represents a powerful driver for the reproduction of class structures which disadvantage young working-class women (Anyon 1981). Given the ways in which attendance and behaviour issues are closely related to structural issues of class, poverty and material disadvantage, the school’s response to these in-school problems – to refer students to the Primrose Project – represents powerful means by which class- and gender-based inequalities are reproduced. Referring ‘difficult’ students to inclusion programmes such as the Primrose Project represents an adherence to an individualized and pathologized view of class and deprivation (Gillies 2016).

Acknowledgements I am grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for funding the PhD on which this chapter is based, and to Duncan Bain, Anna Isaacs, Amanda Ptolomey and Martha O’Carroll for their thoughtful feedback on earlier drafts.

Hannah Walters is a researcher at UCL. A sociologist, her work centres on the intersections of gender, class and youth as they operate in educational, work, cultural and social settings.

Note 1. Synonym.

178

UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF INCLUSION PROGRAMMES

E

References Anyon, Jean. 1981. ‘Social Class and School Knowledge’, Curriculum Inquiry 11(1): 3. Archer, L. et al. 2007. ‘“University’s Not for Me – I’m a Nike Person”: Urban, Working-Class Young People’s Negotiations of Style, Identity and Educational Engagement’, Sociology 41(2): 219–37. BBC News. 2017. ‘Record Proportion of Women on Degrees’, BBC News, 28 August. Biemmi, Irene. 2015. ‘Gender in Schools and Culture: Taking Stock of Education in Italy’, Gender and Education 27(7): 812–27. Francis, Becky and Christine Skelton. 2005. Reassessing Gender and Achievement: Questioning Contemporary Key Debates. London and New York: Routledge. Furlong, Andy, and Fred Cartmel. 2007. Young People and Social Change: New Perspectives, Sociology and Social Change (2nd edn). Buckingham: Open University Press. Gillander Gådin, Katja and Nan Stein. 2019. ‘Do Schools Normalise Sexual Harassment? An Analysis of a Legal Case Regarding Sexual Harassment in a Swedish High School’, Gender and Education 31(7): 920–37. Gillborn, David and Deborah Youdell. 2000. Rationing Education: Policy, Practice, Reform, and Equity. Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press. Gillies, Val. 2016. Pushed to the Edge: Inclusion and Behaviour Support in Schools. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Gordon, T. et al. 2000. Making Spaces: Citizenship and Difference in Schools. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Retrieved May 2020 from https://www .palgrave.com/gp/book/9780333664414. Gouvias, Dionysios and Christos Alexopoulos. 2018. ‘Sexist Stereotypes in the Language Textbooks of the Greek Primary School: A Multidimensional Approach’, Gender and Education 30(5): 642–62. Harris, Anita. 2004. ‘The “Can-Do” Girls Versus the “At-Risk” Girl’, in Anita Harris (ed.), Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century. London: Routledge, pp. 13–36. Harris, John. 2015. ‘Further Education Provides a Lifeline: But Try Telling the Government That’, The Guardian, 18 June. Harrison, Angela. 2011. ‘Vocational Study Dead End Warning’, BBC News, 3 March. Harvey, Michael J. 1984. ‘Pupil Awareness of the Career Pathways and Choice Points in the High School’, Educational Review 36(1): 53–66. Ingram, Nicola. 2009. ‘Working-class Boys, Educational Success and the Misrecognition of Working-class Culture’, British Journal of Sociology of Education 30(4): 421–34.

179

D

HANNAH WALTERS

Kessler, S. et al. 1985. ‘Gender Relations in Secondary Schooling’, Sociology of Education 58(1): 34. Kindlon, Daniel J. 2007. Alpha Girls: Understanding the New American Girl and How She Is Changing the World. Emmaus, PA.: Rodale (distributed to the book trade by Holtzbrinck). Lucey, Helen. 2004. ‘Differentiated Citizenship: Psychic Defence, Social Division and the Construction of Local Secondary School Markets’, in Gail Lewis (ed.), Citizenship: Personal Lives and Social Policy. pp. 85–120. Retrieved May 2020 from https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/ differentiated-citizenship-psychic-defence-social-division-and-th. Lucey, H. et al. 2003. ‘Uneasy Hybrids: Psychosocial Aspects of Becoming Educationally Successful for Working-Class Young Women’, Gender and Education 15(3): 285–99. Mac an Ghaill, Máirtín. 1994. The Making of Men: Masculinities, Sexualities and Schooling. Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press. Maccoby, Eleanor E. and Carol Nagy Jacklin. 1987. ‘Gender Segregation in Childhood’, in Hayne W. Reese (ed.), Advances in Child Development and Behavior (Vol. 20). JAI, pp. 239–87. Retrieved May 2020 from http://www .sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065240708604048. McRobbie, Angela. 1991. Feminism and Youth Culture. London: Macmillan Education UK. Retrieved May 2020 from http://link.springer.com/10.1007/ 978-1-349-21168-5. ———. 2007. ‘TOP GIRLS?: Young Women and the Post-Feminist Sexual Contract’, Cultural Studies 21(4–5): 718–37. Nayak, Anoop and Mary Jane Kehily. 2013. Gender, Youth, and Culture: Young Masculinities and Femininities (2nd edn). Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. NUT and UK Feminista. 2017. It’s Just Everywhere: A Study on Sexism in Schools – and How We Tackle It. London: National Education Union. Paule, Michele. 2016. Girlhood, Schools, and Media: Popular Discourses of the Achieving Girl, Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies. New York: Routledge. Pomerantz, Shauna and Rebecca Raby. 2011. ‘“Oh, She’s so Smart”: Girls’ Complex Engagements with Post/Feminist Narratives of Academic Success’, Gender and Education 23(5): 549–64. Reay, Diane. 2005. ‘Doing the Dirty Work of Social Class? Mothers’ Work in Support of Their Children’s Schooling’, The Sociological Review 53(2_suppl): 104–15. Reay, D. et al. 2001. ‘Choices of Degree or Degrees of Choice? Class, “Race” and the Higher Education Choice Process’, Sociology 35(4): 855–74. Richardson, Hannah. 2016. ‘Boys “Twice as Likely to Fall Behind”’, BBC News, 18 July. 180

UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF INCLUSION PROGRAMMES

E

Rimer, Sara. 2007. ‘For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too’, The New York Times, 1 April. Ringrose, Jessica. 2007. ‘Successful Girls? Complicating Post-feminist, Neoliberal Discourses of Educational Achievement and Gender Equality’, Gender and Education 19(4): 471–89. Ringrose, Jessica and Emma Renold. 2012. ‘Teen Girls, Working-Class Femininity and Resistance: Retheorising Fantasy and Desire in Educational Contexts of Heterosexualised Violence’, International Journal of Inclusive Education 16(4): 461–77. Roberts, Ken. 1968. ‘The Entry into Employment: An Approach towards a General Theory’, The Sociological Review 16(2): 165–84. ———. 2009. ‘Opportunity Structures Then and Now’, Journal of Education and Work 22(5): 355–68. Scottish Government. 2014. Opportunities for All – Post-16 Transitions. Edinburgh. Rachel Thomson and Janet Holland. 2002. ‘Imagined Adulthood: Resources, Plans and Contradictions’, Gender and Education 14(4), 337–50. Walkerdine, V. et al. 2001. Growing up Girl: Psychosocial Explorations of Gender and Class. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Weis, Lois. 2008. ‘“Excellence” and Student Class, Race and Gender Cultures’, in John U. Ogbu (ed.), Minority Status, Oppositional Culture, & Schooling. New York: Routledge. 240–56. Wilkins, Andrew. 2012. ‘Push and Pull in the Classroom: Competition, Gender and the Neoliberal Subject’, Gender and Education 24(7): 765–81. Willis, Paul E. 1977. Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. Farnborough: Saxon House. Wolf, Alison. 2011. Review of Vocational Education – the Wolf Report. London: TSO.

181

D PART III

Support and Control Welfare Measures Handling Girls in Different Contexts

D CHAPTER 10

Becoming a ‘Football Girl’ On Disidentification and Appropriation of Gender Norms and Hierarchies in Sports-Based Interventions in the Swedish Urban Periphery David Ekholm, Magnus Dahlstedt and Julia Rönnbäck

Introduction Girls from ethno-cultural minorities and their absence from sport is a timely topic, not least in Sweden (Fundberg 2017). In today’s segregated suburban landscape of Sweden, participation in sport is highlighted as a means of addressing social problems (Norberg 2011) following from exclusion and social and ethno-cultural segregation. Because participation in sport is deemed a vehicle for social inclusion in society, the absence of girls could be foreseen as a challenge with respect to social policy ambitions concerning social inclusion in general, and such ambitions when it comes to girls in particular. One way of utilizing sport as a means of advancing social policy ambitions is the development of sports-based interventions, which today are an integral part of welfare provision at the

D

DAVID EKHOLM, MAGNUS DAHLSTEDT AND JULIA RÖNNBÄCK

local policy level (Ekholm 2018). In this context, girls with a migrant background and their sport participation are being paid more attention in terms of sport and social policy. However, research on the conditions, absence and exclusion of girls and young femininity within sport is scarce. In this chapter, we pay attention to girls’ social exclusion and perceived social problems, by examining how social inclusion is formed and managed through sports-based interventions in Sweden. The aim is to explore and analyse the conditions for girls’ participation in two sportsbased interventions aiming for social inclusion, focusing on construction of norms concerning ways of being a participant (football) girl. Empirically, this chapter focuses on Midnight-football (MF), a sports-based intervention conducted in two areas characterized by social exclusion and ethno-cultural stigmatization aiming for social inclusion, performed in two mid-sized neighbouring cities in Sweden. The chapter is based on empirical material consisting of semi-structured interviews conducted with coaches (n=8) and managers (n=3) as well as participant or present youths (n=21, 19 boys and 2 girls) in the two sports-based interventions. It should be noted that we have strived to include more respondent girls. However, the relative lack of girl respondents mirrors the absence of girls from the activities observed. Still, the interviews conducted provide multifaceted descriptions, both overlapping and diverse, constituting empirical material that can be analysed in the context of articulations made by coaches, managers and boys. Additionally, on-site observations of the practices were carried out as part of the study. The study in which the empirical material was collected was carried out from 2017 to 2019. In line with the discursive approach adopted, it is the statements articulated by respondents in interviews that constitute the empirical material analysed. The analysis is guided by a problematization (Bacchi 2009) and governmentality (Foucault 2010) approach, focusing on how discourses on social problems or subjects are formed in relation to governing practices. This means that constructions of social problems, how they are discursively constructed in terms of problematization, are intertwined with the activities and technologies of governing outlined to shape and (re)form the conduct of youth (Bacchi 2009; Foucault 2010). Furthermore, governing operates in intersections between a range of categories, such as femininities, masculinities, age, ethno-cultural and socioeconomic dynamics (cf. Bomert 2015; Lykke 2010). Accordingly, a discursive approach enables an analysis of how such categories are made and the kind of governing made

186

ON DISIDENTIFICATION AND APPROPRIATION OF GENDER NORMS AND HIERARCHIES

E

possible by such categorization (Bacchi 2009). From this approach, we explore how girls are constructed as a problem, problematized, through the intersection of gendered, socioeconomic and ethno-cultural dynamics and categorization, producing a particular stereotype of the ‘football girl’ of migrant background in the deprived suburban area of exclusion as a problem.

Previous Research Sports-based interventions have most notably been designed to target urban areas of exclusion (e.g. Collins and Haudenhuyse 2015; Kelly 2011), aiming to promote not least inclusion of migrants (Agergaard, Michelsen la Cour and Treumer Gregersen 2015; Forde et al. 2015; Long, Hylton and Spracklen 2014). Participation and inclusion in sport is often seen as a means of inclusion in society (Collins and Haudenhuyse 2015). Who does and does not participate in sport thus becomes particularly relevant when it comes to social inclusion. Also, inclusion through sport has come to mean several things (cf. Schaillé, Haudenhuyse and Bradt 2019), for instance: inclusion often equates to assimilation to the norms of mainstream society (cf. Ekholm and Dahlstedt 2017; Forde et al. 2015), which may lead to further othering of minority youth (Long, Hylton and Spracklen 2014). Girls and Femininities in Sport Research However, sport is not a homogenous activity. There are a great variety of sporting practices, associated with different ideals and norms of masculinity and femininity, in constant renegotiation and redevelopment (e.g. Forsberg and Tebelius 2011; Hedenborg and Pfister 2017). In line with this, football has been seen as a masculine activity, associated with male dominance and female subordination (e.g. Renold 1997). Importantly, sports-based interventions have been noted to address primarily boys and young men (cf. Ekholm, Dahlstedt and Rönnbäck 2019) and such practices are imprinted with norms of masculinity and in practice target the inclusion of boys in sport and in society (Kelly 2011). Sports-based interventions often maintain racial hierarchies, gendered power relations and socioeconomic inequalities (Coakley 2011). Previous research has paid attention to young women in relation to social inclusion in and through

187

D

DAVID EKHOLM, MAGNUS DAHLSTEDT AND JULIA RÖNNBÄCK

sport (cf. Agergaard 2016; Walseth and Fasting 2004). For instance, girls experience normalized gender oppression, upholding gender stereotypes, in boys’ and girls’ mixed sports activities, from leaders as well as boys ‘acting as if they are superior in relation to the girls’ (Carlman and Hjalmarsson 2018: 13). However, in some instances, sporting practices can be viewed as sources of challenge to traditional and stereotypical gender norms (Caudwell 2011; Oxford and McLachlan 2018). In Swedish research, young femininity in sport has been explored in different sporting practices. Still, the focus has been mainly on the construction of girlhoods and young femininity (Svender 2012) within traditional sports associations (Forsberg and Tebelius 2011; Rönnbäck 2015). The position of girls and the conditions for girls’ participation in sports-based social interventions aiming for social inclusion in society have received scarce attention (cf. Ekholm, Dahlstedt and Rönnbäck 2019). Organizational conditions, such as gender-integrated practices with certain rules concerning outfits and conduct, may be seen as an obstacle for some girls. Cultural norms are for instance said to be manifested through social sanctions from parents and other cultural gatekeepers (Ahmad 2011; Kay 2006; Walseth 2006; Walseth and Fasting 2004; Walseth and Strandbu 2014). Problematizing the Problem Approach Previous research on girls’ participation (or lack thereof ) in sport has been problem orientated, focusing on social barriers and cultural norms hindering girls from inclusion in sport (cf. Ekholm, Dahlstedt and Rönnbäck 2019). However, girls are active in negotiating and constructing their identities in relation to such cultural norms and are not merely passively subjected (Agergaard 2016; Kay 2006; Ratna 2011; Strandbu 2005). In this chapter, we explore how girls within sports-based interventions in a Swedish context are talked about and how they talk. Consequently, we shift focus from viewing girls’ absence as a problem, to the discursive processes constructing girls and their relative absence from participation as a problem and their conditional presence and participation, focusing on the norms concerning ways of being a participant (football) girl. Studies on youth sport participation and social inclusion need to take a critical approach to both the forms and notions of social inclusion that underpin the practices researched (Collins and Haudenhuyse 2015; Ekholm 2018; Schaillé, Haudenhuyse and Bradt 2019) and the kind of gender relations produced (Ekholm, Dahlstedt and Rönnbäck 2019; Raval 1989). 188

ON DISIDENTIFICATION AND APPROPRIATION OF GENDER NORMS AND HIERARCHIES

E

Analysis Midnight-football (MF) is performed in two mid-sized cities in Sweden – called ‘West City’ and ‘East City’, for purposes of confidentiality. Being part of the same overarching organization, the two programmes are orchestrated by a national foundation, primarily funded by corporate social responsibility contributions, performing similar activities locally in up to twenty different municipalities in Sweden based on different forms of cross-sector and inter-organizational collaborations. The programmes describe themselves as non-profit, politically disengaged and working for the common good, utilizing sport to promote social inclusion. The interventions are conducted by local organizations, involving local sports clubs, funded primarily by local sponsors along with support from municipal agencies through subsidies. MF consists of organized, yet spontaneous, indoor five-a-side football games on Saturday nights from 8pm to midnight, open primarily to youths between 12 and 25 years old. Notably, very few girls participate in the practices and football activities arranged. Girls are often present, in the role of spectators and supporters, but rarely on the pitch. This is a situation noted by the managers as posing a certain challenge and problem (cf. Ekholm, Dahlstedt and Rönnbäck 2019). The presentation of the analysis is structured in two sections. First, we highlight how coaches and managers describe the activities and the socio-pedagogical formation performed. Beyond scrutinizing the discourse articulated by coaches and managers, this provides a background and frame for situating the experiences of young people. Second, in the following section we explore how the young people in the sports-based activities reflect upon and experience their participation, as well as how they are positioned in discourse. Girls’ Absence and Socio-Pedagogical Rationality In this first section, we examine how coaches and managers articulate how girls’ absence becomes a problem and how particular solutions are developed, in order to shape the conduct of youth, as a response to this problem. In addition, we highlight different socio-pedagogical ideals in the formation of the conduct of participants. Absence as a Problem and Solutions Outlined In interviews with coaches and managers, as well as with other involved agencies, the absence of girls is recurrently highlighted as a problem and 189

D

DAVID EKHOLM, MAGNUS DAHLSTEDT AND JULIA RÖNNBÄCK

challenge. This problem is articulated in several respects. Firstly, girls rarely participate in the activities, i.e. they are most often absent. Secondly, when girls do participate in the activities, their performance is described as not in line with the coaches’ and managers’ expectations of proper conduct. For example, girls are viewed as not serious enough and more focused on their visual appearances than their participation in the football game. Thirdly, the absence of girls is associated with the girls’ ethno-cultural background, being first- or second-generation immigrants subjected to patriarchal rule (cf. Ekholm, Dahlstedt and Rönnbäck 2019), highlighting the intersections of gender and ethno-cultural background. In the following quote, one of the East City MF managers describes the main challenges of including girls within the activities. That is the weakness, which I believe, we haven’t managed and succeeded with. . . and that was also our ambition. . . that is with the girls. We haven’t reached that ambition. . . . It’s tougher for girls to be out late, like more difficult. . . and then football and girls. . . I’m sorry but. . . this is an immigrant-dense residential area. . . and among migrant parents it is not acceptable, they don’t see things this way. So, these girls, when they ask their father and say that they want to go out and play football until late. . . to ten or twelve. . . it is not [possible]. . . . We really look at it and try. I believe that, first and foremost, we need to have [female] coaches. We have a women’s team [in our club] where we try to recruit coaches. That will be a key factor to. . . like. . . when we communicate that we are starting Midnight-football for girls, one hour. First, it should be for girls only. There have been occasional girls playing with the boys, but very sporadic. But if you can communicate that now there are one or two hours only for girls and there will only be female coaches. . . (Sulejman, East City MF manager)

In this quote, the manager of East City MF illustrates a recurring discourse concerning the problem of girls’ absence from the activities. As illustrated, there are several specific reasons mentioned as to why there is an absence of girls in the activities. And on the basis of this particular way of understanding the problem of girls’ absence, certain ways of dealing with the problem are suggested. According to the manager, it is generally more difficult for girls to be out late at night, particularly so for girls living in ‘the immigrant-dense area’ in West City where the activities are performed. Thus, the problem of girls’ absence is located in a specific geographical setting, the urban periphery, where a large section of the inhabitants have a migrant background. In the quote, the migrant background of the inhabitants, and specifically the fathers, is described as part of the problem, as they are reluctant to let their daughters take part in football activities

