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Exploring Resident (Non-)participation in the UK New Deal for Communities Regeneration Programme Jonathan Mathers, Jayne Parry and Susan Jones Urban Stud 2008; 45; 591 DOI: 10.1177/0042098007087336 The online version of this article can be found at: http://usj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/45/3/591

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45(3) 591–606, March 2008

Exploring Resident (Non-)participation in the UK New Deal for Communities Regeneration Programme Jonathan Mathers, Jayne Parry and Susan Jones [Paper first received, October 2006; in final form, June 2007]

Abstract Current policy responses to low levels of resident participation in urban regeneration schemes may be based on flawed assumptions for the reasons underpinning nonparticipation amongst certain sections of disadvantaged communities. Ethnographic fieldwork in a New Deal for Communities area demonstrates that some residents actively avoid participation as part of ‘survival strategies’ that have been developed to cope with long-term multiple disadvantage. Capacity building exercises are unlikely to impact upon participation rates among these individuals and groups. Instead, a more radical approach to social policy provision is called for, that explicitly acknowledges and understands the socio-cultural context within which residents make decisions regarding participation.

Introduction A central tenet of the present UK Labour administration has been ‘rights and responsibilities’ and the need for communities and individuals to become involved in addressing their own concerns and problems. Community participation has been studied in a range of academic disciplines, offering a range of conceptual frameworks to guide operationalisation in practice. However, in a recent paper reviewing the aims and practice of citizenship and participation in Britain, Brannan et al. (2006, pp. 1000–1001) argued that there was not “enough work on how

civicness actually works” and that there was “not much literature that suggests what governments can do to increase levels of participation”. They concluded that What is needed is on-the-ground research that tells both academics and policy-makers what to do and what not to do—what works and what does not—in a way that builds knowledge about this new policy area (Brannan et al., 2006, p. 1001).

We would concur with the observations of Brannan et al. and suggest that some ‘bottom–up’ policy implementation is progressed on the basis of flawed assumptions

Jonathan Mathers, Jayne Parry and Susan Jones are in Public Health and Epidemiology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK. Fax: 0121 414 7878. E-mails: matherjm@adf. bham.ac.uk; [email protected]; and [email protected]. 0042-0980 Print/1360-063X Online © 2008 Urban Studies Journal Limited Downloaded from http://usj.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 17, 2008 DOI: 10.1177/0042098007087336

© 2008 Urban Studies Journal Limited. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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JONATHAN MATHERS ET AL.

about the motivations driving sections of disadvantaged communities to participate in government-sponsored activities. We have undertaken a series of related projects exploring participation in the New Deal for Community regeneration programme from the perspectives of policy-makers (Wright et al., 2006, 2007), local professionals and practitioners, and residents. In this paper, we report our findings from the perspective of the residents. We explore the actions of some of the residents who are not actively participating in one New Deal for Communities area in the West Midlands region of the UK. We suggest that the actions of residents we worked with are ‘rational’ but that, without knowledge of local contexts, central policy-makers and local professionals fail to understand the basis for such ‘rationality’. Hence, the government response to low levels of participation —to send in experts to build capacity—is fundamentally flawed for this group of residents. We do not intend to lay claim to explaining levels of non-participation amongst all residents in communities targeted by regeneration programmes, but rather to prompt consideration of alternative explanations of ‘avoidance’ of participatory actions on the part of some residents living in long-term and multiply disadvantaged circumstances. The paper begins with a brief overview of the New Deal for Communities initiative and sets out some of the key concepts of participation. We then describe the methods we used to collect and analyse data, present the emerging findings and integrate these with the existing body of work in this area. We conclude with reflections on these findings and the potential implications for present regeneration policy centred on a participatory format.

