The Milltown Boys At Sixty

The Milltown Boys at Sixty is a story like no other, giving both an insider and an outsider view of the ‘Milltown Boys’, exploring the nature of an ethnographic relationship based on research about their experiences of the criminal justice system. A group classically labelled as delinquents, drug-takers and drop-outs, the Boys were also, in many different ways, fathers, friends and family men, differentially immersed in the labour market, in very different family relationships and now very differently connected to criminal activity. Williamson has written books capturing their experiences over the fifty years of his continued association with them: about their teenage years; and twenty years later, in middle-age. This book is about them as they pass the age of 60, providing a personal account of the relationship between Williamson and the Boys, and the distinctive – perhaps even controversial – research methodology that enabled the mapping of their lives. It provides a unique and detailed insight into the ways in which the lives of the Milltown Boys that started with such shared beginnings have unfolded in so many diverse and fascinating ways. These accounts will be of interest to the lay reader curious about the way others have managed (or failed to manage) their lives, the professional who works with those living, often struggling, on the wrong side of the tracks, and the academic researching and teaching about social exclusion, substance misuse, criminal justice transitions and the life course.

Howard Williamson's 'Five Years' was a ground-breaking study of youth, poverty and crime in the 1970s. At its close, the boys he interviewed were left with few prospects and bleak futures. Twenty-five years later, Williamson returns to find out the s ort of men these boys have become and narrates their stories in this extraordinary book.Of the original group of sixty-seven boys, seven are dead -- not one of natural causes. Williamson tracked down half of those remaining. Here they tell of their p ersonal, family and social relationships, legal and illegal work, their experiences of the criminal justice system, and money. Contrary to what one might expect, their lives are startlingly diverse.The Milltown Boys Revisited is a riveting account of life on the edge during the Thatcher and Blair governments. It tells stories of dignity, human betterment and escape, of fatalism on the margins of criminal and drug cultures, and also of getting by in difficult circumstances. It is as much a celebr ation of individual resilience as an account of risk and vulnerability in the lives of the dispossessed.

A reference tool for initiating youth policy and learning about the diversity of national and international governance and about the infrastructure available for youth policy, its implementation, review and evaluation Today, we know much more about national and European youth policy, the role of research, participation of young people and monitoring and evaluation of youth policy than we did when the first Youth policy manual was published in 2009 by the EU–Council of Europe youth partnership. The concept of youth policy can be very narrowly or very broadly constructed. This volume positions youth policy in the context of public policy and reflects on the complex, cyclical nature of policy making, bringing together the results of knowledge gathering and debates central to the European agenda in the field over the last 15 years. Thematically, the manual focuses very specifically on those areas of youth policy that have been formulated and developed through European consensus-building – participation, information, volunteering, social inclusion, access to rights, youth work, mobility and digitalisation. We hope that the five parts of the manual, from the conceptual to the practical, and through a range of examples and questions for reflection, will help you to explore, understand and engage with the youth policy framework in your context, from your own perspective, and will provide you with a sense of all the stages of youth policy making. Most importantly, the manual includes a wide range of standards, tools and resources developed by and for the benefit of youth policy makers, youth work practitioners, youth researchers and young people across Europe. It is About Time! we strengthen the youth sector further to develop a new generation of positive and purposeful youth policies in Europe!

This handbook brings together cutting-edge research from key contributors on the rapidly expanding and fast-changing field of UK youth gangs. It examines the contours of the academic debates, describes and explains the origins and evolution of violent street gangs in the UK against a backdrop of globalization, and discusses the factors surrounding the emergence of these gangs in each of the four UK nations and some English regions. It also examines the relationship between gangs and wider issues relating to gender, ethnicity, drug distribution and organised crime. It critically assesses the potential and limitations of ‘Public Health’ approaches to gang violence reduction and the government’s policy responses to violent street gangs in the UK. Providing a broad examination of the latest UK gangs research, with international comparisons, it is essential reading for undergraduate and post-graduate students, in criminology, sociology, social policy and law, policy makers at local and central government level, and practitioners in the fields of law, policing, youth work, social work, housing and workers in dedicated voluntary sector organizations.

Around 1 in 10 children born in the UK are fathered by men under the age of 25. These men are often from socially disadvantaged areas and frequently overlooked in both research and practice settings. Using findings from a major Economic and Social Research Council study, supplemented with additional data, the authors focus on the transitions of the young men into early parenthood and their unfolding lives thereafter. As negative popular and media discourse around young fathers begins to shift, policy makers, practitioners, researchers and students will find future policy and practice directions designed to nurture the potential of these young men and their children.

The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown into relief some key issues in contemporary youth transitions to adulthood in Europe, presented in this book In early 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic struck Europe with a vengeance. All sections of the population were rapidly affected by the efforts made to limit the deadly impact of the coronavirus: lockdowns and other restrictions on personal movement, the closure of public spaces and limits to association. Young people were perhaps the least at risk in terms of illness and mortality. In other respects, they were disproportionately affected, on account of the closure of educational institutions, the collapse of recruitment to the labour market and the range of challenges surrounding the places and spaces where they lived, whether “at home” or elsewhere. Covid-19 regulations lasted for well over two years and their consequences linger on or persist. The experience of the pandemic affected young people in many ways. This book provides a range of accounts of those experiences, among different sectors of the youth population, in different parts of Europe and among those who sought to provide young people with support. It draws perspectives from pre-existing research projects that were sustained through the pandemic, spontaneous research inquiries and reflective case studies from practitioners in the field. This volume of the Youth Knowledge Book series presents a contemporaneous account of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic period on young people. It broadly confirms the resulting exacerbation of the inequalities affecting young people in different and cross-sectional ways, as their lives and aspirations were disrupted and put on hold. But it is by no means completely bad news. Young people also displayed creativity, resilience and sometimes resistance during the pandemic, as did some professionals responsible for supporting them. From this diversity of understanding about responses to one crisis, there are important lessons and ideas for youth policy and how it may respond better to similar crises in the future.

Structure and Agency in Young People’s Lives brings together different takes on the possible combinations of agency and structure in the life course, thus rejecting the notion that young individuals are the single masters of their lives, but also the view that their social destinies are completely out of their hands. ‘How did I get here?’ This is a question young people have always asked themselves and is often asked by youth researchers. There is no easy and single answer. The lives that are told, on one hand, and their interpretation, on the other, may have the underlying idea of 'own doing' or the idea of 'social determinism' or, more accurately and frequently, a combination of the two. This collection constitutes a comprehensive map on how to make sense of youth’s biographies and trajectories, it questions and reshapes the discussion on the role and responsibility of youth studies in the understanding of how people juggle opportunities and constraints, and contributes to escaping what Furlong and Cartmel identified as the "epistemological fallacy of late modernity", in which young people find themselves responsible for collective failures or inevitabilities. It can thus interest students, researchers and professors, youth workers and all of those who work for and with young people.

The Advanced Introduction to Youth Studies analyses the historical development of the sociology of youth in the context of changing population demographics. Howard Williamson and James Côté explore competing paradigms underlying current understanding of youth with reference to key philosophical, theoretical and methodological debates. Young people’s transitions to adulthood and youth cultural behaviour are then explored. The authors conclude with a consideration of youth policies and how, in the future, these may be better informed by sociological research.