Peters, Fiona Virginia. 2010. Who cares about mixed race? Care experiences of young people in an inner city borough. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

Preview

Text SOC_thesis_Peters_2010.pdf - Accepted Version Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract or Description

This thesis is an engagement with the care experiences of mixed young people, to
produce knowledge of how care processes, mediated though the private foster family,
impact on their lives. It begins with an examination of the relationship between the
mixed classification and care, and continues through a discussion of race, race mixing
and the family. The study then examines methodologically how the mixed classification
operates in social work through a discussion of racialisation and its impact on the care
trajectory of young people. Further, it engages with long-standing debates over why
young people with a mixed classification are more likely to be significantly represented in
care. The empirical chapters are comprised of the narrative accounts and visual
representations of the young people and their experiences in care.

A highly participatory research methodology paid critical attention to the narratives of
mixed young people in care between the ages of 12-20 years, as research participants, in
order to engage and elicit rich detail about their care experiences. An innovative mixedmethod
approach emerged in part from their specific circumstances and led to new ways
to research with and understand young people who live in circumstances of instability
often characterised by crisis.

This thesis engages with the care experiences of the participants to reveal how the
discursive repertoires of mixedness and their application through care processes impacts
on lives. Each empirical chapter is presented as an individual case study that examines
the experiences of a single participant in order to interrogate care practices in relation to
mixedness. The themes to emerge centre around family, relationality, professional
intervention, classification and identification, race and mixedness, sex, gender, class,
culture and ethnicity, all within the crisis of the care system. This thesis argues that
placing the care experiences of mixed young people in the centre of debates about how
to conceptualise mixedness could influence care planning.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Keywords:	mixed race, care, london, children in care, experience, lived experience, lewisham, mixing, mixedness, looked-after, care system, public care, corporate parenting, inner city, social workers, narrative, photography, care leavers, racial classification
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Sociology
Date:	23 February 2010
Item ID:	2885
Date Deposited:	30 Apr 2010 14:55
Last Modified:	08 Sep 2022 08:19
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/2885

View statistics for this item...

Edit Record (login required)