Background The New Deal for Communities Initiative

The importance of addressing health and social inequalities is central to the present

UK (Labour) government. In England, the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal (NSNR) was launched, a key element of which was the New Deal for Communities initiative (NDC)—a scheme targeted at 39 of the most deprived areas in England (Social Exclusion Unit, 2001). NDC communities are based on approximately 4000 households located in a geographically defined area, conforming not necessarily to administrative boundaries but to local perceptions of ‘community’. Around £50 million (over 10 years) is available to each NDC area to spend on projects designed and implemented by the ‘community’ working in partnership with the statutory and voluntary agencies (the ‘NDC Partnership’) responsible for delivering services to the area. The NDC initiative is directed at the rejuvenation of these socially and materially deprived and excluded neighbourhoods, but regeneration is not directed solely at physical or economic renewal. The rebuilding of a cohesive civic society, with active resident participation in local decision-making, is a central component of the initiative (Wright et al., 2006). In response to the perceived failure of previous regeneration policies to reap any potential rewards from local community involvement, NDC has, from the outset, had an emphasised commitment to the centrality of community engagement within the policy (National Audit Office, 2004; NRU, 2004). Indeed, the successful engagement of local residents within the programme is seen as a key aspect of the theory of change underpinning this policy approach (NRU, 2005a). Government Interest in Community Participation

Participation is the current buzzword for development at both national and local levels. It is seemingly impossible for politicians to go through an interview without participation being mentioned in relation to citizenship. The idea that residents (citizens) should


RESIDENT (NON-)PARTICIPATION IN REGENERATION

participate in their communities seems to have become a panacea for all social ills: the falling voting rate, anti-social behaviour, poverty, health inequalities and poor education (Barnes et al., 2003). All these issues, apparently, can be addressed by increasing citizen participation. Accordingly, this is reflected in current UK policy trends with citizen participation becoming a key component not only of regeneration policy but also in crime, education, health and other policy spheres (Brannan et al., 2006). Some commentators have suggested that UK policy has turned full circle, returning to participatory policy approaches evident in the 1960s and 1970s, albeit with an emphasis on partnership and ‘bottom–up’ approaches (Taylor, 2000). This is not simply a British phenomenon; other Western governments too have established programmes that aim to engage with their citizens. In the US, figures on the left such as Charles Taylor and Michael Walzer advocate ‘communitarian citizenship’ as a critical response to Reaganite market neoliberalism: see Marinetto (2003) for further discussion. A vision of community participation might understandably be attractive to a government seeking to alleviate their concerns over a disengaged and, some would argue, increasingly disaffected public. As Dahrendorf notes, people believe that “there is something in citizenship that defines the needs of the future ... [but they] ... proceed to bend the term to their own predilections” (Dahrendorf, 1994, p. 12). Herein, Dahrendorf pin-points the essence of our thesis: that while there has been a move towards the government engaging with citizens, this move has been informed only by the government’s understanding of the legitimate forms that participation will take and the means by which residents will be involved in urban regeneration policy (Atkinson, 1999; Raco, 2000). Following on, we contend that, by not taking account of residents’ own understandings of the ‘rules

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of engagement’, the government has at best a partial, and at worse a fundamentally flawed, understanding of how and why certain people decide whether to participate in the NDC initiative. Participation in the New Deal for Communities Initiative

The NDC initiative commenced in 1999/2000 and is presently the focus of a series of evaluation activities, including local in-house and regional monitoring of spend and a national cross-sectoral evaluation programme exploring structure, processes and outcomes (see NDC Evaluation website). It may be too early to say whether NDC has ‘worked’ but early reports suggest that the process of implementing NDC and in particular the requirement to involve local residents, is proving challenging (Dinham, 2005; Macmillan and Marshall, 2005; ODPM, 2004; Weaver, 2005). In February 2004, the National Audit Office (NAO) published its review of ‘early findings’ from the NDC initiative (National Audit Office, 2004). The review suggested that only 11 per cent of residents had “actively engaged” in activities with their local NDC Partnership, and Partnerships were challenged to address this “because community engagement is an unrelenting task, new and better ways of engaging communities need to be found” (National Audit Office, 2004, p. 17). Updated figures reveal that this figure had improved marginally to approximately 15 per cent in 2004 (NRU, 2005a). The NAO review echoes observations made by the National Evaluation Team, which noted that, while community engagement was seen as a priority for most Partnerships and as essential for building community capacity and selfreliance which in turn would ensure NDC sustainability, many Partnerships were consistently finding it difficult to engage the wider community beyond a core of activists ... often the NDCs had successfully engaged residents at Board level and within formal


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structures, but it was now a question of developing structures and methods to widen participation and to enable residents to get involved at the level they choose to be involved at (Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, 2002, pp. 23 and 25).

