**5. Precarious processes in everyday life in socially deprived housing areas for some young people**

For some young men with an ethnic minority background, precarious processes seem to begin long before their connection to the labor market. Growing up in socially deprived housing areas and having difficulties in gaining access to good schools and completing the final exam, as well as participation in associational life and leisure activities outside the housing areas, seem to constitute a way into the precarious labor market, not only for some immigrants with an ethnic minority background, but also for some descendants of immigrants, that is, the young people who on the whole all have grown up in Denmark, have attended primary school, and had opportunities for upper secondary education and beginning further education.

The precarious processes seem to include movements associated with lack of or poor schooling, several upper secondary educations, which have not been completed, difficulties in finding work or changing periods in work with low-paid jobs, which do not require special educational qualifications, but also a lack of expectations or hope of being able to complete an education and get a permanent job with a good income. Many of the young men attending the youth clubs and the drop-in centers have experienced involvement in crime, for example, vandalism, theft, drug sales, or assault.

### *Processes of Precarious Living Conditions: Young Men of Ethnic Minority Background Growing… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110646*

While several Nordic studies have pointed to everyday life in housing areas [17], as well as the gendered aspect [39], the analyses of the data show the importance of the fact that children and young people experiencing and handling the housing area differently, across their age.20 Different strategies appear to be linked to age, while the vast majority of the children and young men indicate that they live in a place associated with a lot of crime. For the very young people in the leisure clubs, interviews indicate that they are preoccupied with avoiding involvement in crime but at the same time an understanding of it being present in various forms of appearance.

It is across the housing areas and the young people's stories—especially the very young boys—in which they tell about a daily life, where trouble and crime are constantly present:

"Not because you want to, but if you're outside with your friends, if the club isn't open. If we were outside, and someone said something stupid, then I could easily be fighting, because this club was missing."

"It sounds like it's very easy to get involved in crime, when you put it that way?" (interviewer)

"Walla it is easy." "If you have this childhood friend who is older than you, then you become a criminal yourself, then you become like him."

"If the club had not been open on Mondays and Tuesdays and such, I think all of them in here, might have ended up in crime. Because there are a lot of (city name) boys, who commit crime (…) they are like a magnet, you know, you just go to them. So, if I hadn't attended this club, I think I would have become like that" (from a focus group interview with young people from Bluegarden).

Several of the young boys also have many experiences with older brothers, or others, who are "criminals." More precisely, the term "criminal" seems to encompass many different actions; from hanging out on the street and "making trouble," to moving into groups of young people, who stick together, and are "enemies" with the ones from another housing area, to participating in burglaries, assaults, robberies and "taking substances."

A strategy to deal with these experiences in the local housing area, as a place considered to be "easy to become a criminal," seems to be the possibility of having a physical place to stay together with friends and with the pedagogical staff. The leisure clubs in the afternoon, across the three housing areas, are full from the time they open until they close. There are many children and young people there playing on computers, making music, and also many different sports activities take place across the housing areas.

The children and young people point out that it is important to be in the club. This is where you "hang out with your friends," and it is also here that the pedagogues are "perfectly okay" to be with. The pedagogues "play football" with the young people and the pedagogues are also pointed out as someone who is "trustworthy," who has "computer skills," or who "helps" if needed.

At the same time, the place where the young boys live is also a "good place" even if there is "crime." Several of the young boys have in common that they grew up together in the housing area and have lived there all their lives. They point out that all their friends live there, their family, including grandparents, uncles, or cousins.

<sup>20</sup> In the research project, there has not been a focus on gender and gender differences in relation to participation in leisure and youth clubs. Across the three housing areas, there are "equally as many girls as boys" in the leisure and youth clubs in two of the housing areas, while in the third housing area there are no girls, but instead a small girls' club, which participates separately, and separate from the boys [24].

During the fieldwork in the leisure club in Greengarden, where the leisure and youth club is physically located in the middle of the housing area, the young boys point out of the windows, and can show where they live, where their grandparents live, or their best friend, who "lives in the stairwell right next to it." We take a break from playing billiards, drink soft drinks, and talk about "living here with your best friends." "That's the best thing about living here" (from fieldwork notes in the leisure club in Greengarden).

Although Greengarden from the outside looks like a large housing area with a long row of identical blocks of flats, the young boys can still point out that "there is a lot of crime down there." Down there points to a place further down the road, perhaps 500 m, where someone who "commit a lot of crime" live. One of the strategies for these young boys is to stay away from "down there." "We stay up here," "here it is best to stay," seems to be the shared story (from fieldwork notes in the leisure club in Greengarden).

