Joseph Rowntree Foundation support third Teesside YRG study

The Teesside Youth Research Group has won further research funding from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for a third study in a series which examine issues of youth transitions, social exclusion and marginality.

The new project – Two steps forward, two back? Understanding Recurrent Poverty – will be led by Dr Tracy Shildrick and last for 22 months, starting in May 2008.

Te research reflects JRF’s twin concerns of understanding better issues of poverty and place and stems from a wide-ranging literature review conducted. It identified the problem of ‘recurrent poverty’: how some individuals and households, over time, move in and out of poverty but never escape the threat of poverty.

The dynamic, life-course perspective required for the study fits well with YRG’s core interest in processes of life transition. The study will add to YRG’s longitudinal research with people from ‘poor neighbourhoods’. Snakes and Ladders (Johnston, 2000) studied the ‘alternative’ and ‘mainstream’ careers of young adults in one Teesside locale.

Poor Transitions (Webster, 2004) followed up some of the same people as they reached their mid to late twenties. Two steps forward, two back? will interview some of the same individuals, now aged over 30. A key question will be the extent to which people are able to progress through precarious, ‘poor work’ to more stable, rewarding employment.

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