Within Partnerships, the reaction to low levels of participation appears to be the implementation of activities to ‘build capacity’ within the ‘community’ (Macmillan and Marshall, 2005; NRU, 2005a), including the formation of community development teams with a particular focus on ‘hard to reach’ groups (although, as the National Evaluation Team notes, this covers a range of people such that the entirety of the population is mentioned by at least one of the 39 Partnerships; ODPM, 2004). To assist Partnerships develop community involvement in their areas, the national Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (NRU) has made available a panel of Neighbourhood Renewal Advisors (NRAs) with expertise in aspects of community development, including capacity building, to work with Partnerships on request. In a recent review of the government’s discourse on community cohesion—a concept explicitly linked by the government with the discourse of participation (NRU, 2003)— McGhee argues that the government’s strategy to build community cohesion demonstrates supermarket sweep tendencies in relation to social theory: that is, the highly selective smash and grab deployment and understanding of concepts and social theory (McGhee, 2003, p. 380).

Thus, community cohesion and its related concepts of citizenship, social capital and civic society are thrown together and presented as a panacea for disorder, disharmony and conflict, with the resultant capacity building strategy premised “on the communitarian notion that individuals are all members of one another and that individuals are ontologically embedded in a social existence”

(McGhee, 2003, pp. 379–380). The community cohesion strategy seeks to generate ‘unity in diversity’ which is assumed to flow from the operationalisation of a shared vision for the future. What constitutes ‘cohesion’, however, will not be defined, or indeed generated, by the ‘community’ itself: the NRU aided by regional government offices and local authorities will provide community facilitators to build capacity for cohesion in local areas. Thus problematic communities, characterised by high crime rates, economic poverty and social exclusion, will be targeted and reorientated through a pragmatic top–down process of socialisation. The parallels with the discourse emerging from the NDC initiative are evident: the government’s response to a low level of participation has been to initiate, with local Partnerships, a series of capacity building exercises, predicated on the belief that it is an inability rather than unwillingness that is holding back resident involvement. Such an approach ignores the possibility that nonparticipation may be an active rational choice and one reached through consideration by an individual of the pros and cons of getting involved. We now consider briefly how motivation to participate and factors influencing non-participation have been conceptualised by other researchers. Theories of Participation

In line with government activity, academic attention has turned to theorising models of participation acknowledging concerns over the seeming lack of public enthusiasm to engage or participate in civic activities. Much of this attention has been directed towards lowering turnout for elections, but a considerable amount has focused on the decline in citizenship in general. From a political science perspective, Parry’s (1992) instrumentalist theory suggests that individuals will participate if this action protects their interests with the minimum of costs



and the maximum of benefits; in contrast, communitarian theory posits that the decision to participate is not just based upon benefits to the individual but also to the community of which the individual is part. The difference between the two is not as clearcut as first appears: while some supporters of instrumental theory would argue that participation represents a strict individualistic response to the costs and benefits of any given situation, others would suggest that any such calculation is implicitly affected by ‘social forces’ that affect an individual’s propensity to take part in collective action. That is, the socio-cultural environment can affect people’s perceptions of what their interests are. The ‘instrumental–communitarian’ split is also manifest in the social and psychological literature. Here, the most widely used individualistic model is described by rational actor theory (RAT) which supposes that people will rationally choose actions that are best for them—that is, an individual may make a utility appraisal of the personal benefits and risks in any specific situation. As with the instrumental model of participation outlined earlier, the RAT model has been criticised for being too psychologically individualistic— that it only provides limited consideration of the roles that both environmental structures (physical, social, economic, political) and personal attributes have on the propensity for adopting a specific action; ignoring, for example, concepts such as self-efficacy, empowerment, cognitive dissonance and social support, together with the dimension of time and the notion of dynamic change. The debate as to the possibility of developing extended RAT—that is, a ‘thick’ model that moves beyond simple material benefits—has been extensive in recent literature (for example, see Hechter and Kanazawa, 1997; Goldthorpe, 1998). Rather than see RAT in terms of the primacy it affords to individual psychology, the opposite could be argued: that is, as noted