190

ON DISIDENTIFICATION AND APPROPRIATION OF GENDER NORMS AND HIERARCHIES

E

late at night. Thus, the quote and analysis display the intersection between categorizations based on gender and ethno-cultural background as well as socioeconomic conditions manifested in geographic segregation. Given these challenges, the manager highlights two main ways of promoting girls’ participation: first, the recruitment of girls as leaders, and second, the arrangement of separated activities for girls and boys. A Variety of Socio-Pedagogical Ideals When it comes to seeing the activities as sports-based interventions aiming for socio-pedagogical change, there are certain rationalities that recur in the statements analysed. One key rationality concerns how girls are positioned as objects in guiding the conduct of boys. This highlights the variety of ideals of formation of conduct, when it comes to gender, focused on discipline and emancipation. Together, the rationalities of shaping the conduct of youth illustrate how gender stereotypical ideals maintain distinctions between activity and passivity as well as normality and deviance. In the following excerpt, one of the East City MF coaches demonstrates how the conduct of boys is in the foreground of socio-pedagogy and social change. Notions of shaping the conduct and behaviour of youth and thus enabling social change become visible in terms of how relations between role models and youths are described. Here, girls are visualized as objects. Boys are constructed as the target of social change. Then, I also talk about other stuff with the boys. . . we sit down and talk about everything. . . really everything. . . about home, parents, family. . . football teams. . . love. . . but, mainly, girls [laughter]. We help out. I help the guys with how to write to a girl. How to get girls, and how to treat them. And then there are guys who tell us about fuss with girls, and so I talk to them about what they’ve done wrong. (Shanzar, East City MF coach)

Here, there is a specific kind of masculinity appearing, with a focus on support, caring and dialogue. The more experienced role models within the MF activities guide the participants in several dimensions of life – particularly when it comes to issues concerning family life and relationships with girls. Here, there is not only a visualized discourse of heteronormativity, but also a positioning of ‘the girls’ as props and objects of socio-pedagogical interventions. In the quote, boys are characterized as active, though in need of education concerning how to meet and interact with girls. However, in this statement, there is no mention of girls’ agency. In

191

D

DAVID EKHOLM, MAGNUS DAHLSTEDT AND JULIA RÖNNBÄCK

the interviews, there are no explicitly negative descriptions about the girls. Importantly, though, the girls are not present in the descriptions in any other capacity than as objects for the conduct of the boys to be outlined against. In relation to such discourse, boys are the target of socio-pedagogical measures aiming at social change, whereas the girls are positioned as objects of such formation of conduct. In the interviews, girls and boys are constructed as essentially different from each other. They are both construed as in need of intervention and social change, but based on different and even opposite notions of participation and agency. According to West City MF manager Martin, ‘boys are the ones most seen and heard and causing trouble’, while ‘girls are feeling just as bad’ and experiencing ‘just as much worries in their lives’ though being ‘more introvert about it’. Repeatedly, in the interviews, certain barriers to girls’ inclusion and participation are underscored, associated with ‘culture, religion, family and safety’ (Martin, West City MF). According to the youth recreation leader of the local school involved in West City MF, it is ‘the parents, fear. . . and patriarchy’, that are hindering girls’ participation, illustrating how dynamics of gender and ethno-cultural background intersect. In the following quote, the West City MF manager Martin describes the challenges of including girls as different compared to the inclusion of boys. This, in turn, leads to differing ideals in terms of conduct for girls and boys respectively. The problem is that boys are extrovert and destructive. The girls are introvertly destructive, that is inward-acting. . . . There are very few girls out selling drugs. And very few girls are involved in violence and stuff like that. . . . There are many others. . . feeling bad and going to psychologists and staying home and they use drugs a few of them. (Martin, West City MF manager)

As in the previous quotes, both boys and girls are problematized here, however, in contrasting ways. While boys are construed as destructive in an outward-acting manner, the girls are portrayed as introvert, and having problems other than drugs and violence. In particular, girls are perceived as restricted and limited by culture, religion, family and so forth, which results in them staying at home and not participating in MF. Accordingly, boys need to be subjected to discipline in terms of restrictions and regulations of their conduct (Ekholm and Dahlstedt 2020), and girls need to be liberated from their own self-limiting behaviour and from patriarchal rule (Ekholm, Dahlstedt and Rönnbäck 2019).

192

ON DISIDENTIFICATION AND APPROPRIATION OF GENDER NORMS AND HIERARCHIES

E

Conditioned Girls’ Participation In the previous sections of the analysis, we have illustrated how boys and girls are positioned by coaches and managers. In this section, we direct attention towards the participant boys and girls, and their ways of describing the conditions for participation of girls in the activities. The boys and girls are strikingly consistent about the conditions for girls’ participation. However, the participants are not quite as consistent in terms of how such descriptions are made. While girls are quite explicit about the norms and power relations experienced when participating in the activities, boys are more reluctant in describing such dominance. In the following section, we highlight three dimensions concerning the norms conditioning girls’ participation as articulated in the interviews with girls and boys: dichotomization, hierarchization and the strategies deployed by the girls in order to participate on existing terms. Dichotomies In a variety of ways, the participant youths pinpoint differences between boys and girls. Here, opposites such as order and disorder are conceptualized to describe differences. Boys and their conduct are associated with disorder, and more specifically their trouble-making poses a threat to social order. Girls and their participation are also connected to order, but conditioned upon ordered activities. In the following excerpt, Lomana, a participant boy in East City, describes the differences between girls and boys by focusing on the notion of boys as troublemakers. Everyone can do what they want. Everyone is free. But I think that boys are more. . . boys do more stuff than girls do. Here, in the [Area], here it is boys first, then girls. Always, when something happens, you think it is the boys. In that sense, it is uneven. But otherwise, it is equal. How we live and such is equal. Everyone has the same opportunities, I think. But when there are fights and such, then it’s the boys. (Lomana, participant boy, East City)

Here, Lomana explicitly reflects on both gender equality and the differences between boys and girls. In the latter respect, he makes a distinction between girls and boys, based on agency, where boys are described as generally more active than girls. Even though all individuals, according to Lomana, are equal and free to act in whatever way they want, in the name of freedom and gender equality, boys seem to be more involved in what is happening in the Area – not least when it comes to making trouble. When there is trouble in the Area, there is a presupposition that 193

D

DAVID EKHOLM, MAGNUS DAHLSTEDT AND JULIA RÖNNBÄCK

it has been caused by some of the boys. Girls and boys somehow behave in different ways. The same kind of argument is illustrated in the following excerpt, where the participant girl Araksan, in West City, describes girls as in need of calm and order if they are to participate in the activities. It should be more structured. . . more people looking after things . . . like a security guard or something. . . keeping an eye on the game, ensuring that everything is calm and ordered. (Araksan, participant girl, West City)

Here, the conditions enabling girls’ inclusion in the activities are underscored. According to Araksan, security guards could potentially make sure that order is maintained. From this point of view, the conditions of boys’ participation seem not to be based on ensuring calm and order in activities. Hierarchies Beyond distinctions concerning the participation of boys and girls, hierarchies are articulated where the participation of boys is constructed as the predefined norm. This norm is prevalent in statements by both boys and girls. These articulations concern, among other things, presence, capability and feelings of shame. Apparently, girls are confronted with certain norms, either explicated by boys or at least implicitly noticed by girls. In the following excerpt, Yusra, a participant girl in West City, describes how she perceives boys’ expectations and prejudice. Most say like. . . ‘You girls can’t play football, so just leave’. . . It’s like that really. And we didn’t know how we would be treated. (Yusra, participant girl, West City)

According to Yusra, a common notion about girls concerns how they cannot play on the same terms as boys and, accordingly, they do not belong at the MF site. Additionally, the style and quality of play imbued in the norms perceived causes insecurity with respect to how girls are welcomed and included in the activities. In this way, gender hierarchies are formed, where boys’ conduct is constructed as the norm, in relation to which girls somehow need to conform. Yusra further elaborates on this particular norm, stressing how boys have practised football quite a lot, and thus are both skilled and capable in performing the game. In this way, the norms and conduct of boys and girls are dichotomized as well as hierarchized. I believe it is that. . . like, boys can play football. . . and they have practised and such. They think we start crying when we are hit by the ball. I think. . . this. . .

194

ON DISIDENTIFICATION AND APPROPRIATION OF GENDER NORMS AND HIERARCHIES

E

about judging people before you know what they’re capable of. . . that’s what happened often. But. . . it got better. We are not professionals or anything, but we know how to play, and we can handle strength and so on. (Yusra, participant girl, West City)

Importantly, distinctions are made with reference to being ‘capable of ’ playing football. The opposite – i.e. being incapable of playing – is associated with vulnerability and more specifically ‘crying’ when ‘hit by the ball’. This distinction highlights the normative hierarchy of conduct based on established norms of competence, according to which boys are conceived of as capable, and girls as incapable. At least, such discourse is something that girls, as well as boys, need to deal with (a topic we will elaborate on further in the following section). In the excerpt above, Yusra problematizes such discourse. First, she stresses the importance of not judging those who participate, but rather being open-minded before one knows their competence in the game. Second, she points out that girls are, and can certainly be, both competent and ‘strong’. Thus, Yusra’s description in a sense destabilizes and makes visible the discourse on gendered (in)capability illustrated. However, even though Yusra problematizes such discourse, the norm of competence, differentiating between being capable or incapable, is still maintained. Dichotomization and hierarchization between girls and boys, by means of gendered (in)capability, is prevalent also in the boys’ descriptions of girls’ participation. Generally, the descriptions made by the boys are less elaborated and precise concerning the reasons for girls’ absence, as compared to the descriptions made by the girls. When Taisir, a participant boy in East City, is asked about the absence of girls, he speculates about possible explanations. Perhaps girls are afraid and experience feelings of shame. Among other things, he says that ‘I don’t know. . . really. . . I think they don’t dare to play with other boys that they don’t know. . . and that they are ashamed and all that’. Once again, the participation of boys becomes the norm that conditions the participation of girls. Thus, girls’ participation is conditioned upon ‘daring’ to play with boys, whom the girls may not be familiar with. In the following excerpt, Waleed, a boy participant in East City, articulates the same discourse, further elaborating on what such shame may be about. They are ashamed. That is. . . girls and boys, they don’t have the same body size. . . So, like. . . if they do something wrong in the game, they don’t want to be laughed at. (Waleed, participant boy, East City)

195

D

DAVID EKHOLM, MAGNUS DAHLSTEDT AND JULIA RÖNNBÄCK

In this excerpt, Waleed starts out reflecting on the question of shame by talking about the different bodies of girls and boys. Accordingly, girls do not have the same body size as boys. Without making a straightforward argument, this sentence is then followed by another, highlighting that girls may be laughed at if they do something wrong in the game. Waleed’s talk, as well as Taisir’s description, is somehow illustrative of the way in which the boys reflect upon girls’ participation in the interviews. When analysing the interviews of girls and boys, it appears as if the boys are new to the topic of girls’ participation. During the interviews, boys seem to have difficulties further elaborating on and pinpointing the reasons for the absence of girls. As illustrated by both Taisir and Waleed, there is hesitation expressed in the interviews with the boys, as compared to the rather straightforward way of reasoning found in interviews with the girls. This is yet another sign of how boys are considered as the norm of participation, that girls’ participation is not particularly reflected upon. Boys are, seemingly, not used to reflecting upon their own position as the norm. Strategies Together, the dichotomies and hierarchies illustrated above form an imagery which participants – particularly girls – need to relate to. In the following, we will further elaborate on two diverging strategies or ways of relating to these dichotomies and hierarchies among the girl participants: disidentification from and appropriation of norms. First, one way of relating to predominant discourses on girls’ participation is disidentification. In the following excerpt, Araksan talks about whether to play football with boys or not. So. . . I wouldn’t go in and play a game with the boys. I would, like, never do that. On the other hand, it may be that the boys don’t want girls to play. . . and like: ‘No, but you can’t play ’cause you’re not able’, or something. (Araksan, participant girl, West City)

Here, Araksan explicitly distances herself from the norms and conditions of boys’ participation. In the excerpt, she suggests that boys may have particular expectations of girls and their participation – not knowing how to play the game. Given these expectations, Araksan describes how she would ‘never’ engage in such activities. Participating in the game together with boys is not an option.

196

ON DISIDENTIFICATION AND APPROPRIATION OF GENDER NORMS AND HIERARCHIES

E

Another way of relating to predominant discourses on girls’ participation is appropriation of the prevalent norms. In the following excerpt, Yusra illustrates a way of reasoning that is somehow opposite to Araksan’s: instead of distancing herself from the norms (as Araksan does), Yusra makes such norms and conduct her own. Thus, she appropriates predominant dichotomies and hierarchies. Sometimes, it’s like girls don’t have the courage to be there. ’Cause. . . I don’t know. . . I learned how to play from boys. So, I think it’s really nice to have opponents who are better, ’cause then you learn. So, it may be that most girls don’t like to play with boys. (Yusra, participant girl, West City)

In the excerpt, Yusra displays different ways of being a (football) girl – some girls, like herself, enjoy playing with boys, whereas others do not. According to Yusra, boys are better at football than girls, and therefore she prefers playing with them. As boys are generally more skilled at football than girls, Yusra describes how her own skills have been developed by learning from boys. Such reasoning maintains a positioning of the boys as the norm, and thus girls are positioned as outsiders. In the following excerpt, Yusra further describes her own performance in relation to how boys play football. From my perspective, I go there because it is really fun. I love the feeling of just playing football and everyone’s cheering when you dribble. When you are a girl and you just. . . ‘wow, you were dribbled’. . . It’s like. . . everyone just screams and cheers. It’s a really nice feeling, I think. (Yusra, participant girl, West City)

Here, Yusra describes her strong passion for playing football, but also the positive response she gets when performing well. Such response in turn illustrates the specific expectations on girls: a girl performing well in the game is not expected. In this sense, performing well as a girl could be seen as an act of resistance towards boys’ domination of the playing field. However, such resistance is still in line with an overarching performance rationality. The performance as such is not at all resisted, but rather performance is the norm of participation. In this sense, the norm of being capable and performing well as a condition for participation is actively appropriated. Even if the intervention is not based on competitive elements, the rationality of performance seems to condition the norms, conduct and participation. Though the intervention does not explicitly promote competition, performance and competitive elements are interwoven with how participation in sport is perceived. Along such a line of reasoning, Yusra

197

D

DAVID EKHOLM, MAGNUS DAHLSTEDT AND JULIA RÖNNBÄCK

further outlines her views on participation in relation to current norms concerning how to play the game and how to conduct oneself. For me, it doesn’t matter if it was boys or girls. Because, really, I prefer to play with boys. . . . I want harder competition, opponents. . . so you really play the real game and not like chit-chat in the middle of the game. . . . It’s like that often, they sit and like chat during the game. For me, that’s really boring. . . I was there to play football, not to chit-chat. (Yusra, participant girl, West City)

Here, Yusra elaborates on her previous thoughts concerning playing football with the boys and how to conduct oneself. She describes enjoying the tougher and more competitive style she associates with boys’ football. Furthermore, she describes the boys’ games as ‘real’. Yusra reproduces boys’ football as the norm, once more displaying different ways of conducting oneself as a (football) girl: some girls, like Yusra, enjoy playing competitively, while others ‘chit-chat’ their way through the game. When preferring the competitive way of playing, other ways of being a (football) girl are viewed as less valid. In all, rather than distancing herself from prevalent norms concerning girls’ participation and boys’ performance (as Araksan does), Yusra appropriates such norms and conduct, making them her own.

Discussion In this chapter, we have explored the conditions of girls’ participation, focusing on the construction of norms concerning ways of being a participant (football) girl. We have explored a particular case (cf. Flyvbjerg 2006) of intervention and practice, performed in a specific geographical context directed towards specific participant youths residing there. Accordingly, examination of this case provides specific knowledge about the intervention observed. In this regard, the knowledge contributed is not intended to be generalizable to other contexts of sport and youth interventions in general. However, the knowledge provided may notably pave the way for reflection, discussion and further exploration. We have analysed how coaches and managers articulate girls’ absence as a problem, as well as how particular solutions based on separatism and female role models are strived for as a response. Notably, this regards the particular girls positioned in the intersection of gender, ethno-cultural stigmatization and socioeconomic marginalization, constructing the girls of migrant background in the deprived suburban area of exclusion as a 198

ON DISIDENTIFICATION AND APPROPRIATION OF GENDER NORMS AND HIERARCHIES

E

problem. We have also highlighted reoccurring, though differing, sociopedagogical ideals, not least positioning girls as objects for directing the conduct of boys. On this basis, we have illustrated how boys are disciplined in terms of restrictions of their conduct, while girls are seen as in need of emancipation, from their own self-limiting behaviour and ethno-cultural norms. The discourse on discipline and emancipation is a recurring feature in the descriptions of girls’ absence and participation, articulated in interviews with boys as well as girls. However, ethno-cultural norms are not prominent in the participants’ descriptions about participation and inclusion. Three particular dimensions concerning the norms conditioning girls’ participation are illustrated: the production of dichotomies and hierarchies, as well as the development of different strategies of participation, where boys become the primary participants and the norm of participation. Most notably, strategies of distancing oneself from prevalent norms or appropriating these norms are worked out. However, both strategies act upon and maintain the existing hierarchies in different ways. Even though there are visible similarities concerning what is on the radar when talking about girls’ absence and participation, between leaders and participants as well as between participant boys and girls, there are noticeable difference in terms of how this is talked about. The descriptions given by the boys are quite well aligned with those given by the girls. According to this description, there are different conditions for participation between boys and girls, where boys are seen as capable, while girls are seen as vulnerable and associated with feelings of shame. Furthermore, there are commonalities in the boys’ and girls’ reflections concerning girls’ absence: neither the boys nor the girls challenge the state of male domination. The main explanations mentioned are not about the way of organizing the activities, the leaders or the boys participating. Rather, the recurring explanation for girls’ absence is placed exclusively with the girls, focusing on the girls’ shortcomings as participants. Moreover, the boys’ descriptions are more hesitant and briefer, as compared to the girls’ more elaborate way of reasoning. Notably, the girls who are subject to domination, possibly having reflected more upon their position as outsiders (cf. Rönnbäck 2015), may more easily point out and make visible the existing norms and hierarchies than those who benefit from such privilege (i.e. the boys) (cf. Fundberg 2003; Renold 1997). Perhaps the boys are not quite as used to reflecting upon the privileges they actually benefit from, in as well as outside the activities arranged, as compared to the girls. Thus, right there and right then, the boys – who are the subject of intervention in the 199

D

DAVID EKHOLM, MAGNUS DAHLSTEDT AND JULIA RÖNNBÄCK

name of social inclusion – are positioned as the norm. The norm is taken for granted and there seems to be no need to further consider and reflect on it. However, in relation to the wider setting of interventions promoting social inclusion, through sport participation, the boys (as well as the girls) are positioned as outside of the norm, and thus made the target of change, to become more like the norm. The activities analysed in this chapter are located in a specific geographical and sociopolitical setting, i.e. the segregated suburban landscape in contemporary Sweden. In this setting, particular attention has recently been paid to participation in sport as a means of addressing social problems, not least following from exclusion and urban segregation (cf. Ekholm 2018). Against this backdrop, gender equality, participation and social inclusion are attributed particular meanings and enable certain effects. When girls are conceptualized as outsiders, vulnerable and the subject of patriarchal rule, quite a stereotypical categorization is made, specifically problematizing the girl of migrant background in the deprived suburban area of exclusion. Here, it appears as if all girls who are living in suburban areas are the subject of patriarchal rule, rooted in specific ethno-cultural communities, in the same way. As compared to the descriptions given by coaches and managers, there is no specific focus on such problems in the descriptions given by the girls and boys interviewed. The norm as such is made visible, but not really questioned. Rather, a continuous normalization becomes the very condition for conducting activities such as the ones highlighted in this chapter. However, what is not made visible, and thus not made reachable for intervention, is the wider socioeconomic setting in the surrounding society, forming the basis for participation in sports as well as in society at large. Based on how the interventions are conducted and motivated, we have highlighted two main strategies of inclusion among participant girls. Inclusion is enabled, on the one hand, by disidentification of current norms of conduct, by being absent or non-actively present – consequently, not aligned with the expectations of participation and inclusion articulated. On the other hand, inclusion is enabled by appropriation of the male norm of participation and inclusion, by being actively present on the terms defined by boys’ participation and inclusion. These are the conditions of participation and inclusion: absence, disidentification or non-active presence, or active presence and appropriation of norms and gender hierarchies. In accordance, the chapter contributes by problematizing widespread and common-sense discourses of girls, their absence and 200

ON DISIDENTIFICATION AND APPROPRIATION OF GENDER NORMS AND HIERARCHIES

E

conditioned participation as problems that need to be confronted. Rather, we have problematized the problematizing discourses prevalent in the activities. By exploring the discourse as articulated by managers and coaches, as well as the experiences of participants, a variety of conceptualizations have been observed, illustrating commonalities as well as divergences. Given the fact that such practices most often seem to reproduce and maintain dichotomies and hierarchical gender relations, rather than challenging or changing them, it seems quite reasonable to raise critical concerns about their potential as means for social inclusion (cf. Coakley 2011; Ekholm 2018). In light of the inequalities concerning ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic conditions conditioning the football activities, it is reasonable to question the specific use of football as a tool for promoting the social inclusion of girls. Football is not by default a site of equality and inclusion; on the contrary, there are certain norms of masculinities and male domination imbued in the sport. Football activities are often coached and managed by men and for men (Fundberg 2003) and women and girls in football face a variety of challenges and conditions of inclusion, not least when it comes to sexism, homophobia and racism (cf. Caudwell 2011). Furthermore, the notions about football as a connecting force transcending borders and divisions between communities, creating bonds between individuals and populations (cf. Coakley 2011), must, based on the analysis in this chapter, be questioned with regard to intersections of gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic power relations. Moreover, the design and structure of the sports-based interventions, temporally located on weekend nights, is notably underpinned by preconceptions about male delinquency at particular hours and in particular places (Ekholm and Dahlstedt 2020). Reasonably, such notions may affect the outreach to, as well as the participation and inclusion of, girls (cf. Ekholm, Dahlstedt and Rönnbäck 2019). Accordingly, there is a need to question the norms of masculinities and male domination imbued in the football practices, as well as the design and structure of the sports-based intervention as such – at least, if activities are to live up to the expectations placed on them concerning how sport can be a vehicle for social inclusion. In order to provide opportunities for inclusion, to promote social change and to reach out to youths in a segregated suburban landscape, boys as well as girls, sports-based interventions need to do something more than just question the absence, presence and participation of girls. To conclude, if we want to understand why girls do not participate in sporting practices in general or sports-based interventions in particular, we need to direct 201

D

DAVID EKHOLM, MAGNUS DAHLSTEDT AND JULIA RÖNNBÄCK

even more attention towards the experiences and perspectives of girls (cf. Rönnbäck 2015), in and outside of sports activities.

