Race, Place and Globalization: Youth Cultures in a Changing World

What does it mean to be young in a changing world? How are migration, settlement and new urban cultures shaping young lives? And in particular, are race, place and class still meaningful to contemporary youth cultures?

This path-breaking book shows how young people are responding differently to recent social, economic and cultural transformations. From the spirit of white localism deployed by de-industrialized football supporters, to the hybrid multicultural exchanges displayed by urban youth, young people are finding new ways of wrestling with questions of race and ethnicity. Through globalization is whiteness now being displaced by ‘black’ culture – in fashion, music and slang – and if so, what impact is this having on race politics? Moreover, what happens to those people and places that are left behind by changes in late modernity?


By developing a unique brand of spatial cultural studies, this book explores complex formations of race and class as they arise in the subtle textures of whiteness, respectability and youth subjectivity. This is the first book to look specifically at young ethnicities through the prism of local-global change. Eloquently written, its riveting ethnographic case studies and insider accounts will ensure that this book becomes a benchmark publication for writing on race in years to come.