Policing Young People As Citizens-In-Waiting: Legitimacy, Spatiality and Governance

Abstract

This paper draws upon data from two research projects following two distinct groups of young people: youth activists and homeless or street-involved youth. Although these two groups differ in many ways—the former largely white and middle-class, the latter more ethnically diverse and entirely working-class—each describes encounters with the police that are strikingly similar. The paper explores two such similarities: (1) the role played by cultural discourses of the ‘good and legitimate citizen’ and (2) the role of spatiality, or, more specifically, the importance of being an appropriate body in the appropriate space. The paper explores how the above two dimensions nuance and complicate the relationship between youth and police, in the context of governmentality studies.