"We Just Need on-Ramps:" Socially Disconnected Youths' Perceptions of Community and Meaningful Youth Engagement

Background and Purpose: Nearly 18% of youth in New Orleans have been labeled “socially disconnected” from formal educational, social, and economic systems.  Socially disconnected or “opportunity” youth face barriers to social, psychological, and economic well being including high rates of unemployment, racial discrimination, and exposure to violence. Community youth development strategies call for the engagement of all citizens in community-level decision-making and actions to address neighborhood-specific social issues and concerns. Despite calls for “opportunity” youth to be positioned as central community partners, there has been limited theorizing on identifying youth-specific social change strategies or community-level supports and opportunities to facilitate youth generated social change. This exploratory study seeks to investigate the ways opportunity youth conceptualize community, engage with community change, and describe youth-initiated strategies for community engagement.

Methods: Data was collected from six focus groups at 3 youth-serving agencies in New Orleans with missions to engage opportunity youth. All participants were aged 16-24 (n=40), mixed gender, and the majority identified as African American (n=39). The interview guide was pre-tested with youth with similar demographics. A semi-structured interview guide was employed to elicit youth’s conceptualizations of community and community engagement. Using a thematic content analysis approach, we utilized multiple rounds of inductive coding. First, we read the transcripts and identified concepts relevant to the analysis. After generating the first round of codes, we created a codebook to guide the analysis of the remaining transcripts. We then employed matrices to surface key social processes both within and across the focus groups.

Results: Several preliminary themes emerged from across the focus groups. First, participants struggled to generate concrete or nuanced definitions of community. While some participants could provide examples of discrete functions of a community, others expressed feelings of isolation and a sense that they were independently responsible to address their challenges. Participants described the many layers of adversity to “just get by” including loss of family members, community violence, food scarcity, and unstable housing. The majority of participants were unable to generate examples of community engagement, nor were they involved in community development initiatives. One youth described needing more “on-ramps” for community engagement, while others were disinterested in engaging in activities to address community issues that they did not play a role in creating.

Discussion & Implications for Practice: Findings reveal how complex trauma histories impact youth’s constructions and engagement with their communities. Given that many youth reported feeling unsupported by or discriminated against by community institutions, they believed it was “all up to them” to get their needs met. While many programs partnering with socially disconnected youth are seeking to equip youth with job training, our findings indicate they also need tangible opportunities to fully engage with their communities. This analysis underscores the importance of attending to youth’s unresolved trauma and fostering a sense of connectedness prior to initiating community development activities. It is critical to invest in all of the many facets of youth’s well-being including addressing their material, housing, and mental health needs.