209 dream’ discourse, which is congruent with Iris’ stated ambition to become a model.
It is tempting to use the term passive to describe these young people’s
affirmation of dominant media-cultural discourses, even if measured along a continuum of agency. A
s Dedman 2011, p. 512 suggests, “passive […] is a relational concept, separating those whose cultural engagement is more centred on
the consumption of mass-mediated products. In this sense the dichotomous variables ‘active’ and ‘passive’ should not be considered as fixed states”. However,
under any interpretation no matter how nuanced, the term ‘passive’ denotes an
almost unconscious acceptance of exposed to discourses, which I do not believe that the participants in the above extracts are displaying. Rather these young
people appear to have a conscious and affect driven engagement and affinity with the media texts and discourses that they expose themselves to, but this conscious
engagement appears to be relatively uncritical, and does more accurately denotes an uncritical rather than passive disposition.
For example, Tyrone’s discursive interpretation of his favourite movie is thoughtful and deliberative, as are Jack and
Lindsey’s interpretation of the
No Regrets
song, which is incidentally similar to S
ean’s ‘YOLO’ evocation described above. What is not as apparent, however, is an understanding of how their interpretations strongly resonate with neoliberal
individualist and consumerist discourses. Nor is there is any critical read in these accounts as e
xemplified by Tyrone’s, “Anyone who doesn’t like that message then they just don’t want to be successful” affirmations.
7.3 WelfareBenefits Schemata
The majority of these young people’s views and attitudes on welfare
programmes reflected popular negative conceptions disseminated by major media outlets. This marks another important line of delineation from the other two
classifications of young people. However, as the following extracts demonstrate, their views on welfare were also marked by a high degree of ambivalence,
inconsistency, and in some cases, negative strong valence dispositional attitudes. Rudy:
So you guys brought up benefits, so what do think is the government’s role in providing benefits?
Jenkins: I think benefits should be more lenient:
Tyrone: No, [stomping his fists on the table] no I disagree.
Rudy: What do you mean lenient, as in the government should give more
money
210 Tyrone:
No [emphatic] Jenkins:
They should give money but they should know who they are giving it to.
Rudy: Oh like more restrictions?
Jenkins: Yeah like if you make a certain amount that’s fine, but as soon as they
should like have rules, more stricter rules saying that you could only get it cause of this. To actually get benefits, [inaudible] you got to
find work.
Tyrone: Yeah
I hear what you’re saying [directed at Jenkins], but I think it’s really soft this country. Like for instance, a lot of English people in
this country they say, these whatever people come into our country and stealing all our jobs
, but it’s these people that come into this country that own the chicken shops and the corner shops and they’re
the people that are working, they don’t just come into the country and say yeah here I’ll take a chicken shop and run it. So it’s like the
Engli sh people that are on benefits, so I don’t understand this theory
of English people saying, they come for our jobs. Rudy:
But what about benefits in general, what you think about benefits? Tyrone:
Obviously they help, they help. Rudy:
Do you think like Jenkins that they should be restricted more? Jenkins:
Not the amount, but the people that [get them] Tyrone:
I think, people get a lot of help as it is now, but I just don’t think that if someone is on benefits and they’re like 55, you shouldn’t be saying,
oh you got to go to work. There are young people who are like 17 and they can’t get a job, why should a 50 year old get one.
Jenkins: Yeah but that’s different if they’re 55 he’s got 10 years before he has
to retire. Tyrone:
Yeah but that happens though man , trust me, that’s what they do. Is a
lot of these older people that are on benefits in it, is not people like us that are young in it. They’re the ones [that are being told] find a job
and then you come off benefits, and then their argument is if I get a job I won
’t even be getting as much as I’m getting now on benefits, so why am I getting a job I might as well stay on benefits.
Iris: That’s exactly what I was going to say.
Rudy: So what do you think about that Iris?
Iris: I was just going to say what he [Tyrone] just said. I agree with him
[Jenkins] about restricting cause some people might start thinking, right if I’m already getting money, some people might see it as a
reason to not get work. Rudy:
Because they’re getting more… Tyrone:
They’re getting more on benefits for doing nothing especially families that you see in the paper all the time man, families that got like seven
kids just milking the system.
Iris: Yeah
Tyrone: Nice money, housing, and benefits….
Rudy: All of these stories about seven kids where did you hear that?
Tyrone: [raised intonation] Newspapers, type it in Google, type in.
Rudy: But which newspapers
Tyrone: The Sun [UK tabloid newspaper].
There’s people that have loads of kids and milk the system.
211 Iris:
The more kids you have the more money you get. Jenkins:
Yeah the more kids you have the money you get. Hackney participants
Rudy: What do you think about government benefit programmes?
Josh: I think the government should provide these.
Dilanda: [Nodding her head in agreement.]
Josh: Some take the piss, but they should [remain].
Anthony: I think more needs to be done to stop people from [taking advantage
of them]. Bermondsey participants Rudy:
What about your thoughts on government welfare programmes, what do you think of them?
Fernanda: Welfare like when they give out money to poor people? Rudy:
That’s an aspect of it yes. Fernanda: [..]
, I think they’re not doing a good job because I’ve seen people around the neighbourhood and I know people who want certain stuff.
And then it’s funny how I seen this happen to a neighbour of mine, she was in need and she went to the welfare office to get food stamps
she told me, and then another neighbour who like lives with her husband, and put on her
application that she doesn’t live with her husband and has five kids, and her husband has a good job and they
own three cars. And she got food stamps and my neighbour didn’t.
Rudy: But do you support them?