David Ekholm is a researcher and lecturer at Linköping University. Ekholm’s main research interests are in the sociology of social work and social policy. Here, he has a particular focus on youth interventions aiming for social inclusion, and utilized by means of sport and leisure activities. Ekholm’s research is characterized by critical and constructionist perspectives on contemporary social policy transformations. Magnus Dahlstedt is a professor in social work at Linköping University in Sweden. His research concerns citizenship in times of migration and marketorientation, welfare and social policy changes. Some of his recent publications include Neoliberalism and Market Forces in Education – Lessons from Sweden (2019, edited together with Andreas Fejes) and International Migration and Ethnic Relations – Critical Approaches (2015, edited together with Anders Neergaard). Julia Rönnbäck is a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences at Linnaeus University. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on girls’ participation in basketball and their constructions and negotiations of gender and femininity. Rönnbäck’s research is marked by poststructuralist perspectives and a variety of qualitative methods, in particular, ethnographic fieldwork.

References Agergaard, Sine. 2016. ‘Religious Culture as a Barrier? A Counter-Narrative of Danish Muslim Girls’ Participation in Sports’, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 8(2): 213–24. Agergaard, Sine, Annette Michelsen la Cour and Martin Treumer Gregersen. 2015. ‘Politicisation of Migrant Leisure: A Public and Civil Intervention Involving Organised Sports’, Leisure Studies 35(2): 200–14. Ahmad, Aisha. 2011. ‘British Football: Where Are the Muslim Female Footballers? Exploring the Connections between Gender, Ethnicity and Islam’, Soccer & Society 12(3): 443–56. Bacchi, Carol. 2009. Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to Be? Frenchs Forest, Sydney: Pearson. Bomert, Christiane. 2015. ‘Intersectionality Theory and Governmentality: Bringing Together What Belongs Together?’, Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation 9(2): 79–93. 202

ON DISIDENTIFICATION AND APPROPRIATION OF GENDER NORMS AND HIERARCHIES

E

Carlman, Peter and Maria Hjalmarsson. 2018. ‘A Sport for All Programme in School: Girls’ Experiences’, Sport in Society 22(3): 416–31. Caudwell, Jayne. 2011. ‘Gender, Feminism and Football Studies’, Soccer & Society 12(3): 330–44. Coakley, Jay. 2011. ‘Youth Sports: What Counts as “Positive Development?”’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues 35(3): 306–24. Collins, Mike and Reinhard Haudenhuyse. 2015. ‘Social Exclusion and Austerity Policies in England: The Role of Sports in a New Area of Social Polarisation and Inequality?’, Social Inclusion 3(3): 5–18. Ekholm, David. 2018. ‘Governing by Means of Sport for Social Change and Social Inclusion: Demarcating the Domains of Problematization and Intervention’, Sport in Society 21(11): 1777–94. Ekholm, David and Magnus Dahlstedt. 2017. ‘Football for Inclusion: Examining the Pedagogic Rationalities and the Technologies of Solidarity of a SportsBased Intervention in Sweden’, Social Inclusion 5(2): 232–40. ———. 2020. ‘A Model of Discipline: The Rule(s) of Midnight-Football and the Production of Order in Subjects and Society’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues 44(5): 450–75. Ekholm, David, Magnus Dahlstedt and Julia Rönnbäck. 2019. ‘Problematizing the Absent Girl: Sport as a Means of Emancipation and Social Inclusion’, Sport in Society 22(6): 1043–66. Flyvbjerg, Bent. 2006. ‘Five Misunderstandings about Case-Study Research’, Qualitative Inquiry 12(2): 219–45. Forde, Shawn, Donna S. Lee, Cathy Mills and Wendy Frisby. 2015. ‘Moving Towards Social Inclusion: Manager and Staff Perspectives on an Award Winning Community Sport and Recreation Program for Immigrants’, Sport Management Review 18: 126–38. Forsberg, Lena and Ulla Tebelius. 2011. ‘The Riding School as a Site for Gender Identity Construction among Swedish Teenage Girls’, World Leisure Journal 53: 42–56. Foucault, Michel. 2010. The Birth of Biopolitics. New York: Picador. Fundberg, Jesper. 2003. Kom igen, gubbar! [Come on, guys!]. Stockholm: Carlsson. ———. 2017. ‘Idrottsrörelsen och samhällsnyttan – fokus på etnisk mångfald och integration’ [The Sports Movement and the Societal Benefit – Focus on Ethnic Diversity and Integration], in Johan Faskunger and Paul Sjöblom (eds), Idrottens samhällsnytta [The Societal Benefit of Sports]. Stockholm: Riksidrottsförbundet, pp. 118–30. Hedenborg, Susanna and Gertrud Pfister. 2017. ‘Introduction’, Sport in Society 20(8): 995–97. Kay, Tess. 2006. ‘Daughters of Islam: Family Influences on Muslim Young Women’s Participation in Sport’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 41(3–4): 357–73. 203

D

DAVID EKHOLM, MAGNUS DAHLSTEDT AND JULIA RÖNNBÄCK

Kelly, Laura. 2011. ‘“Social Inclusion” through Sports-Based Interventions?’, Critical Social Policy 31(1): 126–50. Long, Jonathan, Kevin Hylton and Karl Spracklen. 2014. ‘Whiteness, Blackness and Settlement: Leisure and Integration of New Migrants’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40(11): 1779–97. Lykke, Nina. 2010. Feminist Studies: A Guide to Intersectional Theory, Methodology and Writing. New York: Routledge. Norberg, Johan R. 2011. ‘A Contract Reconsidered? Changes in the Swedish State’s Relation to the Sports Movement’, International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 3: 311–25. Oxford, Sarah and Fiona McLachlan. 2018. ‘“You Have to Play Like a Man, but Still Be a Woman”: Young Female Colombians Negotiating Gender through Participation in a Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) Organization’, Sociology of Sport Journal 35(3): 258–67. Ratna, Aarti. 2011. ‘“Who Wants to Make Aloo Gobi When You Can Bend It Like Beckham?” British Asian Females and Their Racialised Experiences of Gender and Identity in Women’s Football’, Soccer & Society 12(3): 382–401. Raval, Sadhna. 1989. ‘Gender, Leisure and Sport: A Case Study of Young People of South Asian Descent – a Response’, Leisure Studies 8(3): 237–40. Renold, Emma. 1997. ‘“All They’ve Got on Their Brains is Football”: Sport, Masculinity and the Gendered Practices of Playground Relations’, Sport, Education and Society 2(1): 5–23. Rönnbäck, Julia. 2015. Det är väl typisk tjejer [It’s Just How Firls Are – About Basketball, the Body and Femininity]. Malmö: Idrottsforum. Schaillé, Hebe, Reinhard Haudenhuyse and Lieve Bradt. 2019. ‘Community Sport and Social Inclusion: International Perspectives’, Sport in Society 22(6): 885–96. Strandbu, Åse. 2005. ‘Identity, Embodied Culture and Physical Exercise: Stories from Muslim Girls in Oslo with Immigrant Backgrounds’, Young 13(1): 27–45. Svender, Jenny. 2012. ‘Så gör(s) idrottande flickor: iscensättningar av flickor inom barn- och ungdomsidrotten’ [Discursive Constructions of Girls in a Sports Initiative: How Sporting Girls Are Represented and the Working of Power], PhD dissertation. Stockholm: Stockholm University. Walseth, Kristin. 2006. ‘Young Muslim Women and Sport: The Impact of Identity Work’, Leisure Studies 25(1): 75–94. Walseth, Kristin and Kari Fasting. 2004. ‘Sport as a Means of Integrating Minority Women’, Sport in Society 7(1): 109–29. Walseth, Kristin and Åse Strandbu. 2014. ‘Young Norwegian-Pakistani Women and Sport: How Does Culture and Religiosity Matter?’, European Physical Education Review 20(4): 489–507.

204

D CHAPTER 11

‘Really, I Can Take Care of Myself’ Protection and Care in Danish Secure Institutions Ann-Karina Henriksen

Introduction What do you do, when a 16-year-old girl absconds from residential care, goes missing for several weeks, possibly engaging in transactional sex for survival and to finance drugs? How do you respond when a 13-year old, with a history of self-harm, does the same? In Denmark, Child Welfare Services can apply for temporary secure placement: the only type of institution that is permanently locked. In Norway and Finland, such restrictive measures are not allowed within child welfare services; however, in Sweden, the UK and elsewhere in Europe, children are locked up for protection, treatment and care provision (Enell et al. 2018; O’Neill 2001; Rose 2014). The confinement of minors is fraught with dilemmas between protecting and taking care of the young person, and imposing restrictions that are experienced as punitive and which are potentially harmful. This chapter highlights the gendered experiences of confinement in secure institutions, drawing attention to how the needs of girls are poorly understood and addressed.

Notes for this section can be found on page 221.

D

ANN-KARINA HENRIKSEN

In Denmark, secure institutions accommodate young people with a wide range of problems. 75 per cent are placed on grounds of offending, sentenced or in pre-trial remand, and 25 per cent are placed on welfare grounds for protection or observation. Only 10 per cent of the young people are girls, mainly placed here on welfare grounds based on concerns about repeated absconding with risky behaviour such as use of drugs and involvement in transactional sex. Confinement is viewed as a temporary but necessary response to serious, even life-threatening behaviour; however, in this chapter it is highlighted how secure institutions, developed to accommodate young offenders, fail to meet the vital needs of these girls. The chapter contributes to international scholarship highlighting how these girls fit neither into child welfare services, because of their violent and riskprone behaviour, nor into the juvenile justice system, tailored to the needs of boys (Burman and Batchelor 2009; O´Neill 2001). As argued by Myers (2013) in a US context, the girls who end up in juvenile justice have a long history of institutional neglect, because service provision is poorly tailored to these girls’ needs. I argue that at the margins of the Danish welfare state, welfare provision turns punitive by means of interventions that potentially aggravate the social disadvantages of girls and young women. The chapter draws on two qualitative studies on secure placement, one focusing on gendered practices and experiences of girls placed in secure institutions, the other focusing on risk assessment and decision-making processes in applications to secure placement. By drawing on an intersectional framework, it is highlighted how age in particular shapes the gendered experiences and restrictive measures applied to girls in vulnerable positions. The chapter initially provides a description of Danish secure institutions to contextualize the findings; the two sources of data are then briefly presented, followed by an analysis divided into three parts, the first part presenting gendered experiences of confinement and restrictive measures, the second part highlighting gendered understandings of risk and practices of regulation, and the last part focusing on girls’ experiences of (not) getting psychiatric care and treatment. Finally, the findings are discussed in light of similar institutional practices in a transnational perspective.

Secure Institutions The Danish welfare state is known for its expansive welfare provision for children and families. The number of children in out-of-home care 206

PROTECTION AND CARE IN DANISH SECURE INSTITUTIONS

E

has been constant during the past decades, amounting to approximately 14,000 or 1 per cent of all children under the age of 18, mainly placed in foster care (Lausten and Jørgensen 2017). Within the landscape of out-ofhome care, secure institutions are exceptional first and foremost by being locked, but also by their use of other restrictive measures such as physical coercion, isolation and body search in compliance with the Law on Adult Responsibility for Children and Youth in Out-of-home Care.1 The first secure institutions were established in 1973, replacing a small number of youth prisons, which were closed by law to reduce recidivism and focus on the rehabilitation of young offenders. The capacity of secure institutions expanded, somewhat paradoxically, particularly after Denmark signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991, with the obligation not to confine children with adults and to keep confinement as lenient as possible. In the heyday of secure institutional capacity from 2010 to 2012, there were a total of 145 places. Today, there are eight secure institutions with a total of 106 places, and every year approximately 600 young people enter secure placement with an average length of stay of sixty-five days (Danske Regioner 2019). Secure institutions are closed facilities. Fences surround the premises, staff carry alarms, and there is a strong focus on risk management and safety. The institutions are small, with two to four units, each typically accommodating five young people living in private rooms, sharing a living room and a kitchen. They all offer school and sports activities, as well as selected cognitive programmes aimed at reducing violent behaviour and motivating for drug treatment. The institutions mainly serve as surrogate pre-trial remand for young offenders; however, they are increasingly being used for welfare placements. Since 2010, placement in pre-trial remand has decreased by 40 per cent, while placement on welfare grounds has more than tripled (Danske Regioner 2019). Placement on welfare grounds can be based on either ‘danger’ or a need for ‘pedagogical observation’. These placements require approval by a Municipal Children and Youth Board, based on an application made by the case manager assigned to the young person. The application needs to justify that more lenient forms of placement will not serve the purpose of safeguarding and/or assessing the young person. Welfare placements usually last between three to six months; however, during their stay most of the young people do not know when their stay will terminate. The young people are placed in gender-integrated units irrespective of the grounds of placement, with similar restrictions in terms of access to phone, internet and visits, and they rarely leave the institutions during 207

D

ANN-KARINA HENRIKSEN

their stay. Those placed on legal grounds are between 15 and 18, while the minimum age for placement on welfare grounds is 12.

The Studies The analysis presented in this chapter draws on two qualitative studies on secure placement. The first study, conducted in 2015–2017, was an ethnographic study exploring young people’s gendered experiences of confinement and restrictive measures, social life in the unit and views on treatment and pedagogic practices. The study included multi-sited fieldwork in ten units in four secure institutions and interviews with twenty-five young people (twelve girls /thirteen boys) and twenty staff (m/f ). Twelve of the young people – nine girls and three boys – were placed on welfare grounds, and the analysis presented in this chapter draws on the narratives from the nine girls placed on welfare grounds. The second study was conducted in 2018 exploring decision-making processes related to placement in secure institutions on welfare grounds.2 The data consists of interviews with young people (two girls and seven boys), their case managers and twenty-eight case files (nine girls / nineteen boys) of young people referred to secure institutions in 2018. Nine of the case files belong to the young people who were also interviewed, while the remaining nineteen case files are terminated secure placements obtained from four large municipalities, to provide insight into trajectories in and out of secure institutions and wider patterns in decision-making processes. The study explores how case managers assess the need for secure placement and evaluate the outcome of such placements, and how young people make sense of their placement. From this study, data is included which relates to interviews and case files of the nine girls. The combination of ethnographic fieldwork inside secure institutions, in-depth interviews with girls, and case file data provides detailed and nuanced insights into the understandings that shape welfare responses to girls in extremely vulnerable positions. Both data sets were coded in NVivo applying some similar codes, which enabled analysis drawing on both studies. The findings of the first study on gendered experiences and practices inside the institutions could then be combined with case mangers’ understandings of risk and needs, which enabled an analysis which included both system understandings and girls’ experiences. The structure of the analysis is a product of merging these two perspectives in

208

PROTECTION AND CARE IN DANISH SECURE INSTITUTIONS

E

a way that forefronts the dilemmas but also the shortcomings of system response that comply poorly with the needs of these girls.

Intersectional Analysis The analysis highlights the gendered experiences of being confined for protection and care, while also drawing attention to how such experiences are intersected by age in particular. This enables an analysis of how structures of power and inequality intersect in the lives of girls and young women resulting in variant modalities of regulation and paternalistic care provision. Intersectional theory provides a framework for understanding not only how multiple structures of domination and identification shape women’s lives and dispositions, but also how intersecting categories modify each other (Prins 2006). In an intersectional perspective, ‘categories can exaggerate each other or subvert each other or even cancel each other’ (Kofoed 2005: 44). The analysis is not intersectional in the sense that specific categories are forefronted and systematically explored in relation to intersecting categories. The intersectional framework rather results in an attention to difference in the lived experience of gendered space and welfare provision. The analysis aims to illustrate how girls in vulnerable positions experience and strategize in a range of gendered, but not uniform, ways in their encounters with welfare provision in closed space.