Wacquant et al. [21] point out how different strategies of the individual resident or groups must be analyzed with reference to social positions, which can be connected to, for example, class, life situation, and ethnicity, but age is also pointed out as a factor, which becomes important for strategies to deal with stigmatization in housing areas.

One of the key findings, which stands out in the data material, in relation to the analyses of how the children and young people act on the local stigma, associated with the specific housing area, is the difference in age, especially in terms of how the young boys are handling the stigma of their housing area, a stigma that is spoken of as a place where "crime takes place." Among the young boys, there seems to be an omnipresent knowledge that crime is connected to these housing areas, but also that it takes place in "this block of flats," or down at the "other end," and not "up here, where I live."

## **6. Being young and at risk of precarious living conditions**

In the data material, which includes both focus group interviews with young boys in the leisure clubs, as well as the young men in the youth clubs and drop-in centers, differences in age seem to appear, as a factor that seems to have an impact on how they perceive and handle their experiences of the housing area in which they grow up and live.

While several of the very young boys are preoccupied with avoiding getting involved in "crime" and seem to use the leisure club as a stamping ground, there also seems to be a period of the young boys' everyday life, where precarious living conditions loom on the horizon, provided they do not stay out of crime. If you become a "criminal," then you "destroy" your future, or if you do a crime, it will affect your "schooling," the young boys explain. Precarious living conditions, in which you lose the opportunities for schooling, education, and work, seem to preoccupy the consciousness of several of the young boys, which is also supported by several of the pedagogues in the leisure club. Standing [37] characterizes how precarious processes can include experiences of being without a secure identity or a sense of development achieved through work and life choices.

Several of the pedagogues point out that it is important to "hold on" and offer "alternatives to crime." It thus seems as if there are several traps that one can be caught in, along the way through childhood and youth life, traps that seem endless to overcome once one is caught up. Standing [37] uses the term traps as "a combination of poverty traps exploitation and coercion outside the workplace, and precarity traps

#### *Processes of Precarious Living Conditions: Young Men of Ethnic Minority Background Growing… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110646*

that amounts to a tsunami of adversity [37, 47] analyses are concerned with the working lives of adults and insecure living conditions, especially associated with a lack of rights in working life, the concept of traps, associated with children's and young people's schooling, education and working life, also seems to be identified, especially in terms of the young boys and men.

The pedagogical staff, across the three housing areas, point out that growing up in these housing areas is in many ways difficult for children and young people. There is "nothing wrong" with the children and young people, but they must have support to "step out of the housing areas" and "live their lives."

Through leisure and youth pedagogical work, strikingly appear stories about giving children and young people the competencies and skills to "cope in life," for example, by completing primary school, obtaining a secondary education, perhaps also an apprenticeship, and eventually a permanent job ([7–9, 24] in review).

But several traps seem to be able to be identified by the pedagogical staff; growing up in socially deprived housing areas, attending schools that do not have the resources and time to give young boys and men a good education, as well as the risk of moving into crime, are all precarious processes, in which the children and the young people can be caught and entangled in traps. All these traps seem to be present for the young boys and young men, and the pedagogical staff is constantly preventing the children and young people to be caught up in these traps. The young men from the youth clubs and drop-in centers point to their experiences with these traps. "Not having completed school," "having committed crime," and feelings of abandonment and powerlessness.

"It is my own fault," says Hassan, for example, during the fieldwork in Greengarden's youth club, where we sit together with one of the pedagogues, Michael, who has helped Hassan to apply for upper secondary education. Hassan tells how he started to "commit crime," and at the same time started to "cut school," but also about how he has been "stupid," and now "has pulled himself together." Michael has helped and got Hassan into an upper secondary education, so now "no more acting stupid," as Hassan puts it (from fieldwork notes in Greengarden's youth club).

Thus, the data material points to the fact that a difference can be identified in relation to the young people's age—while the young boys to a great extent emphasize the community in the leisure club and the importance of avoiding involvement in "crime," the older young men are to a far greater extent aware of precarious living conditions associated with the risk of lack of education and lack of work. The differences in age should not necessarily be perceived as a physiological age difference but must be seen with reference to the societal ways in which the welfare state has arranged the overall education system, and in which the youth period deals with choosing education, completing education, and becoming associated with the labor market.

Getting an education is the most important thing, to "cope," or to "become something," seems to preoccupy many of young people, but there is also an experience of having been in situations or periods, where it seemed hopeless. To cope thus also rests on the shoulders of lived experiences of not "having coped."