Ferndanda: Like how support them? Rudy:
Are you against government welfare programmes? Fernanda:
I’m not against them. If people are in need and there’s money out there to give them, well why not you know. Bresee participant
Rudy: Ok since you guys brought up the government, what do you think of
the current Cameron Administration? Sean:
I don’t really agree with him because he cut down on a lot of things that young people and their families really need. He cut down EMA
education maintenance allowance for us, and that’s really brought a
struggle to us really. I feel like som e people’s mums out there can’t
survive off paying for them every week so the thirty pounds really helped them out.
Tirian: No but I think it’s good that he cut down benefits so that people will
have the incentive to work on their own backside. Rudy:
Ah so you agree with him then that benefits should be cut so that people can be..
Tirian: laughs
Well obviously I don’t because I want my mom to get money so that I can get stuff, but in a way is good.
Rudy: Ok explain, please elaborate.
Tirian: Elaborate, in that parent’s that are now forced to work. Not forced,
but they’re forcing their own stale mind, cause when they think that they’re kids ain’t got clothes, usually they’d be getting five-hundred
212 pounds a month, so they can buy some new trainers, but now they get
two-hundred pounds a month, so they have to work, and when you start working it’s not as bad as you think. Hackney participants
Figure 7.1: Tyrone’s WelfareBenefits Schemata
213
Figure 7.2: Tirian’s Welfare Schemata
The above accounts, and as illustrated in Tyrone’s and Tirian’s welfarebenefits schema maps, show the range of conflicting thoughts on welfare
that these young people had. In most cases, as exemplified by Tyrone who cited the
Sun
[a British tabloid newspaper] as his source for his information on welfare recipients
, these young people’s views and attitudes on welfare largely reflected those of negative media stereotypes. Nonetheless, in the final analysis, most of
these young people with the exception of Maurine Zoo participant who also cited Fox News a notoriously right-wing propaganda US cable news network as a
source of political news, support some form of welfare provisions; albeit, in some instances, as Tirian’s and Sean’s accounts demonstrate, this tentative support was
motivated by self-interest. However, as suggested by some of the linguistic markers in the above extracts
e.g., Tyrone’s “getting something for nothing,” or Jenkins, “not the amount but the people that get them”, these young people’s
214 sense of fairness is disturbed when they hear accounts of people cheating the
system, which are influenced by overblown media and anecdotal accounts of systemic fraud which are not vindicated by existing empirical accounts around
1 in the UK,
67
Nonetheless, the strong valence negative dispositional affect expressed by these young people, may be the cognitive product that results from
the clash between the acceptance of widespread anti-welfare discourses however erroneous they may be and their inherent fairness predispositions, which
preliminary research suggests are inherent in human beings see Sloane et al., 2012 In other words, rather than reflect a simple internalization of neoliberal
discourses, these young people’s socially generated negative attitudes towards
welfare programmes and recipients may be related to other unconscious cognitive processes and underlying mechanisms, which are nonetheless exploited by, and
inflected through, neoliberalism. I will elaborate on this point further in section 8.4 of the following chapter.
Furthermore, on the topic of homelessness, t hese young people’s views
generally correlated with the person-blame approach found in their welfare schemata. To wit, they tended to express a person-blame and in most cases
negatively affective view and attitude when discussing the causes of, and government responses towards, homelessness. Moreover, as the following extracts
suggest, these views and attitudes strongly in some instances strongly reflected those that an ideal neoliberal would likely express see Figure 4.3.
Rudy: Do you think the government should do anything to help homeless
people? Ela:
Like homeless people. Like I ’m against people that are just standing
in the corner asking for change. With all that money that they save on the street, or go to a homeless centre, they can somehow find a job.
They can turn their life around. Government should not do anything about homelessness.
Maurine: I don’t think it’s the government’s responsibility to do anything. It’s
up to the individual. Zoo participants However, other
Mainstream
young people, while maintaining that individuals have to be responsible for their own lot in life, did express more sympathetic and
compassionate views on this issue. For example:
67
Retrieved from: http:www.bbc.co.uknewsuk-10922261
215 Rudy:
Do you think the government should do anything to help homeless people?
Karina: I think the government should help the homeless. Some of them have
mental problems that they can’t resolve. Some people just want to be homeless, but I think the government should help people that want to
be helped. Zoo participant
Rudy: Hostels, is that where like..
Jack: Is where like young people can go and live there.
Rudy: Is that right, and they’re charging for it now? And they used to be
free? Jack:
Yeah. Lindsey:
Yeah and they ain’t go nowhere else to live, like homeless people. Jack:
Yeah when I went to the store a homeless guys was like you got a spare fag? And I was like seriously mate you should be indoors its
cold and raining outside.
68
Bermondsey participants Nonetheless, despite their varied views, overall,
Mainstream
young people’s thoughts on welfare and homelessness largely mirrored those propagated by
dominant neoliberal discourses. Correspondingly, while some of these young people did point to bad luck as a possible cause of poverty and homelessness, and
even held more compassionate positions, none of them mentioned any structural factors that can contribute to individual destitution. Furthermore, these more
individualistic views and outlooks also echo the findings of other researchers. For example, Sherrod et al., 2002, p. 268 found that
“those [young people] high in self-interests tend to blame individuals for being poor, unemployed, or homeless,
whereas those high in public interests [like the
CriticalPolitical
young people] tend to see the systemic or structural roots of those problems”.
68
The train of thought from this focus group was difficult to follow. However, these participants implied that the price of hostels, food, and transport should be lowered, and presumably by the
government. Additionally, the Bermondsey participant Josh expressed similar sentiments.
216
7.4 Politics and Capitalism Schemata