‘This Is Bad. I’m in Prison Now’ The girls who enter secure institutions on welfare grounds struggle with a wide range of socio-psychiatric problems. These problems result in behaviour that threatens the health and safety of the girls, which is why they are placed in a secure institution. While professionals have assessed the need to keep the girls locked up, and do so in their best interest, the girls univocally express that secure placement does not feel like being taken care of, as in this quote by Cleo, aged 15: They can’t really explain why I am here, I mean, I don’t think I need to be locked up. I was picked up by the police, and when they locked the door out there, I got scared. The fence out there, it really scared me. I thought, ‘this is bad, I am in prison now’. They searched my things and did a body search. I looked at the

209

D

ANN-KARINA HENRIKSEN

bars in front of the windows and felt bad. I feel bad. It can’t be right. I don’t want to be here. (Interview, Study 1)

Most of the girls express a profound feeling of injustice related to being locked up in a place that looks like a prison and mainly serves as surrogate remand for offending youths. In their narratives of arrival, they recall the fenced perimeter, the bars covering windows, locked metal doors and feeling very overwhelmed, sad and alone. This is not only expressed in interviews, but also in the case files, as an extract from a status report regarding Amanda, age 13, confirms: ‘The first few days she mainly stayed in her room. She cries and wants to call her mum’ (Case file data, Study 2). Confinement includes relational and spatial segregation, which results in feeling alone and being cut off from everyday life, particularly because mobile phones are banned inside, and most institutions furthermore regulate communication with ‘calling lists’, designating a limited number of persons that can be contacted. Sara, aged 14, comments: ‘I thought it was strange, you know all these new people, like I didn´t know anyone and I couldn’t even keep my phone. I thought, “am I just going to be left here?”’ Feelings of being left and alone are reinforced by institutional rules prescribing that youths should spend the first couple of days in their room with limited participation in unit activities. This serves the purpose of slowly integrating them into institutional rhythm and routine, particularly if the staff assess that the young people need to come off drugs and were experiencing withdrawal symptoms. However, it reinforces the spatial and relational disconnection, and resonates with previous experiences of being grounded or secluded as institutional responses to acting out or not complying with rules. Upon arrival, all the young people undergo body searches, their belongings are checked for illegal items such as weapons and drugs, and contraband such as cigarettes, money or un-sealed toiletries are placed in deposit. The staff also assess the clothes that the young people bring into secure care, removing what is assessed as inappropriate or in violation of institutional dress code, such as tank tops, shorts or offensive prints. For the girls, tight clothing or clothing revealing too much skin is also placed in deposit. As explained by a female unit leader: ‘Boys will be boys; I mean they have all their hormones going off when a young girl comes in here’ (Interview, Study 1). Because girls make up less than 10 per cent of the youth, the staff are very concerned about safeguarding them particularly in relation to sexual violation, and precautionary steps include giving girls the room closest to the 210

PROTECTION AND CARE IN DANISH SECURE INSTITUTIONS

E

kitchen or living room area, always being present when a girl engages in unit activities, and prohibiting the girls from being in a boys’ room or vice versa. The girls are mostly recognized by staff as vulnerable, in need of protection, but also as dangerous, in need of surveillance, because they tempt the boys and get all their hormones going off (see also O´Neill 2001). Gendered perceptions of risk and vulnerability translate into practices where the girls are encouraged to wear appropriate clothes and take responsibility for containing their sexual bodies. This is expressed by Jasmin, aged 17, saying: ‘You shouldn’t put yourself on display showing your breasts and stuff; I mean it’s hard on the boys being in here and seeing these things’ (Interview, Study 2). The safeguarding and regulation of girls results in gendered experiences of confinement, where girls are observed more intensely by staff, constrained in peer interaction and punished for violating the rules set in place to safeguard them. According to a status report, this happened to Selma, aged 14, who was moved to another unit because of her ‘persistent interest and presence in the room of a boy in her unit’ (case file data, Study 2). While moving her is a precautionary measure, Selma is distressed. She explains her situation to her case manager, and the following is written in her case file: She (Selma) feels under a lot of pressure and feels alone. The other youth are a completely different type than her; older, boys and criminals. She has been moved from one unit to another, because she went into one of the boy’s room. She says, she just needed someone to talk to. (Case file data, Study 2)

Selma is the only girl in her unit, and the protective measures at the institution result in her feeling alone and different. In Study 1, all but two of the twelve girls experienced living in a unit with only boys. While the girls had various strategies for coping as a gender minority, both studies find that girls struggle to find a place in the unit peer group, which, coupled with limited access to phone and social media, exposes them to loneliness and marginalization. Secure institutions are spaces occupied mostly by boys and male staff, and they have been developed over time to accommodate their needs and interests (Henriksen, 2017b). This is reflected in the wood and metal workshops; the shared activities favouring contact sports such as football, hockey and basketball; and in the games and films available. Young people in closed institutions often express being bored (Bengtsson 2012); however, the boredom is also gendered as expressed by Sara, saying, ‘There is nothing to do here for girls’ or a staff member saying: 211

D

ANN-KARINA HENRIKSEN

The girls are often isolated, because we are either protecting them or because they can’t participate in the activities with the boys. I mean, look at the workshops, I wouldn’t want to do that, especially when I was 16 or 17. (Interview, Study 1)

The gendered space is experienced very differently by the girls; some are used to being part of boys’ peer groups and prefer having male friends, while others find themselves marginalized and even offended by the jargon, as expressed by Anna, aged 15: The boys can be like. . . male chauvinist, and then I think it’s like, you feel a little out-played or out-voted, like often it’s also only men working here and then, especially when I was the only girl here, I thought it was hard, because there were all these perverse jokes and stuff. (Interview, Study 1)

Girls are a gender minority in closed institutions, and furthermore mainly placed on welfare grounds; they are therefore often younger than the boys placed on grounds of offending since the age of criminal responsibility is 15. In Study two, which includes only welfare placements, the average age of the girls and boys is 14.8 and in Study one, the average age of girls is 15.75 compared to the boys whose average age is 16.85. Thus, girls in secure units deviate in multiple and intersecting ways; being younger, being girls and being placed on welfare grounds. This experience is clearly expressed in the previous case file quote by Selma, saying that the others ‘are a completely different type than her, older, boys and criminals’. Another girl, Marie, expressed the feeling that staff viewed her differently, saying: ‘It’s like they (staff) think girls shouldn´t be here. Like because we are girls, it’s worse’ (Interview, Study 1). The social disadvantage and gendered deviance, which the girls have experienced on the outside, is reaffirmed in multiple ways in the masculinized institutional space. While gender segregated institutions have been critiqued for reproducing gender stereotypes (Andersson 1998), I argue that the gender-integrated units of Danish secure institutions produce other forms of gendered vulnerability and disadvantage such as marginalization, intensive supervision and estrangement in an institutional space geared to offending boys (Henriksen 2017b).

‘Really, I Can Take Care of Myself’ The girls placed on welfare grounds all come from out-of-home placements, which had been terminated because the girls had been violent to212

PROTECTION AND CARE IN DANISH SECURE INSTITUTIONS

E

wards staff and/or peers, or had run away repeatedly for days or weeks at a time. Most of their trajectories in residential care are remarkably short, with frequent shifts, and quite quickly advancing into (semi) secure placements.3 In half of the cases in Study 2, the girls made the initial contact to Child Welfare Services, which suggests an active engagement to alter an untenable situation at home by seeking help. However, the help they received did not match their expectations. Some girls were unhappy about a placement far away from their friends and family. Others report that they ‘really didn’t like the place’, and cited ‘being bored’ and ‘too many rules’ as the cause of conflicts with the staff. All the case files include reports on the use of restrictive measures, such as searching and finding drugs in their rooms, the use of force, the use of segregation, grounding, or time in isolation rooms. This suggests that girls struggle to accommodate to the institutional structures, resulting in punishments for non-compliance, conflicts and ultimately absconding. There is no evidence of girls being subjected to more restrictive measures than boys, but their troubling behaviour, such as the use of threatening or bad language, physical violence and absconding, may be interpreted through gendered perceptions of what is considered normal and desired behaviour for girls, which also shapes the interventions set in place to regulate and safeguard them. In many cases, it seems that the more restrictive measures the girls are subjected to, the more they resist and claim their autonomy by running off and managing on their own. In the applications for secure placement (Study 2), which are issued by the case manager, the most frequent grounds of placement include absconding, transactional sex, use of hard drugs like cocaine and ecstasy, gang relations, and life-threatening risk behaviour in relation to intoxication such as standing at or jumping from high places. In most cases the aim of secure placement is to enable pedagogical observation for a consecutive period without the girls absconding or using drugs, while also motivating the girls to a life without drugs and risk behaviour. In the case files of Study 2 a gendered pattern of risk emerged in relation to absconding. When boys abscond, concerns relate to increasing drug abuse, violent/psychopathic behaviour in relation to intoxication, and gang related crime involvement, while concerns related to girls’ absconding include unhealthy sexual conduct, engagement in transactional sex, drug abuse and risk behaviour. These differences expose how professionals draw on somewhat stereotypical assumptions of young people’s coping strategies when living on their own. While feminist scholarship has documented 213

D

ANN-KARINA HENRIKSEN

that survival on the street is gendered (Henriksen 2017a; Jones 2009), scholarship on youth experiencing homelessness also highlights the similarities and age-related coping skills applied by young people such as couch surfing, transactional sex and crime involvement (Bowden and Lambie 2015). In the gendered risk perception, evident in the case file data, boys’ violent and/or sexual victimization and engagement in transactional sex are overlooked, just as girls’ coping through peer group support and crime involvement is omitted. This gendered interpretation of risk is exemplified in the case file of Christina, aged 14. She absconds from her semi-secure placement and goes missing for almost two months. Her case file includes statements from peers and street workers who testify to Christina’s case manager about her use of hard drugs; staying with an older boyfriend who provides her with drugs and lets his friends abuse her sexually; spending time in Christiania (a place known for, amongst other things, selling drugs); and an incidence of threatening to jump out of a window on the sixth floor. This anecdotal evidence of deviance and life-threatening risk behaviour is included in her application for secure care, although Christina claims that she spent the entire time with a friend living outside town, repeatedly denying having been with older men, or having jumped out of a window. These objections are included in her case file, but not in the application. Christina is very unhappy about her placement, which she claims to be the main reason for running and staying away. Text messages to her mum, which are included in her case file, reveal that she is very unhappy and struggles to get regular sleep and meals. Thus, absconding is not a joyride for her, but a response to her residential placement, as suggested in a text message: ‘I am not feeling well, but I just don’t want to stay at x (semi-closed institution)’ (Case file data, Study 2). Eventually she turns up at her mother’s house and is forced to return to the institution. To prevent Christina from running off again, she is placed in a secure institution to enable an ‘initial period of observation’. Christina objects, arguing ‘it’s really hard core types living there’. She explains to her case manager that she feels lonely and wants to be in a small place with someone she can relate to and connect with over time. While her objections and perspectives are included in the application, they do not prevent secure placement for three months. Considering the use of restrictive measures, risk assessments and secure placements, it seems fair to suggest that the girls in these two studies did not get the help they desired or expected from Child Welfare Services. The multiple placements and repeated periods of absconding sparked a 214

PROTECTION AND CARE IN DANISH SECURE INSTITUTIONS

E

desire to take control of their lives and a strong sense of being able to take care of themselves. However, the structured and regulated everyday life in secure placement does not support such notions. In the secure institutions staff consider the girls to be largely unable to take care of themselves, recognizing them as ‘very demanding’, ‘limitless’, and ‘in need of structure and predictability’ (Interviews, Study 1). While ‘limitless’, when applied to boys, refers to having no respect for authorities and other people’s boundaries, when applied to girls, it implies no respect for their own (sexual and emotional) boundaries. Hence, the failure to maintain personal boundaries renders them vulnerable to abusive sexual relations. For about half of the girls, staff explained, sexualized behavior is how they generally relate to men. She has been living on the street for a while, so she is probably used to doing quite a few things for dope and a place to sleep. (Male ground staff, Study 1) She needs help in getting attention from the others, when her sexualized behaviour is taken away. It´s been her behaviour since she was four, so we may not be able to change that in three months. (Female ground staff, Study 1)

Intimacy between the young people is prohibited, however relationships do develop, and sexual encounters occasionally take place. The staff view such sexual relations as exploitative and unequal, wherein the boys use the girls for sex, and the girls mostly mistake sex for affection. In some cases, the staff viewed girls’ involvement in exploitative sexual relations as a form of self-harm, thus merging discourses of deviant sexuality and pathology to legitimize confinement and regulation. Sandra was a 15-year-old girl who the staff described as having ‘no sexual boundaries whatsoever’ and claimed that she had slept with many of the boys in the unit. As expressed by a unit leader, paraphrasing a correctional talk he was going to have with her, ‘I will explain to her that we are worried about her and that it is so abnormal. It is not healthy for you to have sex with all of them. You can deny it, but. . .’. The disciplining talks were bolstered by more punitive practices, such as subjecting Sandra to ‘one-on-one’, which involved constant interaction with a staff member and the denial of interactions with peers, or confinement in her room for weeks at a time. Sandra denied having had sexual relations with any of the boys and claimed that ‘really, I can take care of myself ’. She finds the protective measures unnecessary and insulting, saying, ‘it makes me feel like a dog’, because she is forced to follow a staff member, rather than the staff member following her. Concurrently, she spends most of her time in 215

D

ANN-KARINA HENRIKSEN

her room to escape the surveillance, sleeping and waiting for the sanction to be lifted. The construction of girls as overly sexual and unable to take care of themselves positioned the girls as vulnerable and in need of paternalistic guardianship to regulate access to their bodies and sexual desire. As argued by Vogel (2018), their ‘endeavor for autonomy’ is curtailed in secure institutions and claims of self-mastery largely serve to reaffirm the institutional understanding of them as being in need of support and protection.

‘I Need Psychiatric Treatment, Not This Detention-People Treatment’ When reading through the case file data (Study 2) and listening to the life narratives (Study 1), a pattern emerged regarding the mental health of the girls. In Study two, all the nine girls have multiple psychiatric diagnoses and/or have been admitted to psychiatric units related to self-harm, suicide or ‘hearing voices’. In Study 1, six out of twelve girls are described or describe themselves as having serious psychiatric problems such as anxiety, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), depression, or being bipolar, suicidal or self-harming. It is remarkable that almost all the girls have experienced what could be termed a traumatizing event: the recent death of a parent or sibling, or sexual violence by slightly older peers or male friends. Staff assessed that nine out of ten girls in secure care had been traumatized by such experiences. They spoke about the girls as struggling with multiple forms of socio-psychiatric problems, as in this quote by a unit leader: ‘We only get a few girls in here, but the ones we get are very demanding. They have serious diagnoses, low IQ, and suffer from massive neglect’. While mental health problems are recognized by staff and well described in their case files, psychiatric treatment is not the main purpose of their secure placement. The emphasis lies rather in safeguarding them, assessing them and regulating their behaviour in everyday interactions. This is exemplified in the case file data of Mariam (Study 2). She is placed in secure care just prior to her fourteenth birthday due to repeated absconding, abuse of hard drugs and engagement in transactional sex that is considered harmful/abusive. Her case file portrays an understanding of her risk behaviour as being a form of self-harm and thus a symptom of her mental health problems. A statement issued by her secure institution says: ‘Mariam is placed in a unit with five young boys. They are in surro216

PROTECTION AND CARE IN DANISH SECURE INSTITUTIONS

E

gate custody, but it is assessed that she is in the right unit and she is being constantly observed by the staff ’ (Case file data, Study 2). Thus, the main concern seems to relate to her safety, while living in a unit with five young offenders, and being constantly observed by staff resonates poorly with her needs of care relating to recent trauma, sexual violence and self-harming practices. Staff descriptions of her behaviour suggests that secure placement largely reaffirms her gendered vulnerability and coping strategies acquired on the outside. Her final assessment includes insights on her first weeks in the secure unit. It says: Mariam is very limitless verbally and physically in relation to both staff and unit peers. She is observed to be flirtatious and wants to touch the male staff. She also talks about her sexual experiences, including how many she has slept with. The other youth reject her and do not express interest in her stories . . . Mariam struggles with not getting things her way or in demand situations, getting very aggressive and violent. She yells and screams, while she hits and kicks everything in her proximity, . . . yelling things like ‘you don’t understand anything. . . I am a complete mess. . . you are completely messing me up. (Case file data, Study 2)

It appears that her defiance is largely interpreted as bad behaviour, which, according to the assessment, results in distancing by the unit peers and violent conflicts with staff. While the extract includes some recognition of the pain which Mariam is experiencing, the emphasis lies on describing her immature, even hysteric, behaviour in demand situations, her poor abilities to take care of herself, and her future needs for a ‘structured and predictable environment’. Some inconsistency seems to be evident: between professionals’ understanding of the girls’ troubles and the failure to address these troubles explicitly in the care plan which guides the pedagogical intervention during the secure placement. A study on sexually abused girls in secure accommodation in Scotland suggest that girls’ needs relate to being in a safe and calm space, which can provide ‘continuity of care’ (Creegan et al. 2005). Within a trauma-informed approach, the guiding question for care practices is ‘what has happened to you?’ rather than ‘what have you done?’ (Covington and Bloom 2007), which provides an entirely different framework for understanding girls’ behaviour and acting out. Some of the girls have serious psychiatric problems such as anxiety, depression, self-harm or are suicidal. They have been in and out of psychiatric units, with short admittances to intensive care, but where diagnosing has been challenged by the girls’ absconding and use of drugs. In Denmark, much attention has been placed on reducing restrictive measures 217

D

ANN-KARINA HENRIKSEN

in adolescent psychiatry, and confinement is used as a very last resort, rarely exceeding a few days. This renders a small group of very vulnerable young people with limited possibilities for long-term psychiatric care and treatment. Some of them are referred to secure institutions, which staff and management express concerns about. One unit leader felt that young people with severe psychiatric problems deteriorate in secure care because of being locked up; another unit leader emphasized the lack of treatment: ‘They (the girls with serious diagnoses) end up in a vacuum. In the psychiatric system, they consider them too dangerous, and we say, “Yes she is dangerous, but we cannot provide her with the treatment she needs”’ (Interview, Study 1). Secure institutions can apply a range of restrictive measures that are not allowed in other residential institutions. Besides confinement, staff can conduct room and body searches, clear the rooms of personal items, observe them night and day, and ultimately place them in an isolation room. While these measures serve to protect the girls from harming themselves or others, they are often experienced as punitive. The staff generally aim to provide care based on insight into the girls’ troubles and psychiatric diagnoses; however, staff competences vary especially among temporary staff. The girls report experiencing a lack of insight in their troubles, as Anna, aged 15: It’s difficult with the staff, because they have different solutions and they don’t see a lot like me, because I am not here because of crime, I have psychiatric problems and. . . some of the staff don’t know how to handle that. That makes you uncertain, it doesn’t feel safe, not knowing what they will do. (Interview, Study 1)

Other girls complain about not being provided with treatment. This is also evident in the case file data of Study 2, as illustrated in an adjudication from the Municipal Children and Youth Board, which explicitly states ADHD treatment as the main grounds for one secure placement, while the girl complains to her case manager after two months, saying: ‘We are not doing anything, I am not getting any treatment’ (Case file data, Study 2). The distress of Julia, aged 16, was more explicit, since her stay had been repeatedly extended and she desperately wanted to get out of the secure unit, which she referred to ‘as a place for offenders’. She was self-harming and suicidal; she frequently experienced having her room cleared of all items, was subjected to twenty-four-hour observation, was exempted from many unit activities, and had frequent conflicts with 218

PROTECTION AND CARE IN DANISH SECURE INSTITUTIONS

E

staff, resulting in twelve ‘time-outs’ in the isolation cell during her stay, which exceeded eight months. She said, ‘I am tired of this detentionpeople help, I want psychiatric help’. While her reasons for self-harm were complex, she expressed that self-harm could result in being sent to psychiatric hospital, thus using her body as a site of agency and resistance to her continued confinement. The boys in the unit distanced themselves, unable to fully comprehend her behaviour, finding her both annoying and misplaced, as expressed by one of the boys: ‘That girl, she doesn’t belong in a place like this; she belongs in a psychiatric ward. This is for criminals. She is something different, like completely’ (Interview, Study 1). Thus, her gender deviance intersects with her psychiatric troubles, which reaffirms her as something different, and her experience of being misplaced and denied treatment.

