Mixed-income communities and the wellbeing of low-income young people

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This fellowship aims to contribute to academic debate and research-informed policy and practice around young people's experiences of social housing estates being regenerated into mixed income communities. This will be achieved through a package of research dissemination and knowledge exchange activities that will increase the social impact of my doctoral research and facilitate its uptake by academics, policy makers, practitioners and communities. My doctoral research revealed that working class teenagers are not reaping the benefits of transforming deprived council estates into socio-economically mixed communities. On the contrary, it seems that the regeneration processes further restricting their opportunities and ability to live a good life. My PhD aimed to give prominence to youth voices in understanding how their neighbourhood affects their wellbeing. To that end I spent 12 months in 2018/19 conducting immersive fieldwork in an inner-London council estate that has been turned into a mixed community. I volunteered at the local youth centre and engaged 40 young people (12-19 years) in partiticaptory activities and group discussions. I also interviewed 36 adult stakeholders, including regeneration decision makers and local service providers. Findings showed that, contrary to policy expectations, young people are not able to benefit from the new facilties and improvements in their area and that their wellbeing is undermined by increasing social inequalities and divisions, their exclusion from public spaces and local decision making and their diminishing sense of belonging.These findings have clear implications for the policy and practice of social housing redevelopment, particularly in London and other cities of Western countries where social mix is a common feature of urban regeneration. They are also of relevance to academic debates and literatures on community and place, youth wellbeing and the use of collaborative participatory research methods.Building on my PhD work, this fellowship aims to: (a) enhance the understanding of the influence of mixed communities regeneration on working class young people's wellbeing; (b) advance a conceptualisation of youth wellbeing that foregrounds their lived experiences; (c) contribute to the literature on youth-centred participatory methodology; (d) promote youth-inclusive social housing regeneration policy and practice; and (e) create opportunities for future research collaborations. These aims will be achieved through a programme of activities that include developing academic publications, presenting at conferences and seminars, organising knowledge exchange events with young people, policy makers, practitioners, campaigners and interest groups, co-producing a manifesto for youth-inclusive regeneration policy and practice, writing for a wider audience, scoping post-fellowship research plans and initiating forums for discussions with colleagues about directions for future projects.