Right on the End: Youth Belonging in English Coastal Towns

This paper examines young people’s sense of belonging and marginalisation in English coastal towns. Popular imaginaries of England’s coastal towns evoke nostalgic memories of sea, sand and ice-cream, yet many of these towns are reeling from decades of stark economic decline. As a result, today, coastal youth in England face a future of low-wage, precarious employment, low educational attainment and skills, a degraded built and natural environment, and the stigmatisation of their towns in policy and media discourse as ‘left behind’ ‘ghost towns’ that are ‘on the margins’.

In this paper, drawing on participatory, coproduction and interview data with over 100 young people, we compare the experiences of youth growing up in a range of towns (e.g. resort, industrial, port) across four coastal areas. We examine their leisure activities, use of public space, safety, opportunity structures and sense of place. In particular, we focus on their sense of belonging and how this is shaped (and in some cases weakened) by: their exclusion from public space; the loss of youth-oriented activities and spaces; ‘competition’ with others for a stake in their towns; and the marginalisation of their towns in relation to elsewhere.

By doing so, we elucidate nuanced perspectives on belonging, tied up with uncertain mobility aspirations, contradictory feelings about the peripherality and small size of their coastal communities, and a lack of optimism about the future of their towns. As a result, we hope that this paper can contribute to broader conceptual and theoretical discussions around the fluidity and complex nature of young people’s sense of belonging.