Conclusion This chapter has focused on the welfare provision for the most troubled and troublesome girls, who are placed in secure institutions on welfare grounds. I argue that the increasing number of welfare placements in Danish secure units suggests a punitive turn in the welfare provision for the most troubled young people. This punitive turn is gendered in the sense that girls in secure institutions experience marginalization, gendered control and regulation, and are provided with inadequate treatment particularly in relation to trauma and mental illness. These findings resonate with earlier research in the UK highlighting that girls with behavioural problems fall between two stools, as they are not easily accommodated by services provided by Child Protection or juvenile justice (Burman and Batchelor 2009). The analysis of gendered regulation and control also resonates with research documenting the regulation of sexuality and gender as a key concern in social work with troubled young women (Överlien 2003). There is even a resemblance to historic studies conducted on case file data from the 1950s and 1960s in Sweden (Ericsson and Jon 2006) and Denmark (Kirkebæk 2005), where young women were placed in remote or locked institutions based on concerns about the risk and dangers stemming from women’s deviant sexuality and gender performance. These concerns and understandings of risk shape the interventions offered to troubled and troublesome girls, which results in interventions that are not tailored to the range of needs these young women have. 219

D

ANN-KARINA HENRIKSEN

While it is quite common for child protection to provide confinement for minors on legal and welfare grounds, it matters how these groups are integrated and balanced at the unit level. Danish secure institutions are unique by Western standards being both gender-integrated and integrated on grounds of placement at the unit level. In Sweden, secure institutions largely keep the groups in separate units and locked units are gender segregated (Laanemets and Khristiansen 2008). In the UK, young people can also be held in surrogate remand in Child Protection, however as a minority to the children living here in regular out-of-home placements (O´Neill 2001). The intersectional framework applied in this chapter highlights the multiple axes of power and difference that shape youths’ experiences of confinement. In a secure unit, girls are positioned within intersecting categories of deviance in terms of gender, age and placement grounds, which potentially reaffirms the devalued sense of self and poor mental health that the girls carry into these secure institutions. These issues need careful consideration in the planning and development of effective interventions for troubled and troublesome youths. Professionals generally argue that secure placement is short, constituting a ‘break’ from chaotic lives and a chance to calm down and set a new course. The girls in the two studies all agree that they need help, including out-of-home placement, but they unanimously object to being confined in a place serving mainly as surrogate remand. The girls may not have a clear idea about alternatives to secure placement, but they express some ideas about what an intervention could look like. Ideally, they say, it should be ‘a calm space’ or ‘a small place’, where they do not have to relate to a lot of other young people and different staff. None of them desire to be in place only for girls, but they do talk about ‘a place with girl-things’. Some of them just want ‘a space of my own’, with support from a person they can relate to and build trust over time. Some want to be supported in re-establishing relations with a parent and eventually live at home. Unfortunately, the case files suggest different trajectories. Most of the girls enter a semi-secure placement immediately after secure care or they are placed in residential care, often one they have lived in and been evicted from previously. Many of the girls have multiple secure placements before they become too old for Child Welfare Services. Confinement first and foremost serves the purpose of safeguarding the girls; however, the failure to address the problems causing them to act out could have enduring negative effects on their successful transition to adulthood. 220

PROTECTION AND CARE IN DANISH SECURE INSTITUTIONS

E

Ann-Karina Henriksen is an associate professor at the Department for Social Work, Copenhagen University College, Denmark. She holds an MA degree in social anthropology and a PhD in social science. Her research is qualitative, focusing on risk behaviour, gender and social disadvantage among youth. She has conducted research in South Africa and Denmark and has published particularly on girls’ violent conflicts and placement in secure institutions.

Notes 1. LBK 507, Lov om voksenansvar for anbragte børn og unge. 2. This study was conducted with Rikke Cecilie Bjerrum Refsgaard. 3. A semi-secure placement includes the possibility of being confined for up to thirty days per year if the terms of placement are violated.

References Andersson, Berit. 1998. Ett § 12-hem för flickor: Omdefinitioner i ungdomsvården. Rapport nr 2 1998, 2 [A § 12-Home for Girls: Redefinitions in the Protective Services for Youth]. Stockholm: Statens Institutionsstyrelse. Bengtsson, Tea Torbenfeldt. 2012. ‘Boredom and Action – Experiences from Youth Confinement’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 41(5): 526–53. Bowden, Francesca and Ian Lambie. 2015. ‘What Makes Youth Run or Stay? A Review of the Literature on Absconding’, Aggression and Violent Behavior 25: 266–79. Burman, Michelle and Susan Batchelor. 2009. ‘Between Two Stools? Responding to Young Women Who Offend’, Youth Justice 9(3): 270–85. Chamberlen, Anastacia. 2016. ‘Embodying Prison Pain: Women’s Self-Injury Practices in Prison and the Emotions of Punishment’, Theoretical Criminology 20(2): 205–19. Covington, Stephanie and Barbara Bloom. 2007. ‘Gender Responsive Treatment and Services in Correctional Settings’, Women & Therapy 29(3–4): 9–33. Creegan, Chris, Sara Scott and Rachel Smith. 2005. The Use of Secure Accommodation and Alternative Provisions for Sexually Exploited Young People in Scotland. London: Barnardo’s. Danske Regioner. 2019. Statistik for de sikrede institutioner [Statistics for Secure Institutions]. Copenhagen: Danske Regioner. Enell, Sofia, Sabine Gruber and Maria A. Vogel. 2018. Kontrollerade unga: Tvångspraktiker på institution. Studentlitteratur AB. Ericsson, Kjersti and Nina Jon. 2006. ‘Gendered Social Control: “A Virtuous Girl” and “a Proper Boy”’, Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology & Crime Prevention 7(2): 126–41. 221

D

ANN-KARINA HENRIKSEN

Henriksen, Ann-Karina. 2017a. ‘Navigating Hypermasculine Terrains: Female Tactics for Safety and Social Mastery’, Feminist Criminology 12(4): 319–40. ———. 2017b. ‘Confined to Care: Girls’ Gendered Vulnerabilities in Secure Institutions’, Gender & Society 31(5): 677–98. Kirkebæk, Birgit. 2005. ‘Sexuality as Disability: The Women on Sprog and Danish Society’, Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research 7(3–4): 194–205. Kofoed, Jette. 2005. ’Holddeling: Når der gøres maskulinitet og hvidhed’ [Setting Teams: When Doing Masculinity and Whiteness], Kvinder, Køn & Forskning 14(3): 42–52. Jones, Nikki. 2009. Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and InnerCity Violence. Newark: Rutgers University Press. Laanemets, Leili and Arne Kristiansen. 2008. Kön och behandling inom tvångsvård: En studie av vården organiseras med avseende på genus [Gender and Treatment in Compulsory Care: A Gender Study on the Organization of Care]. Stockholm: National Board of Institutional Care (NBIC). Lausten, Mette and Trine Jørgensen. 2017. Anbragte børn og unges trivsel [The Wellbeing of Children and Youth in Out of Home Care]. Copenhagen: SFI – The Danish National Centre for Social Research. Myers, Randalph. 2013. ‘The Biographical and Psychic Consequences of “Welfare Inaction” for Young Women in Trouble with the Law’, Young People Justice 13(3): 218–33. O’Neill, Teresa. 2001. Children in Secure Accommodation: A Gendered Exploration of Locked Institutional Care for Children in Trouble. London: Jessica Kingsley Pub. Överlien, Carolina. 2003. ‘Innocent Girls or Active Young Women? Negotiating Sexual Agency at a Detention Home’, Feminism & Psychology 13(3): 345–67. Prins, Baukje. 2006. ‘Narrative Accounts of Origins: A Blind Spot in the Intersectional Approach?’, European Journal of Women’s Studies 13(3): 277–90. Rose, Jim. 2014. Working with Young People in Secure Accommodation: From Chaos to Culture. London: Routledge. Vogel, Maria A. 2018. ‘An Endeavour for Autonomy: How Girls Understand Their Lived Experiences of Being Referred to Secure Care’, Young 26(1): 70–85.

222

D CHAPTER 12

Girlhood Incarcerated Perspectives from Secure Care Annie Crowley, Anna Schliehe and Maria A. Vogel

Introduction Growing up as a girl in north-western Europe is in many ways associated with conceptions of success (Formark and Bränström Öhman 2013). Girls are succeeding in school, they make up the majority of students in university studies in several countries, and in many ways, feminism has become a political matter of course (at least rhetorically), where advancement of girls and young women is construed as a sign for social progress (Aapola, Gonick and Harris 2005; McRobbie 2009). At the same time, research studies show there are higher numbers of girls and young women than boys and young men reporting extensive mental health problems such as self-harm, depression and anxiety (Arnull and Eagle 2009; Jacobson et al. 2010; Zahn-Waxler et al. 2008), exposure to violence and sexual abuse (Batchelor 2005; Sharpe 2012; Överlien et al. 2019), growing economic disadvantage (Steffensmeir et al. 2005) and other forms of psychosocial problems (Public Health Agency of Sweden 2018; Sharpe 2012; Strömbäck et al. 2014). Put together, this paints a divided picture of

Notes for this section can be found on page 238.

D

ANNIE CROWLEY, ANNA SCHLIEHE AND MARIA A. VOGEL

European girlhood where ideals of successful girlhood appear foremost to concern those of middle- and upper-class young women (Gonick 2006) but seem impossible to attain for others. In such an unequal society, the situation for young women from marginalized families and neighbourhoods is bleak, especially in relation to dominating neoliberal discourses of girlhood success (Walkerdine, Lucey and Melody 2001). Consequently, girls and young women from marginalized families and neighbourhoods are subject to higher levels of state surveillance (McRobbie and Garber 2001; Steffensmeir et al. 2005) and are more often in contact with social services than their middle- and upper-class sisters, making social services measures a class-stratified part of the welfare system. For those young women with more severe behavioural and psychosocial problems, who are often in extensive need of protection, or viewed as being so, secure care may be considered. This measure can be said to symbolize a last resort for children and young people, and detains a population deemed to pose a risk to themselves or others. Secure care stands for protection and minimizing risk for a group of young and highly vulnerable people while also providing the backdrop to these young people’s transitions into adulthood. Put differently, and in relation to European girlhoods, in a society focused on individual discourses and neoliberal politics of self-regulation, secure care functions as a way to lock up a selected group of young women due to their behaviours, legitimized through a narrative of protection. This chapter aims to conceptualize secure care across Scotland and Sweden in a cross-European analysis, highlighting young women’s experiences in particular. Secure Care in the Swedish and Scottish Context In both Sweden and Scotland, choices between welfare and punishment have shaped provision for children and young people as far back as the industrial schools and reformatories that existed in the early 1900s – a conflict that persists to the present day (Levin 1998; McAra and McVie 2010). That being said, juvenile delinquency in Sweden is primarily handled within social services; hence Swedish secure care institutions are considered a welfare measure rather than a criminal justice one. This means that the majority of the young people in secure care are there on referral by social services due to extensive needs of treatment (approximately just 6 per cent are sentenced under a criminal justice act). However, Swedish secure care institutions share many similarities with juvenile correction facilities in other countries as well as with prisons for adults. The most 224

PERSPECTIVES FROM SECURE CARE

E

apparent similarity is the fact that the institutions are locked, and that the young persons’ freedom of movement is heavily restricted. In addition, secure care staff have the authority to, among other things, temporarily isolate residents, conduct body searches, control incoming and outgoing phone calls and mail, and take urine and blood samples. A referral to secure care in Sweden therefore means an extensive restriction of rights in that it involves forced care in a locked environment. The institutional framework surrounding secure care in Scotland, the Children’s Hearing System (CHS), has welfare as its guiding principle, in recognition of the similarities in circumstances and backgrounds of children who offend and children in need of care and protection (Whyte 2004). As such, secure care units in Scotland are unique environments as they are equally shaped by principles of care and of control (Schliehe and Crowley 2016). As in Sweden, secure care in Scotland is intended to be a last resort for children and young people who are considered to pose a risk either to themselves or to others. Young people can be sent there via the CHS or via the courts, and thus secure care units house both those admitted for welfare concerns and those who have been remanded or sentenced for an offence. 75 to 80 per cent of young people are sent to secure care on the basis of it being deemed necessary for their own protection (Gough 2016). However, the different routes into secure care are merged and rendered indistinguishable once detained there, as in general the reason does not determine subsequent location or treatment within the unit (Harris and Timms 1993; Schliehe and Crowley 2016).

Gendered Elements of Incarcerating Young Women As Covington (2003) points out, gender differences and gender-related dynamics that are part of society overall should be the starting point for understanding gendered elements of institutions like secure units. Within social and criminal justice more widely, masculinist epistemologies are inherent as most institutions and policies are geared towards men, which leads to an invisibility of women, and especially of young women. Covington (2003) states that such invisibility of girls and women can in itself be considered a form of oppression. She points towards the gender differences in issues like pathways to crime, homelessness, physical and sexual abuse, and addiction problems, but also relationships, young motherhood and economic vulnerability. Often young women have their first encoun225

D

ANNIE CROWLEY, ANNA SCHLIEHE AND MARIA A. VOGEL

ter with the criminal justice system after running away from home to escape violence and/or abuse (Steffensmeir et al. 2005). With regards to treatment of women in closed institutions, Chamberlen (2018: 42) writes about the paradox that ‘they are treated differently from men, while also being treated as if they were men’. In this context, women are often stigmatized not just as undesirable citizens but also as ‘unnatural’ in relation to their femininity. Growing up with such gendered discipline measures has a particular effect on young women (Carlen 1983). Later studies on female imprisonment, for example, by Howe (1994) or Bosworth (2000), focus more on the technologies of punishment at play for women, and the agency of incarcerated women. The overall structural effect of a system that is largely designed for men both inside and outside of institutions has an underlying effect on the gendered experiences of young women in secure care units. As Gooch (2016: 278) underlines, imprisonment in childhood ‘is never a neutral experience’; not only does it expose children and young people to potentially very real harm, but it is also often part of an institutional response by services that have failed these young people before they reach closed conditions. Incarcerated young people are at ‘a critical stage of maturation, development, and, crucially, transition – from childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood’ (Gooch 2016: 279). These age-related factors coincide with gender and other elements like cultural, environmental and social realms that shape the individual experiences of confinement. Valentine (2003) suggests that the ‘liminal period’ of youth is shaped by fluid and complex transitions that rely on reflexivity (like lifestyles, subcultures or adoption of different identities), which is curtailed by incarceration. In the secure estate, as in young offender institutions, ‘almost all decisions exclude young people, with the institutions, as well as the social justice and social work systems, run by adults’ (Schliehe 2015: 5). Even though Swedish secure care is mostly considered a welfare measure, the institutions historically have focused on disciplining and controlling unwanted and antisocial behaviours, and the institutions are intimately linked to handling behaviours with masculine connotations like criminality and violence, with young men making up the majority of those referred (Vogel 2012). The proportion of young women in secure units in Sweden amounts to a third, and the reasons for their referral are a mixture of misuse problems, poor mental health and absconding from home, along with extensive concern for how they fare in an often exploitative social environment (ibid.; Vogel 2016). In Scotland, where secure care exists both to address welfare needs and offending, the numbers of 226

PERSPECTIVES FROM SECURE CARE

E

young women has risen in recent years (Gough 2016): for example, from 43 per cent in 2017 to 53 per cent in 2018 (Scottish Government 2018). However, reasons for their referral continue to relate mainly to risks that they are considered to pose to themselves, whereas for young men this relates more to risks posed to others (Muncie 2004; Whitehead et al. 2010). Consequently, in both Sweden and Scotland, young women are dealt with in a disciplinary policing system even though their main problems are rarely of a criminal nature. However, such treatment is not new: girls and young women have throughout modern history been subjected to control, punishment and incarceration based on moralistic judgements regarding, above all, their sexual behaviour and their femininity. Arrangements of gender within units in secure care differ in Scotland and Sweden. In Scotland, which used to have a designated secure unit for young women (the Good Shepherd Centre), the decision was made in 2012 to make all units in the secure estate mixed.1 In Sweden, on the other hand, secure care is gender segregated, although some units provide care for both girls and boys living in separated wards but sharing school facilities (and sometimes the dining hall). Regardless of whether the context is gender segregated or not, one dominant understanding of girls and young women in secure care uncovered by earlier research is that they are more ‘difficult’ to treat, which can be interpreted as deviating from the institutional norm (Baines and Alder 1996; Galardi and Settersten 2018; Sharpe 2012). This may also relate to discourses of girlhood in general, often constructing the teenage girl as someone in crisis – vulnerable and a victim of an exploitative environment, often intimately linked to perceptions of mental health (Aapola, Gonick and Harris 2005; Gonick 2006). Vogel (2016) demonstrates how this view of the socially disadvantaged girl is present in Swedish social services, in all likelihood affecting the perceptions of staff of young women as being difficult to treat, and hence making them harder to understand in a secure care setting. Overall, the interrogation of gender, age and incarceration provides important aspects to an understanding of European girlhood through the prism of social control. As Ericsson and Jon (2006) point out, social control of women is immeasurably tighter and qualitatively different from that of men. The particular politics of place within secure care units show – at the extreme end of a control continuum – how this affects young women in specific ways that are often wrapped in mundane and everyday encounters, which are nonetheless very powerful in shaping social control more widely. Lloyd (2005) underlines the importance of recognizing the social 227

D

ANNIE CROWLEY, ANNA SCHLIEHE AND MARIA A. VOGEL

construction of young women being constituted as ‘a problem’ or ‘having a problem’ while at the same time acknowledging the real difficulties faced by some young women, both within institutions and in their life outside. Others like Lopez (2017) and Flores (2016) have shown how securing young women out of a notion of ‘care’ can result in wraparound incarceration lasting a lot longer than their stays in closed environments. Young women in our societies ‘face many dilemmas pertaining to peers, aspirations and sexuality’ (Chesney-Lind and Sheldon 2004: 299) that are subsequently exacerbated by securing them in detention. A feminist critique of gendered social control can help a broader understanding of these dynamics and add facets of social control to the study of European girlhood.

Brief Methods for All Three Studies The empirical data regarding the Swedish secure care system, and the young women held there, was collected by Vogel within the scope of an ethnographic study aiming to grasp everyday life for young women in secure care, with a focus on their own perceptions and understandings. A particular aim was to explore how gender is (re)constructed in a secure care environment and how young women handle their situation both individually and collectively. The study was conducted during 2015–2016 at two different wards located in two different institutions. In sum, Vogel spent around 500 hours in the two secure care wards participating in everyday life together with the young women (and staff). During this time fourteen young women (aged 14–19) were living in the studied wards, and individual and group interviews were conducted with twelve of them. For the Scottish sample, fieldwork was carried out in 2012–2014 (Schliehe 2016) and 2015–2016 (Crowley 2018). For Schliehe’s research, eleven young women were interviewed in one of Scotland’s secure care units (aged 14–18) and twelve young women were interviewed outside (aged 14–21) about their experiences of secure care. Additionally, twentyfour interviews were conducted with staff at the secure unit, including different levels from top management to unit workers as well as education and therapy staff. The interviews were complemented by participant and field observation and many hours of taking part in everyday life in different units over an eleven-month period. The main point of this observation was to understand further how secure care works as an institution 228

PERSPECTIVES FROM SECURE CARE

E

and to understand individual and gendered experiences during the young women’s time there, including transition into and out of the unit (see also Henriksen and Schliehe forthcoming; Schliehe 2015, 2016). Crowley’s research focused upon practitioners working with young women within various settings related to criminal justice across Scotland: prison, secure care, social work and in the community. In this study, fifty in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with practitioners working across Scotland. Nine of these interviews took place inside secure care settings with staff working there; however, several of the social workers and community-based practitioners interviewed in other settings also worked with young women during their time in secure care (as well as before and after). The roles of practitioners interviewed in secure care included clinical psychologists, a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) therapist and social care staff working directly within the secure care units. The interviews were aimed at understanding how practitioners explain and construct this population of young women, their descriptions of the work that they conduct, how these constructions feed into their practice, and the impacts of this work upon those working within these settings.

