Schools, Safety and the Urban Neighbourhood connects an earlier project on the social organization of school suspension and expulsion policies and processes to my doctoral research on the institutional and governance relations influencing young people’s experiences of homelessness and housing precarity. The project uses a range of qualitative research methods (e.g., policy analysis, participant observation, participatory mapping, interviews and focus group discussions) to investigate school and community safety from the standpoints of youth “at risk.”
The research focuses on young people’s movements through their neighbourhoods and across institutional settings – especially schools, community housing, courtrooms, and jails. Working with small teams of youth researchers, we identify and describe processes of social and institutional exclusion – including racializing and criminalizing processes – that can lead to reduced access to education and other public resources for youth. We have worked collaboratively with educators and educational leaders, as well as practitioners in youth justice and social services organizations from the early days of project development through the first two years of the study. The findings from this research are also relevant to pre-service and practicing teachers, seeking to teach for and about social justice.
Five-year (2013-2018) SSHRC Insight Project
Contact: Naomi Nichols, PhD
