Marginalization and the White Working Class: an Ethnographic Study of NEET Young Men in a Northern Inner City

This research is an ethnographic examination of 13 white working-class NEET young men aged between 16-24, located in a particular urban space. A Bourdieusian theoretical framework was deployed to conceptualize the lives of these young men. The key findings were that the young men’s identity and culture disadvantaged them in achieving in education, and gaining employment, subsequently, resulting in NEET status. This was primarily due to the young men not prepared to sacrifice their cultural identity – which was an embodiment of class and race - despite a concerted attack by neoliberal discourse. Consequently, they became marginalized, and thereafter, engaged in the local value system of their community to create counternarratives to middle-class culture and constitute themselves as subjects of value. The young men however, still maintained key values and dispositions associated with employment, family and home life as they all projected mainstream attitudes. However, the practices that actualize their local identities, contribute to keeping them NEET within a process of ‘advanced marginalization’.