Care and Control – Environmental Ambivalence in Secure Care The life that takes place within the walls of secure care institutions has particular gendered implications arising both from the physical environment and the management of the young people held there, both in Scotland and Sweden. These implications start upon arrival into secure care, which takes place through a series of locked gates and doors, after which young people are searched. For the population of young women, many of whom have often experienced sexual abuse (for example, Batchelor 2007), this can be a (re-)traumatizing experience. Once inside secure care, life is shaped by routines and regimes. All aspects of life take place in the same space: sleeping, eating, socializing, education, counselling and exercise are conducted within the locked building and its enclosed courtyard. Staff describe how closely and carefully controlled life is, where ‘everything’s secure, everything’s counted’ (Mhairi, team leader, Crowley 2018). Relationships between staff and young people, carefully and deliberately built, are also a key tool in the joint caring and controlling aims of secure care. The strict control of life in secure care extends to the composition of ed229

D

ANNIE CROWLEY, ANNA SCHLIEHE AND MARIA A. VOGEL

ucational classes and to the consideration of which young people might be out in the yard at the same time. One staff member described how, whilst the strict and systematic regime may appear to be punitive, it has a function beyond this in aiming to make young people feel safe, and ‘actually allows[ing]the young people to be children’ (Dee, forensic psychologist, Crowley 2018). Having such structure was seen as removing pressure associated with responsibility and decision-making, with staff explaining that many young women had previously assumed high levels of responsibility for family members and for themselves in their everyday lives. The gender-segregated organization of Swedish secure care makes even the referral a gendering process. This is often disapproved of by the young women, who express a wish for living in a mixed group. The reasons for this vary, but several argue that they are (more) used to friendships with boys and young men from their lives outside secure care, and some think it boring to only hang out with other young women (see Vogel 2018a). Some of the young women also consider the hypothetical presence of young men as a reason to ‘make oneself look nice’. In this way, the young women are gendering both themselves and the young men potentially living there, through a traditional dichotomy of contrasting gender positions. However, the gendering of the young women is first and foremost done by the staff, as well as by the way in which care is organized. For example, the staff frame possible positions of femininity for the young women by expecting them to show ‘female interests’ and offering activities such as fixing their nails. Another way in which the young women are attributed femininity by the staff is how food and eating is handled. The meaning of food and eating, intimately linked to body and looks, is central to the construction of young femininity, and eating disorders are in several ways linked to discourses of troubled girls. By maintaining an ongoing conversation on food, calorie counting, avoiding sugar and ‘eating right’, staff regulate body image and femininities, even though these conversations are not always addressing the young women directly. Focusing on the female body does not only concern attributions of femininity. There are also ways in which the organization of care makes it difficult to ‘be’ a young woman or to ‘have’ a female body in secure care. For example, one young woman in the Swedish study, Jenny, had to wait several days for the contraceptive pills that she needed for her menstrual cramps, due to organizational hindrances. In other words, the bureaucracy that regulates care obstructs the very same care because of a lack of flexibility. In the Scottish study, staff described how they are always with the 230

PERSPECTIVES FROM SECURE CARE

E

young people: ‘When they’re in the unit, they’re never left alone, there’s always staff with them’ (Lucy, case worker, Crowley 2018). This element of control is gendered, with young women having to navigate menstruation around locked doors and requests for toilet visits and sanitary materials, something that is particularly pronounced in the mixed gender setting. Another way in which the organization of care obstructs the young women’s bodies in a gendered way involves the rules of how they are allowed to interact physically. The living room in one of the units in the Swedish study used to be furnished with a large sofa, which had been replaced with a few armchairs. Frida, who had been living at the unit during the refurnishing, understood the reasons for this to be to prevent the young women sitting ‘too close’, both in terms of obscuring intimate or sexual relations between them but also regulating body contact in general. Staff being on the lookout for sexual relations amongst young people in the units can also be viewed in the context of their wish to let the young women be children, as expressed by Dee, a forensic psychologist mentioned earlier in this section in the Scottish study (Crowley 2018). This resonates with Överlien (2004), who showed how staff in Swedish secure care expressed that time in care should be a safe space for young women to heal and be allowed to (once again) be little girls, raising issues of infantilization rather than supporting agency and acknowledging their status as teenagers on the way to adulthood. Staff in the Scottish study described how they might spend time with them reading to them and tucking them in, with several staff describing how they felt young women (in contrast with young men) liked them to take a ‘more nurturing approach, so like the more mumsy approach’ (Mhairi, team leader, Crowley 2018). The use of such ‘mothering discourses’ (Acker 1995: 24) was seen by some practitioners as particularly pertinent to their work with young women. This fits with the essentializing gendered discourse used to construct this population as highly vulnerable and as children, but simultaneously as young women, who are seen as difficult and manipulative when they fail to adhere to traditional gender norms (Crowley 2018), as discussed earlier (see also Baines and Alder 1996; Gelsthorpe and Worrall 2009; Sharpe 2012). Adding to the discourse surrounding young women in secure care as difficult and in crisis was the understanding of these young women as having higher mental health needs than the young men also held there. Staff described how most young women had mental health issues that needed addressing, and which had contributed both to their incarceration in secure care and to their needs whilst there. Such understandings of the 231

D

ANNIE CROWLEY, ANNA SCHLIEHE AND MARIA A. VOGEL

young women in Scottish secure care have many resemblances with how Swedish social services portray troubled young women (Vogel 2016). In both countries, self-harm in particular was also seen as an issue that affects young women: ‘although the boys self-harm sometimes, self-harm for girls is probably a way of coping that’s quite common that’s not as common in the boys’ (Mhari, team leader, Crowley 2018). Paradoxically, secure care environments were described as increasing rather than mitigating self-harming behaviours, as a result of being constantly watched, increasing the visibility and surveillance (and hence, control) of young women and taking away other coping mechanisms. Physical restraint was sometimes employed in response to self-harming, which, as with the experience of being searched, may also have the effect of re-traumatizing young women. While some staff described the benefit of having time and resources available in secure care to address mental health issues, conducting such interventionist work inside locked settings separates young women’s needs from their context, given the disconnection from existing issues in life ‘outside’ (Crowley 2018). This illustrates an ongoing tendency for structural influences to be overshadowed by a concentration upon the individual and upon the psychological effects of gender oppression (Pollack 2012).

Young Women’s Experiences of Secure Care Whether a young woman is staying in secure care for the first time or if it is one of many detainments, the attached labels of being ‘vulnerable’, ‘risky’ and ‘out of control’ affect young women in their various stages of adolescence and in the way that they see themselves. In secure care units, young women experience new boundaries that can be spatial, physical and mental – all shaping their experiences of the institution (Schliehe 2017, Schliehe and Crowley 2016). While a few young women (often with previous experience of incarceration) report feeling calm and composed when entering secure care, most respondents describe feeling anxious, abandoned and often depressed. The transition phase into secure care is a crucial moment that involves severing ties with the outside world. These ties can be communication devices, but for young women this also often means leaving behind other items that they say define them in some way, like Ava: ‘it was weird because I wasn’t allowed tights, and I came in tights, jeans, 232

PERSPECTIVES FROM SECURE CARE

E

a crop top, hair extensions. And I wasn’t allowed my hair extensions . . . I wasn’t allowed tights. I came in with moonboot and crutches. And I wasn’t allowed crutches’ (Schliehe 2016: 164). This disassemblage of self, in Goffmanian’s terms (1991), is described by most young women regarding entry almost as a form of ritual into secure care. As time goes on, however, this rather negative and difficult start transforms as relationships with staff and other young people are forged. For many, a sense of ambiguity remains that is partly based on living within a form of enforced collective – truly close bonds are rare, as according to Mia, ‘you never know who you’re living wi[th]’ (Schliehe 2016: 166). However, staff work hard to establish close relationships with young people, which is often experienced as nurturing as well as confusing by young women, as professional, personal and private spheres collide in secure care environments. This ambiguity shapes relationships going forward and follows young women beyond the actual stay in secure care; it can reinforce previously missing nurturing and supportive connections with adults, but it can also have a demoralizing effect when these bonds stop at the gate of the institution. The extremely restrictive physical environment and the high security measures mean that privacy and time for oneself is not a given. For a rapidly changing female adolescent body and mind, measures like constant observations can be a real challenge – such as being monitored while in the shower or having to talk about and negotiate menstruation with staff they might or might not know. Despite the strict regime and extreme rules, the flow of information and rumours that go around a secure unit is extraordinary, including details on other young people’s very personal details, like HIV status (Ava in Schliehe 2016: 176). The implications of secure care on young women are immense; it means an extreme disruption of their agency and institutional dis- and reassemblage. Essentially, it makes young people feel relatively safe and comfortable within an environment of high care and high control, which affects young women’s sense of self and command over their own life far beyond the gates of the secure care unit: I enjoyed it when I was there [secure care] and I always went back ‘cause I wanted to be in . . . but I don’t agree wi[th] it . . . I just don’t think it’s a good place for people to go. . . . In there it’s a false environment. So you’re cared for and stuff like that and then when you’re out, like, you just want to be back. And I know most of the people who have been in here [prison] who have been in the secure care done the same, they went back and then they’ve came to prison. . . . And it’s the attachment you’ve got to that place. (Flo in Schliehe 2016: 196)

233

D

ANNIE CROWLEY, ANNA SCHLIEHE AND MARIA A. VOGEL

This revealing quote touches on one of the dilemmas of secure care: its artificial, ‘manicured’ environment, which draws young people to it and creates dependencies. These dependencies are to the secure unit itself and its staff, but this often leads to subsequent detention in other closed institutions like prisons and closed psychiatric units (Schliehe 2016). The artificiality of the secure care setting also makes it difficult to judge the actual level of risk of/to a young woman, increasing the anxiety and frustration of staff who are involved in judging when it might be safe for a young woman to be released (Crowley 2018; Schliehe and Crowley 2016). Staff described being more frightened to take risks with young women, perceiving them as more vulnerable than young men, again in line with more general discourses of girlhood. At times this resulted in young women having to stay inside secure care for longer, framed as for their own safety, but also to protect staff against the fear of making ‘the wrong’ decision with potentially negative consequences (Crowley 2018). Another dominating theme in young women’s descriptions of life in secure care is that it ‘totally lacks action’ and is very boring (cf. Bengtsson 2012). The young women often describe how time seems to pass more slowly inside the unit than outside. Miranda articulates the lack of action in the following way: When you arrive they ask what you’re interested in, and then after a month maybe you’re allowed to go play basketball or go to a youth club or something. I mean, there are things to do but somehow it’s just so difficult to make it happen. I don’t know why that is. (Miranda in Vogel 2020)

Miranda goes on to say that she understands it is particularly hard for the young women to make something happen, explaining that their poor mental health needs to improve before being able to be active. However, this ‘paralytic state’ of everyday life also seems to inflict the staff, resulting in often very uneventful days. In relation to this, young women are overall very critical of secure care. This critique is often related to the sense that nothing ever happens, and is especially directed towards how treatment is carried out, or rather the lack thereof. Young women describe how the administration and organization of secure care obstruct treatment in different ways; they talk about treatment being delayed, ending prematurely or needing to start over, often due to personnel administration or other bureaucratic issues (Vogel 2018b). In the young women’s narratives on the lack of treatment, there are also aspects of mistrust. Some of them feel that the staff’s obligation to document and inform social services makes it difficult to confide in them, which obstructs the trusting relationships 234

PERSPECTIVES FROM SECURE CARE

E

necessary for successful treatment. This can also be seen as one of many examples of how everyday life in secure care is first and foremost organized based on the staff’s terms, as perceived by the young women. When asked to unpack their critique and articulate what treatment should consist of, few of the young women are able to express this. Instead, the critique should be read as being aimed at the placement in secure care as a whole. Rather than concerning specific treatment elements, the young women are critical about how they are being treated and governed generally and about how everyday life is organized. By formulating this critique as directed specifically towards treatment, they are adapting to a professional discourse as a means to be taken seriously (ibid.). Connected to the experiences of a transition from a rather negative start to their time in secure care to a somewhat more safe and quiet position, as expressed by the young women in the Scottish context above, is the risk of trivializing a sometimes problematic environment. As everyday life in secure care continues, aspects of coercion and injustice can become normalized and consequently invisible. For example, both young women and staff in the Swedish study compare their present unit with other units, claiming the present one to be better. This custom of relativizing their stay seems to be a way for the young women to handle being locked up, but it also connects to myths and conceptions of secure care and its inhabitants. For example, Frida depicts what she had heard about young women in secure care before she was herself referred, by describing them as ‘being totally crazy, having murdered people and stuff’. However, she explicitly says that these fears were not confirmed when she arrived and she makes distinctions between the unit she is living in and other secure units (Vogel 2020; see similar narratives in Schliehe 2016). Staff also tend to distinguish units and groups of young women in similar ways, painting a picture of it always being worse somewhere else. This way of handling the current situation thus makes it easier to accept and even ignore problems in the present unit for staff and young women, risking possible injustices and assaults being left unmanaged. As has been shown, secure care in both Scotland and Sweden is a strictly regulated and in many ways challenging environment for young women to spend time in. This is both because of the Goffmanian disassemblages of selves and the all-embracing gendered control, but perhaps even more because, as time goes by, it becomes familiar and ordinary, passivizing both staff and young women, with the risk that both damaging impacts and maltreatment go unnoticed. 235

D

ANNIE CROWLEY, ANNA SCHLIEHE AND MARIA A. VOGEL

Conclusion: Girlhood and Growing up ‘Secured’ This chapter set out to conceptualize secure care in Sweden and Scotland. It is an institution very much on the margins of awareness for most people. However, exploring secure care contributes to an understanding of what it means to grow up as a young woman in Europe in the present day. This cross-country perspective has described how secure care symbolizes a last resort for children and young people, detaining those deemed to pose a risk to themselves or to others. It has a symbolic effect upon the lives of a larger group of young people than those who find themselves incarcerated there, as part of wider welfare systems. Yet whilst it sits at the far end of the continuum of increasingly secure care placements, it also sits at the far end of the continuum of what is conceived of as ‘successful lives’ for young women. For European girlhoods, secure care is an institution that represents the pinnacle of societal fears for and about young women, through its joint punitive and protective functions. It serves to illustrate the modes of social control to which young women are currently subjected (Carrington 2013), and functions to legitimize operation of these controls. As set out in the introductory sections, secure care both in Sweden and Scotland has the welfare and protection of young people as a key aim. As a measure it is not intended therefore to be painful for young people, but by its very nature it inherently brings with it the deprivations, paradoxes and intrusions that are intrinsic features of imprisonment. The equal shaping of secure care units by principles of care and control is an extremely challenging balance to achieve in practice, with the potential for too much of either to be damaging – whether, for example, through relationships with staff that are too close, long-term traumatic effects through being restrained, or through the control of life spheres. These, and other, harmful effects of secure care impact particularly upon young women, as gender adds an additional and intersecting layer of disadvantage. The marginalization of young women in secure care settings is intensified by the way in which they ‘fall between two stools’ (Burman and Batchelor 2009), in terms of policy responses designed for young people that are based largely upon the needs of young men, and policy responses for women that are focused upon adult women. The largely unaddressed connection of gender and age as they collide in secure care settings means that the particular needs of young women can be exacerbated by their incarceration. As with the pains experienced through incarceration in prison (Liebling 2004; 2009; Sykes 1958), the moral, social and emo236

PERSPECTIVES FROM SECURE CARE

E

tional state of the secure unit has a direct link to the wellbeing of the young women detained there. Many find it hard to cope with the deprivation of liberty resulting from incarceration not only ‘to an institution’, but also by ‘confinement within the institution’, as pointed out by Gooch (2016: 281). The resulting impacts of this, such as increased self-harm and worsening mental health, can then act to further their period(s) of detention. Being incarcerated at this particular age, even in a so-called ‘childfriendly’ secure unit, means that the period of childhood is irrevocably shortened, altered and lost, impacting in different ways upon subsequent transitions to adolescence and adulthood. At such a pivotal time for the development of self-image, the experience of secure care can be extremely detrimental. Young women may be perceived as breaching social norms through being detained, and breaching underlying gender norms regarding what it means to be a ‘respectable’ girl/young woman. Being held in secure care also suspends access to the environments, lifestyles and subcultures that are influential in shaping the fluid self-identity of this stage of development. Whilst the period of secure care incarceration may be relatively short, the impact may be profound and long-lasting for the young person (Schliehe and Crowley 2016). The cross-national perspective provided by this chapter does so in recognition of the dearth of research conducted on young women crossnationally, either qualitatively or quantitatively (one exception being the Pittsburgh Girls study, see Loeber et al. 2017). This is a missed opportunity: conducting cross-national research in this area makes visible the universality and historically enduring nature of the ongoing modes of social control and oppression that shape European (and global) girlhood, whilst highlighting those factors within each different country setting that have influenced its unique shaping. Such research also speaks to issues of European youth justice more generally, to the institutional and wider societal responses to young people that Goldson (2015) finds contradictory and counter-intuitive and often disconnected from underlying issues. Cross-country interrogation of the institution of secure care, and how it intersects with gender and age, goes some way towards addressing the marginalization of young women held there, by connecting the experiences and needs of these small populations to those of wider groups of young women, at national and international levels. Exploring gendered facets of the secure care experience adds to an understanding of the social controls shaping European girlhood, and the growing divide between groups of young women in societies speaks to the need to do this further. 237

D

ANNIE CROWLEY, ANNA SCHLIEHE AND MARIA A. VOGEL

Annie Crowley is a postdoctoral research fellow within the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research based at the University of Stirling. She completed her PhD in Criminology at the University of Glasgow. Her research interests include young women within criminal justice and care settings, the experiences of practitioners, and the treatment and human rights of people detained in different types of custody. Anna Schliehe is a research associate at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge and earned her doctorate in Human Geography at the University of Glasgow. Her main research areas are carceral geography and comparative criminology, with a focus on gender and young people. Her doctoral research focused on young women’s experiences of confinement in different types of closed institutions and the community. Maria A. Vogel has a PhD in Social work and is director of research at a municipal Research and Development unit in Stockholm, Sweden. Her main research areas are young people with psychosocial problems, and secure care. An overall theme in her research is the role of gender in young people’s lives and development, with a special interest in teenage girls and the construction of girlhood.

Note 1. In Scotland the secure estate has changed significantly over the last decade. For example in 2009 there were 124 beds in seven units (Scottish Government 2009), compared to 84 beds in six units in 2019. Being both welfare and criminal justice orientated in the UK, secure units mix both ‘risky’ and ‘at risk’ young people, boys and girls, in age groups ranging from 12 to 18 years.

References Aapola, Sinikka, Marnina Gonick and Anita Harris. 2005. Young Femininity. Girlhood, Power and Social Change. New York: Palgrave McMillan. Acker, Sandra. 1995. ‘Carry on Caring: The Work of Women Teachers’, British Journal of Sociology of Education 16(1): 21–36. Arnull, Elaine and Susannah Eagle. 2009. Girls and Offending – Patterns, Perceptions and Interventions. London: Youth Justice Board. Baines, Margaret and Christine Alder. 1996. ‘Are Girls More Difficult to Work with? Youth Workers’ Perspectives in Juvenile Justice and Related Areas’, Crime and Delinquency 42(3): 467–85.

238

PERSPECTIVES FROM SECURE CARE

E

Batchelor, Susan. 2005. ‘“Prove Me the Bam!”: Victimisation and Agency in the Lives of Young Women Who Commit Violent Offences’, Probation Journal 52(4): 358–75. ———. 2007. ‘“Getting Mad Wi’ It”: Risk Seeking by Young Women’, in Kelly Hannah-Moffat and Pat O’Malley (eds), Gendered Risks. London: Glasshouse Press, pp. 205–27. Bengtsson, Tea Torbenfeldt. 2012. ‘Boredom and Action: Experiences from Youth Confinement’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 41(5): 526–53. Bosworth, Mary. 2000. ‘Confining Femininity: A History of Gender, Power and Imprisonment’, Theoretical Criminology 4(3): 265–84. Burman, Michele and Susan Batchelor. 2009. ‘Between Two Stools? Responding to Young Women who Offend’, Youth Justice 9(3): 270–85. Carlen, Pat. 1983. Women’s Imprisonment: A Study in Social Control. London: Routledge. Carrington, Kerry. 2013. ‘Girls and Violence: The Case for a Feminist Theory of Female Violence’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 2(2): 63–79. Chamberlen, Anastasia. 2018. Embodying Punishment: Emotions, Identities and Lived Experiences in Women’s Prisons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chesney-Lind, Meda and Randall G. Sheldon. 2004. Girls, Delinquency and Juvenile Justice. Belmont, CA: Thomson-Wadsworth. Covington, Stephanie. 2003. ‘A Woman’s Journey Home: Challenges for Female Offenders’, in Jeremy Travis and Michelle Waul (eds), Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Re-Entry on Children, Families and Communities. Washington DC: Urban Institute Press, pp. 67–104. Crowley, Annie Rose. 2018. ‘“It’s Our Anxiety That Keeps Them Locked up”: Protection for Whom? Responding to the Needs of “at Risk” Young Women in Scotland’, PhD dissertation. Glasgow: University of Glasgow. Ericsson, Kersti and Nina Jon. 2006. ‘Gendered Social Control: “A Virtuous Girl” and “A Proper Boy”’, Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 7(2): 126–41. Flores, Jerry. 2016. Caught Up: Girls, Surveillance and Wraparound Incarceration. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Formark, Bodil and Annelie Bränström Öhman. 2013. ‘Situating Nordic Girls’ Studies’, Girlhood Studies 6(2): 3–10. Galardi, Tasha Randall and Richard A. Settersten. 2018. ‘“They’re Just Made up Different”: Juvenile Correctional Staff Perceptions of Incarcerated Boys and Girls’, Children and Youth Services Review 95: 200–8. Gelsthorpe, Loraine and Annie Worrall. 2009. ‘Looking for Trouble: A Recent History of Girls, Young Women and Youth Justice’, Youth Justice 9(3): 209–23.

