Young people, place-based stigma and resistance: A case study of Glasgow’s East End

Abstract

This article analyses working-class young people’s perceptions of and resistance to place-based stigma, through a case study of a youth-led theatre project in the East End of Glasgow, UK. The impact of stigma on working-class communities is well-established; through the effects of poverty and inequality people and places are stigmatised. Although existing literature emphasises that we must recognise how working-class people construct alternative narratives, there is limited evidence on how people in neighbourhoods with high levels of poverty manage and resist stigma. There is a dearth of research on young people’s resistance to stigma. This qualitative study found promising signs of young people’s agency to resist place-based stigma by constructing alternative narratives. Through creative work, young people were able to convey powerful messages around poverty-related issues, making visible the effects of poverty on individuals and communities and encouraging empathy and understanding. However, it was also evident that individualistic understandings of poverty are so powerfully ingrained that these alternative narratives stopped short of an explicit recognition of structural causes of poverty. This article argues that viewing resistance as a process helps to identify possibilities for supporting young people to further develop critical consciousness, to confront stigmatising discourses in a way that exposes power relations, and to generate activism.