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by Crossley, RAT could be conceived as being psychologically minimalistic for in spite of its asocial and individualistic orientations, RAT directs our attention away from the domain of psychology and towards structures of the social world. In seeking to explain a specific change in behaviour, RAT will look for those changes in the environment of agents which has made that change less costly or more profitable (Crossley, 2002, p. 59).

Thus, RAT offers a possible lens through which to view resident behaviour in the context of participation in the NDC programme. In this paper, we chose to use ‘thick’ RAT as a lens through which the (non)-participatory actions of residents in one NDC area can be viewed. That is, we view residents’ actions to be premised on a weighing-up of subsequent pros and cons by the individual but explicitly acknowledge the role of intangible ‘social’ costs (for example, a sense of obligation) and benefits (a sense of fulfilment or of belonging to a community) in that process. We make no claim of either uniqueness or primacy of RAT as a single overarching ‘grand theory’: more, as suggested by Dunn (2006, p. 572), we use the theory to aid “conceptualisation of a phenomenon or thing in which to theorise is to prescribe a particular way of conceptualising something”.

Methodology Study Context and Location

The research reported in this paper is part of a larger programme of work focusing on the evaluation of the health impacts of the NDC programme in the West Midlands region. The evaluation adopts a mixed methods approach combining a large quasi-experimental design, time-series analysis of health indicators and focused qualitiative enquiry. As part of the programme of work, a specific project exploring participation in the NDC initiative was undertaken. This comprised: an


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analysis of government documents describing the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal, and in particular, the NDC initiative (Wright et al., 2006); one-on-one semistructured interviews with professionals and practitioners working within two NDC areas; and, in-depth ethnographic work with residents not involved in NDC activities or projects in one of the two NDC areas in which the professional interviews were undertaken. This paper reports findings from the latter project. This research was located in one NDC area in the West Midlands region. The area is disadvantaged in terms of many deprivation indicators and has a predominantly White population. The area is located on the edge of a city and has not previously been in receipt of any substantial regeneration funding.1 The Ethnographic Method

The focus of this work was to examine not only why people do not participate but also to begin to examine how people resist participation. Due to the specific need to work with residents who were not engaging with NDC, we decided that an ethnographic approach would be an appropriate research method. Ethnography as a form of anthropological practice is both a methodology and a perspective (Brewer, 2000; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995; de Laine, 1997). Through ethnography, we wanted to attempt to generate a holistic account of the culture and people in the area, and the relationship to participation in NDC. At its core, ethnography relies on ‘participant observation’—that is, the notion that you learn by doing and by watching, and by the interplay of those two roles. If we were to investigate how and why people resist participation with NDC schemes, we needed to spend time in the cultures and with people we were studying, engaging with the people, participating in every-day life and attempting to make sense of the patterns of the culture.

