Health matters: the social impacts of street-involved youth's participation in a structured leisure programme. Issue 1 (2nd January 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: McClelland, Carolyn; Giles, Audrey R.
• Is Part Of: Leisure studies. Volume 35:Issue 1(2016)
• Page Start: 46
• Page End: 63
• Publication Date: 2016-01-02
• Subjects: street-involved youth -- leisure -- Foucauldian approach -- social impacts; Leisure -- Periodicals; Recreation -- Periodicals; 306.4805
• DOI: 10.1080/02614367.2014.994549
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0261-4367

Abstract

Abstract : In this ethnographically informed study, we used a Foucauldian approach to examine the social impacts of street-involved youth's participation in a structured leisure programme. Our findings suggest that structured leisure activities help to facilitate social ties between the youth participants as well as the youth and programme staff/volunteers. Nevertheless, we found that structured leisure does not necessarily assist in the formation of relationships between street-involved youth and members of the mainstream community outside of the programme. We show how the ways the youth took up dominant discourses concerning street-involved youth and engaged with technologies of the self-influenced their social relationships and their ties to the community. These findings complicate our understanding of structured leisure's potential benefits for street-involved youth.