How do the effects of deindustrialisation and neoliberalism influence young people鈥檚 perceptions of work and education? In Cancelled Futures, Amit Singh examines how experiences of class-based inequality work through race, place, and gender in different ways. Moving beyond the usual framing of race versus class and the populist fixation with the white working class, Singh shows the intractable challenges that Black, Asian, and white young people share when they envision their futures in changing labour market conditions. Drawing on extensive interviews with sixty-two young working-class Britons, he describes the range of strategies they employ in the absence of viable economic opportunities鈥攁nd the uneven results that follow.
Singh offers a vivid nationwide portrait, bringing together seemingly divergent locations and their youth鈥攖hose living in proximity to the extraordinary wealth and perceived opportunity of the City of London, in the former northern mill town of Rochdale, and in the forgotten seaside town of Morecambe Bay鈥攁nd captures the empathetic sense of struggle that many cultivate. Singh reveals that although the unique features of place raise distinctive racial and gendered reckonings with their circumstances and hopes, these young people have in common an increasingly fading sense of the future. Singh shows that they do not cling to the illusion that hard work pays off or the myth of meritocracy, but seek only to realise some sense of dignity and meaning amid a future that feels not just confusing but altogether absent.
Amit Singh is assistant professor of sociology at University College London. He is the author of Fighting Identity and the coauthor of Pubs for the People.
“Cancelled Futures is a vivid and deeply empathetic book that underlines that to understand class in contemporary Britain we have to grapple with place. Drawing on detailed and intricate ethnographic fieldwork in areas of the UK routinely ignored by researchers, Singh shows us how young working-class people’s imagined futures are fundamentally mediated by space, race and the structural conditions of their locale. Highly readable and highly recommended.”—Sam Friedman, coauthor of Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite
“This book is essential reading for all those concerned about class inequalities in education. Its rich, vibrant narrative, grounded in the voices of working-class young people, combines compelling evidence of how aspirations are shaped, and too often constrained, by place, with the powerful message that we need greater investment in young people, and a much more caring approach to them.”—Diane Reay, University of Cambridge
“Growing up in working class families still implies struggle and disadvantage, but these difficulties are not uniform. Through carefully tracking the lives of young people from different parts of England, Singh draws out how place structures opportunity, how it shapes their sense of the possible and how too many, even when they do the ‘right things,’ still fail to find stability and security.”—Aaron Reeves, coauthor of Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite
“Cancelled Futures is a powerful account of what it means to come of age in a society that valorizes mobility yet has built countless obstacles in its way. Singh outlines how for young people in London, Rochdale, and Morecambe, each step they take toward their future seems, somehow, to never really bring them closer to their goals. The power of this book is in showing how this common experience is experienced in very different ways. The sensibility may be the same, but the distinct lived experiences of race and place mean that a common experience is reached by different pathways.”—Shamus Khan, author of Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School