For this reason, we needed to spend time in people’s places watching how people move around an area, when and where they go, their interactions with services and so forth. Eight months was spent in the field by one of the authors (SJ), with the majority of resident contact occurring over the summer months of 2005. The field researcher (SJ) was a White woman with a school-aged daughter. SJ knows the NDC area well, being a resident herself in an adjoining neighbourhood, and she also knew one female resident in the NDC area socially. This assisted SJ in entering the field and making initial contact with a couple of women residents. Snowballing was then used to make contact with a larger number of residents. As a result of SJ’s own background and initial contacts, most of residents that SJ met were women living in the NDC area, who were members of a well-defined social network of younger and older mothers, although where possible data were also gathered through contact with some male residents during the fieldwork. We consider further the interaction between the field researcher, the research process and the interpretation and transferability of our findings later in this paper. At the beginning of the fieldwork, time was also spent ‘hanging around’ what appeared to be the main meeting-place in the area at key times in the day; for example, the local shopping area, at the school at drop-off and pick-up times, in local pubs and cafes. This was in order for the field researcher to acquaint herself with the more commonly used public spaces in the area. Data Collection

Three techniques were used to gather information from residents: direct, first-hand observance of daily behaviour recorded via field notes; informal conversations with residents recorded via field notes; and, longer, more structured interviews. Only six interviews were audio-recorded, with the



majority of material collected via fieldnotes, for residents, typically, were unwilling to be interviewed formally. The interviews were used as a means to actively question respondents about their involvement/non-involvement with NDC. These were conducted as one-toone interviews and were arranged at the convenience of the interviewees, and usually after the ‘trust’ of individuals had been gained by the field researcher. The interviews were intended to complement observation and informal conversations, the latter often taking place with two or more residents during field visits.

Findings Here, we report findings from the ethnographic fieldwork. We will show that some of the residents we met during our time in the NDC area are employing what we term here ‘survival strategies’ that enable them to live in areas which are poor, both financially and in terms of ‘legitimate’ opportunities. We will demonstrate how for these individuals and the social networks they move within, such strategies often entail, or are specifically designed to achieve, avoidance of public services (which are perceived as the interfering and threatening state). We will also show how these residents utilise experiential knowledge and embodied cultural capital as part of survival strategies, knowledge and capital which often contradict and oppose that offered within the official discourse of service organisations working with the NDC. In presenting these findings, we will demonstrate how some of the residents that we met during our fieldwork, rather than lacking capacity to engage with NDC and the services it offers, make an active and rational choice to avoid such offers as part of their survival strategies. We therefore posit that capacity building exercises with these individuals will fail to influence their non-participation in NDC activities.

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Residents Are Experts at Living ‘Around Here’: Survival Strategies and Avoiding the Gaze of the State

As an adjunct to the ethnographic fieldwork, and as part of the wider project, interviews were conducted with NDC officers in the study area (see Introduction; results reported elsewhere). It is interesting to note here that many of the NDC officers said that part of the participative contribution of residents was to provide contextual knowledge about the area: knowledge that the officers as nonresidents admitted they were not privy to. One NDC officer emphasised this by saying “what residents are experts at is living around here”. We concur with this observation, but would suggest that, perhaps ironically, it is this very expertise in living in the area that results in some residents choosing to avoid the reach of the NDC as far as is possible. It is this expertise—the skills and capital appropriate for the area—which is used by residents to develop everyday survival strategies. Such survival strategies may be seen as a response to the long-term ingrained social and material deprivation characteristic of the NDC and many other urban areas. One key element of these strategies that became apparent during fieldwork was the need for some residents to avoid the gaze of the state, because for these residents, the attention of the state can be dangerous. As can be seen from the examples that follow, the attention of the state is threatening because of the consequences of some state interventions: for example, having your children taken off you or put on the ‘at risk’ register, being arrested for criminal activities, or losing the right to receipt of state benefits. As will also be shown, official discourses from some state-employed professionals label aspects of residents lives as ‘improper’, suggesting an absence of worth, and in doing so damage resident self-esteem and induce a sense of demoralisation for those


