I am very pleased to belatedly announce that the edited collection I have been working on with Dr Tara Young and Dr Rod Earle was released at the end of September 2023 with Bristol University Policy Press. Exploring Urban Youth Culture Outside of the Gang Paradigm: Critical Questions of Youth, Gender and Race On-Road is a collection with a brilliant group of academics who all write about young people’s lives on-road without a focus on gangs- but rather, on the way young people live, love, relate, and survive. To celebrate the book we are going to have a small roundtable in November where we will put our book in conversation with Luke Billingham and Keir Irwin-Rogers’ brilliant book Against Youth Violence: A Social Harm Perspective. We have invited four community experts to come and critically discuss concepts from the books and what resonates (or does not) in their practice. We are going to live-stream this discussion and invite you to join us online- tickets here. Attendees will be able to access a discount code to purchase the books.
We were thrilled to see the endorsement of our book by the brilliant Dr Jonathan Ilhan
“A welcome departure from the well-trodden path – there are no stereotypes of Black ‘gang members’ here. Instead, we meet friends, lovers, creatives and future youth workers navigating harsh socioeconomic inequality and racist criminalisation on-road.”
Jonathan Ilan, University College Dublin
The book blurb is here:
‘On-road’ is a complex term used by young people to describe street-based subculture and a general way of being. Featuring the voices of young people, this collection explores how race, class and gender dynamics shape this aspect of youth culture.
With young people on-road often becoming criminalised due to interlocking structural inequalities, this book looks beyond concerns about gangs and presents empirical research from scholars and activists who work with and study the social lives of young people. It addresses the concerns of practitioners, policy makers and scholars by analysing aspects and misinterpretations of the shifting realities of young people’s urban life.
Foreword by Claudia Bernard
1. Introduction: Youth and On-Road – Making Gender and Race Matter – Jade Levell, Tara Young and Rod Earle
2. Black, British Young Women On-Road: Intersections of Gender, Race and Youth in British Interwar Youth Penal Reform – Esmorie Miller
3. Tainted Love: Intimate Relationships and Gendered Violence On-Road – Yusef Bakkali and Ezimma Chigbo
4. (The) Trouble with Friends: Narrative Stories of Friendship and Violence On-Road – Tara Young
5. The Sexual Politics of Masculinity and Vulnerability On-Road: Gender, Race and Male Victimisation – Jade Levell
6. The Road, in Court: How UK Drill Music Became a Criminal Offence – Lambros Fatsis
7. On-Road Inside: Music as a Site of Carceral Convergence – Chris Waller
8. Jeta e Rrugës: Translocal On-Road Hustle, Within and from Albania – Jade Levell and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers
9. ‘He’s shown me the road’: Role Model and Roadman – Peter Harris
10. Diary of an On-Road Criminologist: An Auto-Ethnographic Reflection – Martin Glynn
11. Conclusions, Compromises and Continuing Conversations – Jade Levell, Tara Young and Rod Earle
jadelevell.com 