ABSTRACT
For some, the lack of respect conferred on them in everyday life is such that there’s no need to do anything to risk disapproval or disrespect: a safe space is the exception and not the rule. In this case the ‘airlock’ doesn’t take us from the relative safety of everyday life to the potential risks of drama, but from the threats of everyday life to a bounded time without the feeling of threat. Mary Ann Hunter handles the idea of safe space in working with such supposedly ‘at risk’ young people very sensitively, in an influential article inspired by her work in a ‘peace building’ project which brought together people of differing ethnicities. Participants included indigenous Australian, Pacific Islander, Sudanese migrant, and Australian-born Asian people, who were often in conflict – sometimes through the physical violence, and sometimes ‘symbolic’ violence.