239

D

ANNIE CROWLEY, ANNA SCHLIEHE AND MARIA A. VOGEL

Goffman, Erwin. 1991 [1961]. Asylums: Essays on the Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. London: Penguin Press. Goldson Barry. 2015. ‘The Circular Motions of Penal Politics and Pervasive Irrationalities of Child Imprisonment’, in Barry Goldson and John Muncie (eds), Youth Crime and Justice. London: Sage, pp. 170–90. Gonick, Marnina. 2006. ‘Between “Girl Power” and “Reviving Ophelia”: Constituting the Neoliberal Girl Subject’, NWSA Journal 18(2): 1–23. Gooch, Kate. 2016. ‘A Childhood Cut Short: Child Deaths in Penal Custody and the Pains of Child Imprisonment’, The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice 55(3): 278–94. Gough, Alison. 2016. ‘A Safe Future? Finding a Way Forward for the Secure Care Sector in Scotland’, Scottish Journal of Residential Child Care 15(1): 70–79. Harris, Robert and Noel Timms. 1993. Secure Accommodation in Child Care: Between Hospital and Prison or Thereabouts? London: Routledge. Henriksen, Ann-Karina and Anna K. Schliehe. Forthcoming. ‘Ethnography of Young People in Confinement – on Subjectivity, Positionality and Situated Ethics in Closed Space’, Qualitative Research. Howe, Adrian. 1994. Punish and Critique: Towards a Feminist Analysis of Penality. London: Routledge. Jacobson, Jessica, Bina Bhardwa, Tracey Gyateng, Gillian Hunter and Mike Hough. 2010. Punishing Disadvantage: A Profile of Children in Custody. London: Prison Reform Trust. Levin, Claes. 1998. Uppfostringsansalten [The Reformatory]. Lund: Arkiv. Liebling, Alison. 2004. Prisons and Their Moral Performance: A Study of Values, Quality and Prison Life. Oxford: Clarendon Studies in Criminology, Oxford University Press. ———. 2009. ‘Women in Prison Prefer Legitimacy to Sex’, British Society of Criminology Newsletter 63: 19–23. Lloyd, Gwynedd. 2005. ‘Why We Need a Book about Problem Girls’, in Gwynedd Lloyd (ed.), Problem Girls: Understanding and Supporting Troubled and Troublesome Girls and Young Women. London: Routledge, pp. 1–9. Loeber, Rolf, Wesley G. Jennings, Lia Ahonen, Alex R. Piquero and David F. Farrington. 2017. Female Delinquency from Childhood to Adulthood: Recent Results from the Pittsburgh Girls Study. London: Springer. Lopez, Vera. 2017. Complicated Lives: Girls, Parents, Drugs, and Juvenile Justice. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. McAra, Lesley and Susan McVie. 2010. ‘Youth Crime and Justice: Key Messages from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime’, Criminology and Criminal Justice 10(2): 179–209. McRobbie, Angela. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism. Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: SAGE. 240

PERSPECTIVES FROM SECURE CARE

E

McRobbie, Angela and Jenny Garber. 2001. ‘Girls and Subcultures’, in Angela McRobbie (ed.), Feminism and Youth Culture. 2nd edn. Basingstoke, UK: MacMillan Press Ltd, pp. 12–25. Muncie, John. 2004. Youth and Crime. London: Sage Publications. Överlien, Carolina. 2004. ‘Girls on the Verge of Exploding? Voices of Sexual Abuse, Agency and Sexuality at a Youth Detention Home’, PhD dissertation. Linköping: Linköping University. Överlien, Carolina, Per Moum Hellevik and Sibel Korkmaz. 2019. ‘Young Women’s Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence – Narratives of Control, Terror, and Resistance’, Journal of Family Violence; published online 14 December 2019, https://doi-org.ezp.sub.su.se/10.1007/s10896-019-00120-9. Pollack, Shoshana. 2012. ‘An Imprisoning Gaze: Practices of Gendered, Racialized and Epistemic Violence’, International Review of Victimology 19(1): 103–14. Public Health Agency of Sweden. 2018. Skolbarns hälsovanor i Sverige 2017/18 [Schoolchildren’s Health in Sweden 2017/18]. Schliehe, Anna K. 2015. ‘Locking Up Children and Young People – Secure Care in Scotland’, in Bethan Evans and John Horton (eds), Play, Recreation, Health and Well Being, Geographies of Children and Young People Vol. 9. London: Routledge, pp. 1–19. ———. 2016. ‘Tracing Outsideness: Young Women’s Institutional Journeys and the Geography of Closed Spaces’, PhD dissertation. Glasgow: University of Glasgow. ———. 2017. ‘Towards a Feminist Carceral Geography? of Female Offenders and Prison Spaces’, in Dominique Moran and Anna K. Schliehe (eds), Carceral Spatiality: Dialogues between Geography and Criminology. London: Palgrave, pp. 75–112. Schliehe, Anna K. and Annie Rose Crowley. 2016. ‘Carefully Controlled: Young People and Their Pathways Through Spaces of Secure Care’, in Michelle Pyer and John Horton (eds), Children, Young People and Care. London: Springer. Scottish Government. 2009. Securing our Future: A Way Forward for Scotland’s Secure Care Estate. A Response from Scottish Government and COSLA. Retrieved 17 May 2014 from http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/2703 00/0080508.pdf. Scottish Government. 2018. Children’s Social Work Statistics Scotland, 2017– 18. Retrieved 12 November 2020 from https://www.gov.scot/publications/ childrens-social-work-statistics-2017-2018/pages/5/. Sharpe, Gilly. 2012. Offending Girls: Young Women and Youth Justice. Abingdon, UK and New York: Routledge. Steffensmeier, Darrell, Jennifer Schwartz, Hua Zhong and Jeff Ackerman. 2005. ‘An Assessment of Recent Trends in Girls’ Violence Using Diverse Longitudinal Sources: Is the Gender Gap Closing?’, Criminology 43(2): 355–406. 241

D

ANNIE CROWLEY, ANNA SCHLIEHE AND MARIA A. VOGEL

Strömbäck, Maria, Bodil Formark, Maria Wiklund and E-B. Malmgren-Olsson. 2014. ‘The Corporeality of Living Stressful Femininity: A Gender-Theoretical Analysis of Young Swedish Women’s Stress Experience’, YOUNG: Nordic Journal of Youth Research 22(3): 271–89. Sykes, Gresham. 1958. The Society of Captives: A Study of Maximum Security Prisons. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Valentine, Gill. 2003. ‘Boundary Crossings: Transitions from Childhood to Adulthood’, Children’s Geographies 1(1): 37–52. Vogel, Maria A. 2012. ‘Särskilda ungdomshem och vårdkedjor: Om ungdomar, kön, klass och etnicitet’ [Secure Units and Chains of Care: Youth, Gender, Class and Ethnicity], PhD dissertation. Stockholm: Stockholm University. ———. 2016. ‘Psykisk ohälsa, utsatthet och en legitimerande oro – diskursiva förståelser av flickor som placeras vid särskilda ungdomshem’ [Mental Health, Vulnerability and a Legitimizing Concern – Discursive Understandings of Teenage Girls and Secure Care], Socialvetenskaplig tidskrift 23(2): 109–28. ———. 2018a. ‘Endeavour for Autonomy – How Girls Understand Their Lived Experiences of Being Referred to Secure Care’, YOUNG: Nordic Journal of Youth Research 26(1): 1–16. ———. 2018b. ‘Behandling i teori och praktik’ [Treatment in Theory and in Practice], in Sofia Enell, Sabine Gruber and Maria A. Vogel (eds), Kontrollerade unga: Tvångspraktiker på institution [Controlled Youths: Practising Compulsion in Residential Care]. Lund: Studentlitteratur, pp. 167–90. ———. Forthcoming. Disciplinering, femininitet och tvångsvård: Tjejers vardag vid särskilda ungdomshem [Discipline, Femininity and Compulsory Care: Girls’ Everyday Life in Secure Care.]. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Walkerdine, Valerie, Helen Lucey and June Melody. 2001. Growing Up Girl. London: Palgrave. Whitehead, Indiya, Gillian Henderson, Gwen McNiven and Donald Lamb. 2010. Secure Authorisations in Scotland’s Children’s Hearings System: An Exploration of Decision Making, Placements, Outcomes and Social Backgrounds. Glasgow: Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration. Whyte, Bill. 2004. ‘Responding to Youth Crime in Scotland’, British Journal of Social Work 34: 395–411. Zahn-Waxler, Carolyn, Elisabeth A. Shirtcliff and Kristine Marceau. 2008. ‘Disorders of Childhood and Adolescence: Gender and Psychopathology’, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 4: 275–303.

242

D CONCLUSION

(How) Can You Live Like a Girl? Summing up Differences and Similarities Maria A. Vogel and Linda Arnell

Our aim with this anthology has been to capture the diversity of what it means to live like a girl in contemporary Europe and beyond. As several of the chapters have shown, girls and young women face many barriers on their way to adulthood. These take the form of gendered structures embedded in education and employment, along with welfare and juvenile justice measures, as well as racist, ableist and misogynistic conceptions of what a girl can be or do. As the broader picture emerging from this book shows, the prerequisites and opportunities for girls and young women to shape their own lives independently differ between countries, emphasizing the social, political and geographical diversities within the European continent. While young Spanish women face large-scale unemployment intersecting with traditional gender discourses that position women as primarily mothers and housewives, immigrant girls in Finland fight for their right to an equal academic education with their native Finnish peers. Beyond the European continent, Russian girls try to make use of their agency within a neoconservative political climate that is dismantling their rights, while black girls in Israel try to make a life for themselves surrounded by racist conceptions. In Denmark and Sweden, often held up as

D

MARIA A. VOGEL AND LINDA ARNELL

welfare state ideals, girls with psychosocial problems are met with punitive measures that rarely focus on what the problem actually is. A similar pattern is revealed regarding Scottish girls who use violence, where contextual and underlying factors are neglected.

Normative Femininity, Neoliberal Discourses of Girlhood and Girls’ Agency An important take-home message from this book is that it captures the situations of girls and young women subjected to different kinds of welfare measures. These range from more general ones, such as different forms of school interventions, to those aimed at selected groups, such as secure care. Hence, taken together, the chapters of this anthology reveal the lives of those girls and young women who are facing more distinct surveillance in their transitions to adulthood than young women do in general, as they are forced to submit themselves to the requirements and expectations of welfare agents in order to progress and assimilate. This is most palpable regarding young women with severe psychosocial problems who are referred to secure care or other forms of measures aimed at rehabilitating violent or other types of delinquent behaviour. However, it is also experienced by girls defined as having an intellectual impairment in their efforts to pass as ‘ordinary’, or by immigrant girls who are often considered more difficult to reach than boys with integration measures. Even though requirements and expectations differ by country and type of measure, what connects them is the way in which they are all gendered, relating to normative ideas of a femininity that centres on responsibility, respectability and a focus on family life and motherhood. Furthermore, although welfare systems and social and political structures obviously differ, the girls themselves share ambitions and attitudes regardless of country. Whether it is students in Italy or England, Swedish girls with intellectual impairment or young women navigating the Croatian education system, many of them emphasize agency and the struggle to lead their own lives regardless of gendered, classed or racialized expectations and constraints. In relation to this, many of the chapters reveal an overarching political discourse of neoliberalism, which places responsibility for success as well as setbacks onto the girls and young women themselves. Neoliberalism is therefore something girls have to respond to, regardless of national or local structural hindrances or incentives. Thus, in 244

CONCLUSION

E

different ways, what the chapters reveal are the dominant ideals of femininity to which girls living among very different geopolitical and social circumstances must all relate. This feminine neoliberal subject, sometimes labelled the ‘top girl’ or ‘can-do girl’ (Harris 2004; McRobbie 2007), who is clearly regulated by discursive understandings of ‘girl power’, is integrated into society’s expectations of girls and young women. But this individualized subject is also more or less internalized in the girls themselves, as is obvious in several of the chapters, leading them to claim personal responsibility for succeeding in education, employment and emancipation, regardless of structural hindrances. We can conclude that this is problematic because many of the young women featured in this book, as mentioned above, have poor personal resources due to social class, psychosocial problems, disability and/or racism. Hence, in relation to norms of femininity, differentiation is also accomplished based on class and ethnicity. Working-class girls in Scotland are ‘sent off ’ to vocational education despite a school system that values individual choices and, in a similar way, immigrant girls in Finland are directed away from academic educational routes regardless of their ambitions. This reveals a system that expects less of girls and young women who are not white, abled and/or middle class, structural barriers that seem to extend beyond national borders.

Living Like a Girl in Contemporary Europe and Beyond In the field of girlhood studies the aforementioned ‘girl power’ discourse, regulating dominant ideals of femininity for girls beyond borders, has in numerous scholarly discussions been paired and contrasted with a girlhood-as-crisis-discourse which views girls as vulnerable and in need of help and support in order to transit to adulthood (see for example Gonick 2006; Erevelles and Nguyen 2016). This way of dichotomizing girls as either winners or losers is highly problematic and, as the chapters in this anthology have shown, a simplistic description of girls’ lived experiences. A conclusion of the chapters points to an overarching need to understand girls as both strong and vulnerable, as both agents and in need of help and support. As Everelles and Ngyuen (2016) argue, the vulnerability many girls experience is not (only) discursive but highly material as many of the chapters in this anthology have emphasized. This anthology also illustrates the diversity of experiences embedded in the position of the girl. As stated in the introduction, girl as a concept 245

D

MARIA A. VOGEL AND LINDA ARNELL

intersects various positions of gender, age, class, ethnicity, ability and sexuality. Those groups and individuals portrayed as girls and young women in this book cover a wide range of different possible positions. Alongside nationality, ethnicity, ability and class, they vary by age, raising the question of when (or if ) girlhood ever ends. Following the aim of the anthology of focusing girls’ lived experience, we can note that transitioning from girlhood to adulthood is shaped not only by discursive understandings of who a girl is, but also of legal and social regulations. Some of the factors often used to distinguish adulthood from childhood (hence girlhood) is labour and housing (i.e. living on your own). As several of the chapters have shown, labour is not a given part (or path) of life for groups of girls in the European context, due to unemployment as well as conservative discourses on women and motherhood. In comparison, there are around 64 million girls around the world who are involved in child labour (International Labour Office 2017). Although in very different ways, young women held back from labour in parts of Europe, as well as girls involved in child labour, are both challenging the borders of the girlhood concept. Further, in contrast to social regulations keeping young women in girlhood well above age of majority, other groups of girls are made widely responsible for their behaviour prior to adulthood, as shown in the chapters focusing on girls with violent and delinquent behaviour. Accordingly, the concept of girl is complex and multifaceted, and the chapters show how the borders of girlhood can be challenged in multiple ways. Drawing from the chapters of this anthology it is also clear that legal and social circumstances shape the meaning of girlhood differently both within and across national and geographical boarders.

The Need for Social Science Perspectives in Girlhood Studies – Concluding Remarks This anthology clearly elucidates the importance of focusing on the impact that welfare systems and socio-geographical dimensions have on girlhood, and the need to include a social science perspective in girlhood studies. This was one of the central aims of the book. However, this need was made even clearer to us in the process of putting the book together. The response to the call for abstracts on girls’ life situations, particularly in relation to social problems and social vulnerability, was unevenly distributed across the European continent. While we are delighted that the 246

CONCLUSION

E

book covers both the northern and southern parts of Europe, which are known for very different welfare and political systems, it is remarkable that, despite our best efforts, the larger part of central Europe is missing. We are also delighted with the wide range of subjects discussed in the chapters, but still, the perspectives of queer, trans and gay girls and various perspectives on age are missing. This evokes questions relating to the width and spread of girlhood perspectives in social science, but it also points to the difficulty of defining Europe as an entity. It is a continent embracing around fifty countries and even more languages, shaping a myriad of sociopolitical and cultural systems. As shown in this book, the diversity of the continent is palpable in the welfare systems regulating young women’s lives, but it is of course also a central factor regulating higher education, universities and the lives of scholars in different parts of Europe. We therefore hope that this anthology will inspire the development of research collaborations that extend beyond national borders, creating opportunities for more transnational girlhood studies, emphasizing intersectional identities and the localized experiences of girls and young women from a social science perspective with the aim of improving girls’ and young women’s lives.

Maria A. Vogel has a PhD in Social work and is director of research at a municipal Research and Development unit in Stockholm, Sweden. Her main research areas are young people with psychosocial problems, and secure care. An overall theme in her research is the role of gender in young people’s lives and development, with a special interest in teenage girls and the construction of girlhood. Linda Arnell has a PhD in Social work and is a researcher at the School of Law, Psychology and Social Work, Örebro University, Sweden. Her research interests include gender, youth and emotions, with an emphasis on the construction of girlhood and children’s and young people’s perspectives on violence, abuse and social relations.

References Erevelles, Nirmala and Xuan Thuy Ngyuen. 2016. ‘Disability, Girlhood, and Vulnerability in Transnational Contexts’, Girlhood Studies 9(1): 3–20. Gonick, Marnina. 2006. ‘Between “Girl Power” and “Reviving Ophelia”: Constituting the Neoliberal Girl Subject’, NWSA Journal 18(2): 1–23. 247

D

MARIA A. VOGEL AND LINDA ARNELL

Harris, Anita. 2004. Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century. London: Routledge. International Labour Office. 2017. Global Estimates of Child Labour: Results and Trends, 2012–2016. Geneva: International Labour Office. McRobbie, Angela. 2007. ‘Top Girls? Young Women and the Post-Feminist Sexual Contract’, Cultural Studies 21(4–5): 718–37.

