Whewall, Sam; Keating, Avril; (2024) Wish you were here? English coastal youth and their sense of place. Presented at: Stop the Clock - 4th Journal of Youth Studies Conference, Belfast, UK.

Preview

Slideshow Whewall_JoYS conference - SW.pdf Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

This paper examines young people’s sense of place in English coastal towns. Traditionally, popular imaginaries of coastal towns evoke nostalgic memories of the sea, sand and ice cream of childhood holidays. However, many towns along England’s coastline, whether tourist destinations or industrial towns, are reeling from decades of stark economic decline. Today, young people growing up by the sea face a future of low-wage and insecure employment, low educational attainment and skills, poor health outcomes, a degraded physical environment, and the stigmatisation of their towns in policy and media discourse as ‘left behind’ ‘ghost towns’ ‘on the margins’. With this in mind, in this paper, we question what is distinctive about growing up by the sea today, and how coastal youth negotiate a sense of place. To do so, we draw on participatory, coproduction and interview data from 60 young people (aged 15-20) in two towns (a seaside resort and an industrial town), elucidating their lived experiences and perceptions of: how their town is (mis)represented and/or stigmatised; local opportunity structures; safety; the built environment; and the future of their town. By doing so, we foreground how the economic decline of coastal towns has affected the sense of rootedness and pride of young people who live there, as well as their priorities and proposals for positive change going forwards.

Download activity - last month

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as JSONCSVXML

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Archive Staff Only

View Item