Performance and surveillance in an era of austerity: schooling the reflexive generation of Muslim young men

The last 15 years have seen a remarkable shift in the educational representation of British-born Muslim young men. In the media-led reclassification of them, from South Asian to Muslim, they have moved from ideal student to potential jihadist. This article draws upon a three-year ethnographic study with young Muslim men located within the West Midlands. A shared emphasis on structural issues across critical theoretical frameworks on neoliberalism, government discourses, such as Prevent, and counter narratives on Islamophobia serves to underplay young Muslim men’s subjectivity, and in so doing limits their self-authorization. We argue that at a time of intense state/institutional surveillance as a ‘suspect community’ and the criminalization of ethnic and religious difference, Muslim young men are in the process of negotiating late-modern urban masculine identities. Simultaneously, deploying a methodological reflexivity indicates that a re-reading of their narratives provides insights into recent political changes and national belonging

Higher Education, de-centred subjectivities and the emergence of a pedagogical self among Black and Muslim students

This article explores late modern Black and Muslim young men’s and women’s experiences of higher education. Carrying out qualitative research with 14 male and female young people, these students claimed that their Youth and Community Work course at their university made available an alternative representational space, enabling them to develop a major transformation of their sense of identity and self. In deploying the term pedagogical self, we are attempting to capture their naming pedagogy as central, in their terms, to the ‘reinvention of their selves’. We conclude by suggesting that our research participants’ narratives are located within an exploration of late modern identity and the self in higher education. In turn, this enables us to reflect on a generational shift in meanings around racialization and difference in thinking about the future of higher education in Britain

Shifting Discourses from Boy Preference to Boy Crisis : Educating Boys and Nation Building in Neoliberal China

It is well established that China has emerged as a major economic power, resulting from the nation’s neoliberal modernization. What is less understood is the socio-cultural and educational impact of this change on public institutions. This article focuses on the education system, which is currently seen as central to delivering the nation’s modernization project, particularly through suzhi jiaoyu (education for quality). More specifically, we engage with a pervasive public discourse of a boy crisis. We suggest the need critically to explore the local (national) meanings within a contemporary Chinese context of this assumed projected crisis that appears to be established as a western phenomenon. We argue that the discourse of a boy crisis can be read as a strategic move to re-inscribe an earlier discourse, that of the boy preference, that in turn is discursively linked to nation building at a time of globally inflected socio-economic transformations

Inclusive Masculinities in a Working-Class Sixth Form in Northeast England

This research examines the construction of masculinity among a group of working-class boys aged sixteen to nineteen in the northeast of England. Drawing on data collected from a six-week ethnography with boys in a religious (Christian) sixth form college, this study documents how only a small minority of these boys embodied the orthodox archetype of masculinity that has traditionally been associated with working-class youth. Instead, the great majority of participants adopted attitudes and behaviors that can be categorized as a set of inclusive masculinities: They espoused positive attitudes toward homosexuality, engaged in physical tactility and emotional intimacy, and used homosexually themed language without the intent to wound or marginalize other boys. These findings pose a considerable challenge to dominant narratives on working-class masculinities; narratives that must now be reconfigured to account for the proliferation of inclusive masculinities among working-class youth