Warehousing young people in urban Canadian schools

Drawing upon the theoretical insights of cultural geography (e.g. Massey 1999) and the sociology of youth culture, this paper explores perceptions of ‘peer rivalries’ ¹ and accounts of social exclusion on the part of economically disadvantaged male and female youth (aged 14–16) in one urban concentration in Southern Ontario, Canada. In particular, we examine the impact of contemporary urban youth class conflict and neoliberal school cultures on the social formation of youth sub-cultural identities in the modern Canadian inner city. In so doing, we seek to assess the ways in which economically disadvantaged male and female youth perceive the influence of gender and urban schooling in shaping their conceptions of their social futures, which are viewed here, following Reay and Lucey (2003), as ‘tied to the geography’ of urban cities and school life.