ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned to investigate young people’s uses and perceptions of public space and issues of safety and danger. It is based upon a study of South Asian, Afro-Caribbean and white youth who live in a medium-sized town in the south-east of England which we have called ‘Thamestown’.2 The chapter explores the question of how an ethnically mixed group of young people negotiate public space as part and parcel of their everyday lives when moving about the town. This is set against a backcloth of continuing racial, class and gender divisions within an area of the country which is stereotypically characterised as the ‘affluent southeast’, but which has been under-researched in terms of youth studies. As the above quotations from our interviews with these young people suggest, certain people and places can gain local reputations based upon racialised3
perceptions of ‘danger’ and ‘trouble’, whilst on the other hand personal familiarity and ‘knowing people’ from a diverse range of backgrounds can facilitate feelings of safety and movement across the invisible borders of youth territory.
