Working Age Benefits.

149

The number of people aged between 16 and 64 years old in receipt of working age benefits is significantly higher than the city average with 17.8 % in receipt of some form of out of work benefit whereas the average for the city is 7.4%. In terms of unemployment although the number of individuals claiming Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) has fallen back from the peak of 258 in 2009 to 159 in October 2013 this represents almost three times the city average at 5.2% of the population. 8.6% of residents are in receipt of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) or Incapacity Benefit (IB)31, 1.7% are registered careers and 1.3% are registered disabled. 3.8% of people under 25 are in receipt of some form of working age benefit which is three times the city average.

5.6 Conclusion.

This chapter has explored some of the ways in which the Leys has been negatively viewed and represented by local and national media as well as outlining aspects of the wider Oxford social and economic contexts. In the next chapter I present an analysis of the data generated through the semi-structured qualitative interviews I conducted with residents from the estate during my fieldwork which explores how residents themselves report on how the estate and those who live there are seen by others.

150

Chapter Six: ‘It’s Like a Story of Hope in a Damned Environment.’

I mean, the general reaction of people when I tell them I’m from the Leys is sort of almost fear I suppose, from people, unless they’re from sort of Barton, Rose Hill, one of the other estates or anything. (Will).

6.1. Introduction.

In chapter four I explored how notions of community are constructed within and through critical readings of New Labour’s policy approaches to urban regeneration, neighbourhood renewal and social exclusion. In chapter five I explored some of the ways in which the Leys has been negatively viewed and represented by local and national media as well as outlining aspects of the wider Oxford social and economic contexts. In the next three chapters I present an analysis of the data generated through the semi-structured qualitative interviews I conducted with residents from the estate during my fieldwork. As noted in chapter one, these three chapters are an attempt to pay serious attention, in Back’s terms (2007) to the views of those who are often the ‘targets’ of policy interventions and the discourses that attend these. My aim throughout the fieldwork was to engage residents in discussions about their views and experiences of the living on the estate, their experiences of how they and the estate are ‘othered’ by non-residents from other parts of the city, their sense of the estate as a community and what community means to them. I also wanted to explore what participants saw as the strengths and weaknesses of the estate and how they perceived external agencies and authority responses to respond to the estate as well as those who live there. These chapters attempt to foreground data that can be compared with the official views of ‘poor’ communities and those who lived in them as articulated through New Labour (amongst others) policy discourses. Put simply, I wanted to ask the residents of the estates what they thought were the main characteristics of where they lived, what did they think were

151

the main issues that they and their neighbours faced and how best could these be addressed. The data reported in the chapter demonstrates that residents detect a high level of both actual and perceived negative attitudes, to the area they live in. Anger, resentment and irritation are also expressed about these attitudes, as they are seen as unfair, unjustified and prejudicial. Some of the participants demonstrate a reflexive understanding and perceptions of the issues that may underpin the attitudes of others and offer a range of insights into the social processes that they see at work here. The chapter begins with a series of reflections from residents on the reputation of the Leys and, in particular, how they see the estates as viewed by ‘outsiders’. The chapter reports on how residents of the estates talk about this reputation and how they perceive this reputation impacts on them, their life chances and their community.

For me, one of the most striking findings from the study has been that throughout the fieldwork conducted for this project participants consistently talked about the impact of the persistent and cumulative impact of these negative representations; on themselves, their experiences and more broadly on what they see as their wider life chances (for example, education, work, relationships, connectivity with the wider city). My analysis revealed some important and nuanced reflections on the representations of the estate and those that live there. Participants frequently present sophisticated accounts of a multi-level and interwoven set of discourses, time-lines (both real and imagined) and how these not only impact on them and their community but how they contribute to the overall structuring of relationships between the estate and other parts of the city and, in particular, with the availability and quality of service provision and the distribution of local and national resources.

Because of the specific significance of one set of repeated representations of the estate – the ‘riots’ of autumn 1991- I take a particular focus on the public disorder associated with the period of high-profile (in terms of local and national media coverage and academic

152

commentary) joy-riding or ‘hotting’ as it was known locally in 1991 and I explore how these events appear to hold a symbolic importance (both locally and nationally) that is far greater than the ‘reality’ of the events that reportedly occurred during the late summer of 1991. Due to the timing of these events (they took place at the same time as apparently similar series of disturbances in a number of other cities across Britain) they have become woven into a broader set of national narratives about a set of riots and public disorders that occurred in certain other English cities in the early 1990s (Campbell, 1993, Lavery, 1997, Mulghan, 1996, Power and Tunstall, 1997). Interestingly, perhaps, these events were spontaneously referred to in most of the interviews and, appear, to occupy a highly significant place within local understandings and the structuring of those understandings of Blackbird and Greater Leys, both for those who live there and for those who do not. However, depending on where you look, who you speak to or what you read the ‘reality’ of what happened in 1991 is very much disputed. It seems that all too readily disparate and unrelated events that take place in one geographical area can become very much confused with other events in different areas. Or perhaps become part of an amalgam or even imaginary of more generally reported and remembered events which can then be mobilised either locally, nationally or perhaps even personally to constitute a suitable and necessarily selective narrative of events.

The chapter is organised into a series of sub-sections through which I explore the different ways in which discourses about the estates are perceived and reflected upon by those who live there and how these discourses interrelate with each other. In the final section of the chapter I examine how these various discourses reflect wider discourses about and attitudes to council estates and how discourses of this type may contribute to issues of wider concern, such as social and economic class divisions, notions of and attitudes to crime, disorder, anti-social behaviour and ‘risk’ (in relation to Britain’s ‘dangerous places’ (Campbell, 1993)) and the role of large areas of concentrated urban housing as key signifiers

153 in social, political and policy discourse.