CAMPOS DE CONCENTRACION LABORALES DE LA PACIFIC RUBIALES

The ethnographic fieldwork in each locality revealed significant differences in the leisure activities of the young people. The variances in play, leisure and access to opportunities between the young people in Sandton and Rockford revealed differences underpinned by class. The majority of the young people who attended the youth centre in Sandton were chaperoned there by parents in order to participate in organised activities, similar to the findings of Valentine and McKendrick’s (1997) research. Sessions were provided to improve the young person’s extracurricular skills through singing, dancing and sports:

“It’s helped my confidence and it’s given me something to do” (Female 15 Sandtonyouth-centre Interview)

These paid for sessions were in contrast to the youth centre in Rockford, where admission was free and the youth centre provided a safe place for young people to socialise and to receive food. The provision of a hot free meal every night was essential for some, as one young person stated:

“Like I’ve seen like both ...I wasn’t one of the kids that came in because I was starving all the time I was quite lucky in that sense but… there are a few things to do in Rockford but you need to pay for them and none of them have got the

money they can’t even afford to eat, I’m not saying that is a bad thing it’s just the way things turn out... you know it’s true because they can’t afford like...not that their parents will just not feed them it’s just that they haven’t got enough money to feed them and like keep the house” (Female 17 Rockford youth- centre Interview).

The extract below from one interview in Sandton exemplifies the busy and demanding schedule typical of many of the youth centre-based young people there:

“I go to the dance academy on Mondays at 5pm I do modern and I also do ballet on a Wednesday now… oh I have a friend who I know from my other drama class who comes here and does Pilates and a fitness workshop, but they clash with my Monday nights” (Female 13 Sandton youth-centre Interview).

Another young person described why he attended the youth centre, emphasising the youth centre’s commitment to providing informal education; a dominant feature of youth work funded by the youth service (Smith 1988):

“It’s interesting, its enriching I mean we have got enrichment days every Wednesday at school but you really don’t learn much there, it’s here that you learn something” (Male 16 Sandtonyouth-centre Interview).

In contrast, the young people in Rockford attended the youth centre as an alternative to ‘hanging around’ on the streets:

“I always come here every day ...didn’t want to start drinking and smoking. Wanted to avoid falling into that way of life” (Male 14 Rockfordyouth-centre Interview).

“People are friendly and there’s stuff to do to stop me from getting in trouble and stuff on the streets” (Female 15 Rockford youth-centre Interview).

The differences in the activities provided at each youth centre emphasised two things; first, that unlike Rockford many young people could afford to participate in extracurricular activities in Sandton, and second that the young people in Sandton were more closely chaperoned. Newson and Newson (1976) argue that ‘middle class young people gravitate to partake in exercise or creative activities when outside the home and tend to be more supervised by their parents, whilst working class children are expected to spend more time outside the home’ (cited in Valentine, 1997: 77). Restrictions imposed by parents consequently led to many of the younger youth centre based people in Sandton not spending much time in public space. Valentine (1997) suggests that parents impose boundaries and consequently restrict children’s

use of space (Hart, 1979) by using what Katz (2006: 108) defines as ‘terror talk’. This was evident from the extract below:

“When we are on our bikes we usually go around the block, my mum won’t let me go any further, we can just go around the block and go into each other’s gardens, because I have got a trampoline so they like to go around to mine and go on the trampoline….but sometimes when you go there (parks) there are boys that hang out there and my mum doesn’t really want me to take my brother because just in case something happens” (Female 13 Sandton youth- centre Interview).

Valentine (1997) emphasises that these anxieties are predominantly middle class and examines the chaperoning of young people to various activity centres. Middle class families have the money and transport to do so but young people from low income families have less access to this resource (Valentine, 1997). Although the findings of this research concur in part with Valentine’s (1997) conclusions on chaperoning and resources, it was not the case that parental anxieties about young people’s safety in public space were predominantly middle class. In Rockford, the young people strongly articulated a discourse around ‘stranger danger’ (Katz, 2006), predatory adults and paedophilia. Adults were perceived as a threat to their personal safety. Parents in Rockford were very aware of some of the unsafe places and would trust the young people to take notice of their warnings. As in the findings of Sutton (2008: 543), ‘these children were expected to manage risk much more than the private school children’ (Sutton 2008: 543). The concept of young people as vulnerable to attacks by strangers was overwhelmingly articulated by the young people in Rockford, rather than Sandton, and this is discussed further in Chapter Eight.

Differences in leisure activities between the two localities suggested that, in Sandton, restrictions to the young people’s use of public space were also parent-imposed. Resonating with Valentine’s (1997: 77) research, the younger people in Sandton spent ‘more of their leisure time indoors or taking part in activities supervised by adults’ whereas most of the young people in Rockford, regardless of age, spent the majority of their time in public space and subsequently had a stronger presence in, and relationship with, their locality (See Matthews et al., 1999). The research findings suggested that ‘poverty and material disadvantage reduces children’s opportunities

to participate in organised and structured leisure activities’ in line with the conclusions of Sutton’s (2008: 544) research. When young people do occupy public space, particularly in a group, this often attracts the attention of ‘others’ - young people and adults - and can often lead to conflict (Lieberg, 1995).