248

INDEX Abiétar López, Miriam, 104 ability, 2–3, 30–32, 34, 37, 40–42, 46–47, 51, 67, 69, 71–73, 92–93, 246. See also disability. ability norms, 37 ability to reflect, 15, 25 ableism, 31, 41 sense of ability, 78 absence, 25, 103, 171, 173, 175, 177, 185–186, 188–190, 195–196, 198–201 age, 2–3, 33, 37, 47, 49, 56, 69, 87, 91, 93, 105, 108, 124, 127, 129–130, 132, 134–137, 139–141, 149–150, 152, 172, 175, 206–209, 212, 214, 220, 227, 236–237 ageism, 66 age-related, 214, 226 agency, 3–4, 15, 20–25, 46–48, 50–51, 54–56, 59–60, 71, 84, 151, 154–156, 158–159, 167, 191–193, 219, 226, 231, 233, 243–244 bounded agency, 55, 151, 154 Ahmed, Sara, 38 appropriation, 196–197, 200 assimilation, 68–69, 187 Azhgikhina, Nadezhda, 19 Bartky, Sandra, 34–35, 37 Bauman, Zygmunt, 45

Baumann, Shyon, 55 Beck, Ulrich, 45 behaviour, 16, 19, 21–22, 25, 33–36, 47–49, 52, 57, 60, 85, 87, 89, 107, 125, 167, 170–172, 174, 191, 213, 215–217, 219, 224, 226, 246 antisocial behaviour, 226 behavioural issues, 171–172, 174, 177–178 behavioural problems, 219, 224 bodily behaviour (see body) consumer behaviour (see consumption) delinquent behaviour, 244, 246 female behaviour, 19, 54 risk behaviour, 206, 213–214, 216 self-harming behaviour, 232 self-limiting behaviour, 192, 199 sexual behaviour, 95, 227 violent behaviour, 89, 92, 207, 213 Berger, John, 30, 36 Berger, Jonah, 47–48 Bettman, James R., 46 Bhattacharjee, Amit, 47–48 blackness, 66, 70–72, 74–75, 78–79 body, 20, 31–32, 34–35, 37–38, 41–42, 46–47, 57–58, 73–74, 79, 196, 219, 230–231, 233 black body, 70 (see also blackness) bodily behaviour, 32 (see also behaviour)

D

INDEX

body image, 20, 230 body search, 207, 210, 218, 225 embody, 71, 77 sociology of the body, 30 Bordo, Susan, 58 Bosworth, Mary, 226 boundaries, 2, 4, 55, 68–70, 75, 78, 215, 232 ethnic boundaries, 72, 77, 79 gender boundaries (see gender) sexual boundaries, 215 social boundaries, 66, 68, 69, 71, 73, 77 symbolic boundaries, 69, 78 Britain. See United Kingdom Butler, Judith, 55 Cairns, Kate, 55 capital cultural capital, 28, 93 economic capital, 67, 73 social capital, 22, 67, 73, 168 symbolic capital, 67 capitalism, 3, 65, 73, 165 care, 16, 89, 93–94, 125, 205–206, 209, 215–218, 225, 227–228, 230–231, 233, 236 care and beauty, 66, 78 caregiver, 71, 85, 103 caretaker, 92 care work, 101, 103 forced care, 225 foster care, 207 out-of-home care, 206–207 paternalistic care, 209 psychiatric care, 206, 218 residential care, 205, 213, 220 secure care, 210, 214, 216, 218, 220, 224, 226–237, 244 self-care, 57 social care, 229 Chamberlen, Anastacia, 226 choice, 15–16, 20, 22, 24–25, 38, 47–48, 50–53, 56–57, 59, 65, 71, 84–85, 94–96, 105, 123, 150–155,

250

157–159, 165–167, 171, 175–178, 224, 245 choice-making, 147–148, 150–155, 157–158, 166 church, 14, 16, 19–20 Orthodox church, 15–16, 20, 24 class, 2, 3, 24, 45, 55, 95, 166, 167, 169, 173, 178, 244–246 class-stratified, 224 middle-class, 3, 15–16, 19, 49–50, 173, 245 social class, 47, 60, 165, 245 underclass, 177 upper-class, 224 working-class, 49–50, 165, 167–170, 172–173, 176–178, 245 citizenship, 60, 84, 102 colonialism, 3 confinement, 205–207, 210–211, 215, 218–220, 226, 237 Connell, Raewyn, 19 on hegemonic masculinity (see masculinity) conservative, 14–15, 17–19, 21–22, 25, 58, 67, 75, 79, 125, 243, 246 conservative turn, 4, 18, 20, 25 consumption, 38, 46, 48–56, 59 consumer behaviour, 46, 48–49, 52–53, 55, 59 consumerism, 19 consumption culture, 38, 60 consumer practices, 14, 55, 56 control, 16, 20, 31, 34–35, 37, 39, 47–48, 56–59, 84, 89, 94, 215, 219, 225, 227–229, 231–233, 235–237 Covington, Stephanie, 225 crime, 85, 93, 95, 225 crime involvement, 213–214 criminal justice, 224–226, 229 Croatia, 124–127, 130, 134–136, 140–142, 244 Zagreb, 126, 131, 136 democracy, 14 Denmark, 205–207, 217, 219, 243

INDEX

disability, 31, 245. See also ability disability studies, 3, 30, 34–35, 42 discipline, 16, 18, 31–32 34–35, 41, 84, 191–192, 199, 215, 226–227 education, 14, 16–18, 32, 47, 49, 55, 74–75, 84, 94, 101–109, 115–118, 124–142, 147–159, 164–178, 191, 229, 243–245, 247 basic education, 148–149, 152, 157 educational aspirations, 126–127, 130–131, 134, 140, 153, 157 educational attainment, 75, 101, 124, 130–131, 134, 136, 139, 140 educational outcomes, 108, 125 education system, 104–105, 117, 147– 149, 154–155, 157–158, 244 further education, 125, 168–169, 172 higher education, 108, 125, 127, 141 upper secondary education, 136, 141, 147–150, 152–154, 156–159 vocational education, 102, 104, 118, 140, 149, 152–153, 157, 168, 172, 175, 177–178, 245 employment, 67, 70–71, 74, 78–79, 103, 126–127, 134–138, 140–142, 243, 245. See also unemployment empowerment, 47, 56, 59, 65–66, 84–85, 95 equality, 77, 83, 102, 105, 118, 148, 150, 201. See also inequality gender equality (see gender) Erofeyev, Viktor, 18–19 Escalas, Jennifer Edson, 46 Esping-Andersen, Gøsta, 103 Ethiopia, 66–67, 69–80 ethnicity, 2–3, 47, 49–50, 55, 60, 69, 76–77, 79, 148, 150, 155, 201, 246 ethnic background, 77, 154, 165 ethnic boundaries (see boundaries) ethno-cultural, 185–187, 190–192, 200 ethno-cultural norms, 199 ethno-cultural segregation, 185 ethno-cultural stigmatization, 186, 198

E

Europé, 1–4, 14–15, 101, 116, 118, 123, 124, 126, 135, 141, 149, 152, 166–167, 205, 223–224, 227–228, 236–237, 243, 246–247 East Europe, 124, 126, 141 European Commission, 105 European Union, 1, 102, 107 Evans, Karen, 55, 151 Exclusion, 15, 67–69, 72–73, 76, 167, 171, 177, 185–187, 198, 200 family, 14–17, 19–22, 36, 45, 51–55, 72– 73, 77, 84–87, 89–90, 92, 94, 101, 103, 106–108, 112–113, 115–117, 123–125, 131, 151, 154–155, 167, 169–170, 191–192, 213, 230, 244 modern family, 17 motherhood, 17, 21, 54, 88, 101, 103, 108, 225, 244, 246 traditional family, 17, 20, 22, 89 feminism, 20, 223 post-feminist, 47, 84, 89, 95-96, 165 femininity, 18, 31–33, 35, 37, 41–42, 57–60, 79, 88, 93–94, 103, 187, 226–227, 230, 244–245 agentic femininity, 65, 70, 80 ideal femininity, 31–32 respectable femininity, 96 traditional femininity, 19, 77, 94 young femininity, 2, 15, 17, 31, 34, 39, 41, 186, 188, 230 Ferraro, Rosellina, 46 Finland, 147–150, 152, 154, 156, 158, 205, 243, 245 Foucault, Michel, 34–35 disciplinary power, 34 on governmentality (see government) Gapova, Elena, 20 gender, 2–3, 14–18, 30–32, 34, 37, 40–42, 45–48, 53–55, 57–60, 66, 69, 71, 83, 85, 89–94, 96, 101–103, 105–106, 116–117, 125, 140–141, 148, 150, 153, 157, 167, 169, 178, 187–188, 190–192, 195, 198, 201,

251

D

INDEX

205–206, 208–209, 211–214, 217, 219–220, 225–231, 235–237, 243–244, 246 gender-based differences, 109, 113–114, 117, 139, 225 gender boundaries, 72, 79, 95 gender discrimination, 125 gender equality, 15, 17, 55, 105, 193, 200 gender hierarchies, 90, 92, 201 gender inequality, 90, 102 gender-integration, 188, 207, 212, 220 gender norms, 17, 25, 31, 37, 86, 88–90, 93, 95, 231, 237 gender order, 15–17, 19, 25 gender oppression, 188, 232 gender roles, 16, 22, 53, 60, 67, 71, 77–78, 102–103, 105, 117, 125 gender segregation, 102, 105–107, 116–118, 212, 220, 227, 230 gender stereotypes, 95, 105, 118, 188, 191, 212 generation, 13, 16, 22–25, 45, 49, 59, 124 intergenerational, 124, 127 second-generation, 66, 190 Gilligan, Carol, 71 Girlhood, 1–3, 15, 18–21, 25, 47–49, 58–59, 80, 84–85, 95, 188, 224, 227–228, 234, 236–237, 245–247 globalization, 1, 165 Goffman, Erving, 233 on disassemblages of selves, 235 Goldson, Barry, 237 Gooch, Kate, 226, 237 Goodkind, Sara, 95 government, 14, 17, 24 health, 37, 55, 95, 115, 134, 170, 209 mental health, 84, 95, 170–171, 173–174, 216, 220, 223, 226–227, 231–232, 234, 236 physical health, 175 sexual health, 213, 215 hierarchy, 25, 194–197, 199–200 gender hierarchies (see gender)

252

patriarchal hierarchies, 31 racial hierarchies, 187 Howe, Adrian, 226 Iannelli, Cristina, 105 immigration. See migration imprisonment, 226, 236 incarceration, 226–228, 231–232, 236–237 inclusion, 25, 68, 75, 148, 167, 177, 188, 192, 194, 199–201 inclusion programs, 165, 177–178 inclusion schemes, 167, 171 self-inclusion, 72 social inclusion, 185–189, 200–201 individualization, 47, 55 individualism, 25 successful individual, 65 inequality, 15, 24, 209 gender inequality (see gender) intersectionality, 3, 42, 47, 60, 65, 206, 209, 220, 247 Israel, 66–67, 69, 73, 75–79, 243 Italy, 48–49, 53, 59, 135, 244 Janigo, Kristy A., 56 Jenkins, Richard, 45 Jiwani, Yasmin, 3 Johnson, Kim K. P., 56 Johnston, Josee, 55 Jones, Domenique, 56, 58 justice criminal justice, 224–226, 229 justice system, 206 injustice, 55, 96, 210, 235 justice for girls, 95 juvenile justice, 206, 219, 243 social justice, 226 youth justice, 83, 95, 237 Kabeer, Naila, 47 labour market, 105, 117–118, 124, 126, 135–136, 139, 141–142, 165 global market, 60

INDEX

job market, 127, 165, 168 marketization, 166, 171, 177 market mechanisms, 55 media market, 19 sex market, 18 Lamont, Michele, 68 language, 36, 67, 72, 76, 149–150, 152–153, 156–159, 167, 213, 247 Linton, Eliza Lynn, 18 Lloyd, Gwynedd, 227 Lutz, Richard J., 53 Marhuenda-Fluixà, Fernando marginalization, 3, 33, 66, 72, 74, 142, 198, 211–212, 219, 224, 236–237 marketization. See labour market masculinity, 17, 90, 95, 187, 191 McRobbie, Angela, 47 Melnichenko, Nastya, 20 Menon, Geeta, 47–48 migration, 1, 45 immigrant, 108, 116, 190, 243–245 immigration, 67 migrant background, 147–151, 153–159, 186–187, 190, 198, 200 Mifflin, Margot, 59 minorities, 14, 185 mirroring, 30–31, 39–41 Mitchell, Claudia, 3 Moore, Elizabeth S., 53 Morris, Jenny, 35 Mun, Jung M., 56 Navas Saurín, Almudena, 104 neocolonialism, 3 neoliberal, 1, 21, 65, 67, 74–75, 78–79, 84–85, 89, 95–96, 151, 165–166, 171, 177, 224, 244–245 neoliberal subjects, 67, 70–71, 73, 84 norms, 17, 19, 25, 35, 39, 55, 95, 186–188, 193–200 ability norms (see ability) conservative norms, 21 contemporary norms, 31 cultural norms, 188

E

ethno-cultural norms (see ethno-cultural) gender norms (see gender) liberal norms, 21 norms of femininity, 19, 33, 41, 245 norms of masculinity, 187, 201 norms of whiteness (see whiteness) patriarchal norms (see patriarchy) social norms (see social) Överlien, Carolina, 231 Pantzar, Mika, 50 pathway, 103–105, 108, 116–118, 141, 165, 167, 225 patriarchy, 3, 37, 192 patriarchal community, 67, 75, 79 patriarchal hierarchies (see hierarchy) patriarchal norms, 125 patriarchal renaissance, 15, 17 patriarchal rule, 190, 192, 200 patriarchal standard, 58 patriarchal structures, 3, 42 patriarchal system, 142 patriarchal values, 105 peers, 75, 90, 93, 95, 126, 130–131, 134–135, 140, 174, 213–217, 228, 243 Pokropek, Artur, 105 post-traumatic stress disorder. See trauma poverty, 15, 73, 94, 142, 178 power, 2–4, 15, 24, 34, 42, 47–48, 50, 57–59, 60, 66, 68–69, 74, 77, 79, 94–95, 178, 187, 198, 201, 209, 220, 227 disciplinary power (see Foucault, Michel) empowerment, 47, 56, 59, 65–66, 70, 62, 78, 84–85, 95–96, 169 girl power, 16, 20, 84, 245 Pussy Riot, 19–20 Putin, Vladimir, 13–14, 16–17, 19 protection, 14, 84, 127, 205–206, 209, 211, 216, 224–225, 236 Child Protection, 219–220

253

D

INDEX

precarity, 45, 135, 141, 165 psychiatric care. See care psychiatric treatment. See treatment psychiatric problems. See health punishment, 211, 213, 224, 226–227 race, 3, 49–50, 67, 69–70 racism, 4, 66–67, 79, 158, 201, 243, 245 resistance, 18, 20, 25, 59, 66–73, 76–80, 94–96, 153–155, 157–158, 197, 213, 219 respectability, 36, 91–92, 96, 237, 244 rights abortion rights, 16 civil rights, 102, 125 reproductive rights, 14, 125 restriction of rights, 225 rights of sexual minorities, 14 rights of the child, 207 rights of women, 125 rural, 125, 131, 140 Russia, 13–20, 24–25, 150, 243 Moscow, 17, 19 Russian-French, 15 St Petersburg, 17 Saltmarsh, Sue, 50 Scotland, 84–85, 165–166, 168–169, 217, 224–229, 235–236, 245 secure institutions, 205–209, 211–212, 214–216, 219–221 secure care (see care) segregation, 17, 112, 213 ethno-cultural segregation (see ethno-cultural) gender segregation (see gender) geographic segregation, 191 horizontal segregation, 109 sectorial segregation, 107 spatial segregation, 210 urban segregation, 185, 200–201 sexuality, 2–3, 19, 21, 47, 58, 84, 91–92, 94–95, 150, 211, 216, 219, 228, 246 heterosexuality, 3, 16, 20 254

sexism, 66, 93, 167, 201 sexual abuse, 32, 86, 89, 214, 217, 223, 225, 229 sexual behaviour (see behaviour) sexual education, 16 sexual harassment, 20 sexual relations, 16, 215, 231 sexual victimization (see victimization) sexual violence (see violence) transactional sex, 205–206, 213–214, 216 Shabtay, Malka, 76 Sharpe, Gilly, 95 Shove, Elizabeth, 50 Sikora, Joanna, 105 Skeggs, Beverly, 38 Smith, Ann, 3–4 Smyth, Emer, 105 solidarity, 15, 20, 23–24, 95, 124 social, 2, 4, 14, 21, 23, 58, 60, 68, 77–79, 101, 124, 127, 186, 193, 208, 226, 246 social activities, 3, 90 social actors, 46–47, 50, 55, 57, 79 social background, 125–126, 130, 134, 140, 150 social boundaries (see boundaries) social capital, 22, 67, 73, 168 social care (see care) social change, 1, 25, 60, 191–192, 201 social context, 46–48, 55, 140 social control, 227–228, 236–237 social disadvantage, 206, 212, 227 social discrimination, 33, 66 social division, 95, 243 social inclusion (see inclusion) social mobility, 67, 74, 127, 130, 141 social networks, 20, 155 social norms, 4, 30–32, 35, 41, 45, 53, 125, 237 social polarization, 103 social policy, 1, 102, 185–186 social positions, 73, 124–125, 141, 153 social problems, 1–2, 4, 75, 124, 185–186, 200, 223–224, 244–246

INDEX

social reproduction, 126–127, 131, 140, 142 social roles, 51, 123 social services, 4, 103, 224, 227, 232, 234 social status, 125–126, 141 social structure, 50, 77, 79, 123, 140, 244 social systems, 2–4 social vulnerability (see vulnerability) social work, 85, 171, 219, 226, 229 socialization, 16, 60, 91, 105, 125, 229 sociodemographic, 49, 106–108, 116, 126, 130–131 socio-pedagogic, 189, 191–192 socio-political, 66, 69, 79, 124, 140, 200, 247 Soviet, 13–14, 16, 18, 23 Perestroika, 16 Post-socialist countries, 15 Post-Soviet, 13, 18 space, 19, 21–25, 57, 66, 72, 125, 168–169, 209, 211–212, 217, 220, 229, 231 Spain, 101–105, 111–112, 116–117 Balearic Island, 102, 106–107, 111–112, 116 Mallorca, 106 Steenbergen, Candis, 3 stigma, 67, 69, 72 ethno-cultural stigmatization (see ethno-cultural) stigmatization, 65, 68, 70, 72, 78, 159, 198, 226 stigmatizing gaze, 68–69, 73, 76–77 strategies, 39–40, 66, 68–69, 72–74, 76, 78–80, 85, 102, 193, 196, 199, 200, 209, 211, 214 coping strategies, 211, 213, 217 Strübel, Jessica, 56, 58 support, 17, 22, 24, 66, 67, 78–79, 125, 148–149, 152, 154–155, 159, 166, 171, 174, 176–177, 189, 191, 214, 216, 220, 245 family support, 21, 155 financial support, 166, 171

E

Sweden, 185–186, 189, 200, 205, 219– 220, 224–227, 229, 235–236, 243 Syria, 1 trajectories, 45, 75, 124, 208, 213, 220 post-school trajectories, 167 transnational, 3–4, 206, 247 transnationalism, 3 transitions, 101, 124, 147, 165, 176, 226, 237 educational transitions, 149–150, 152–153 post-school transitions, 165–166, 177 transitions to adulthood, 2, 118, 126, 224, 237, 244 trauma, 95, 217, 219, 236 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 216 re-traumatizing, 229, 232 traumatic history, 84 traumatizing, 216, 229 treatment, 205–207, 218–219, 224–227, 234–235 psychiatric treatment, 206, 216, 218 unemployment, 103–104, 135, 243, 247 UN convention on the rights of the child, 207 United Kingdom (UK), 1, 84, 164, 166–168, 177, 205, 219–220 urban suburban area, 187, 198, 200 suburban landscape, 185, 200–201 urban periphery, 190 urban segregation, 200 Valentine, Gill, 226 Vanner, Catherine, 3 victimization, 83–85, 92, 96, 214 sexual victimization, 85, 214 violence, 20, 83–85, 88–90, 92–93, 95–96, 192, 213, 223, 226, 244 domestic violence, 86 physical violence, 85, 93, 213 sexual violence, 201, 216–217 255

D

INDEX

vulnerability, 95, 125, 135, 195, 211– 212, 217, 225, 245–246 welfare, 89, 206, 208, 224–226, 236, 244 child welfare services, 205, 206, 213–214, 220 family welfare model, 101 welfare measure, 2, 224, 226, 243–244 welfare placements/placement on welfare grounds, 206–209, 212, 219 welfare provision, 185, 206, 209, 219 welfare state, 206 welfare system, 2, 4, 224, 236, 244, 246–247 Wendell, Susan, 35 West, 3, 14, 18, 60, 67

256

north-western Europe, 223 western Balkan, 141 western culture, 67, 70 western democracy, 14 western propaganda, 16 western society, 30–31, 52 western standard, 220 west of Scotland, 165, 169 whiteness norms of whiteness, 38 Wilkie, William L., 53 Wimmer, Andreas, 68–69, 77 Young, Iris M., 55 Yudin, Grigory, 25