ABSTRACT
We would, however, want to stress the abstract quality of the unease that is felt about ‘yobs’. Local newspapers regularly carry letters, or other reports, complaining about the behaviours of these ‘yobs’ in public spaces in the city centre, on public transport or in local neighbourhoods. But the discussion of individual young people in our discussion groups was often surprisingly sympathetic, and did not involve the attribution of these kinds of label. There is a balancing of an awareness of the real difficulties of life being experienced for some young people (a form of social solidarity echoing the long history of Northern experience) with an active dislike of the predatory and uncontrolled yobbery of the lumpenproletariat.1 In this sense, the anxieties of other publics over young men, when encountered in person on the streets, were similar to the unease provoked by the presence of the poor and the homeless.2