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individuals. And herein lies a central tension for the NDC programme: regeneration NDC-style involves the development of a partnership between residents and a range of local agencies, including among others, the local authority, Benefits Agency, Primary Care Trust and the police. However, residents have encountered these agencies before—and some not always on favourable terms. Our findings suggest that some residents perceive the NDC Partnership as a coming together of state agencies aiming to get into their lives and community under the guise of being something different. And if the NDC is viewed as an arm of the state, then some residents, where possible, will avoid contact with it. Our interviews with NDC officers confirmed this tension, with some reporting that, in their eyes, many residents failed to distinguish between the NDC Partnership and other services, despite the officers’ attempts to stress that they were different. In the next section, we give two examples of the survival strategies that we encountered. First are those employed by mothers, and particularly young mothers, to avoid intervention by health and social services, and which consequently result in avoidance of NDC-provided services. Secondly, we illustrate strategies that deal with financial deprivation and which, if seen by the state, result in the threat of either arrest or loss of benefits. Young mothers’ contact with health and social services. Many of the points made earlier were clear themes that emerged during discussions with the young mothers with whom we worked. Respondents told us that contact with the state, in the form of contact with social services, health visitors, schools or social security, consisted of these services telling them what to do, telling them that they were doing something wrong or trying to make them do something differently. Overriding this was the unspoken but perceived

threat that being judged an unfit mother by these services could result in sanctions including placing your child on the ‘at risk’ register, or even your child being taken into care. Thus, the young women chose to avoid contact with these services where possible and, by extension, with similar services provided as part of the NDC Partnership in the area. This point is illustrated with one of the NDC initiatives, an aim of which was to encourage more women to breast-feed their babies. NDC workers to whom we spoke saw this as a project that had met with some resistance among local mothers. Through childbirth and being the main care providers for children and other family members, women have more direct contact with the state than do men. One key point of contact is during post-natal care. Among the women to whom SJ spoke, taking ‘kids’ to the baby clinic was discussed at length with repeated reference to experiences with the ‘hell’s visitors’ (this group of women refer to health visitors as ‘hell’s visitors’). Three elements of this survival strategy emerge from these experiences, all of which identify costs of breast-feeding, apparent to the mothers but perhaps hidden from the health professionals. First, the benefits of breast-feeding espoused by the health visitors conflict with the cultural capital and associated knowledge held by the mothers. Talking with this group of women, the survival strategy was clear: if you are a poor mother, the state can act and remove your child from your care. At the baby clinic, good clothes and a baby gaining weight keep the health visitors off your back. Here lies the tension between the respective sources of knowledge: the mothers said that bottle-fed babies gained weight more quickly than breast-fed babies and thus, to tick the ‘good mother’ box and avoid sanction from the health visitors, it was rational to choose this option for their child. A second element of this survival strategy highlighted other costs associated with



breast-feeding. Young women reported that the health visitors perceived them purely as mothers and, by extension, their breasts as just ‘food sources’ for their child. In contrast, the women spoke of their desire to regain their sexuality and, through this, to ensure the security of the relationship with the child’s father, thereby maintaining emotional and financial support. My tits are his. They’re his favourite bit. He’s not gonna want them if a baby’s been hanging off them.

The health visitors failed to appreciate this wider context of these young women’s lives. Thirdly, the women talked of their healthcare treatment as negative, of feeling judged, of being looked down upon and of being talked down to. An example of this came from R who described how her contact with the ‘hell’s visitors’ left her feeling that she had done something wrong by having her daughter at a young age, that she had made a mistake and that in turn both she and her daughter are mistakes. She talked of her own friends from school on the estate who have babies, as well as the other young mothers who are housed in the area. It’s not as if I was the only one, what’s their [the health visitors’] problem? There’s loads of us here.

This risk to her self-esteem, the dissonance between expert and lay knowledge, and the tacit threat of being judged an unfit mother, resulted in R attempting to minimise contact and hide from the gaze of the state and, by extension, to avoid NDC-instigated projects. Financial deprivation and survival strategies. A main form of contact with the state is the Benefits Agency. Here, one young unemployed man, K, talks about NDC and its inseparability in his mind from these agencies

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NDC is in league with the soash [social security] fucking job shop, all they’ve got is warehouse stuff, go here work your fucking bollocks off and get fucking nothing or we take your money off ya.

During discussions with K, he always described NDC as representing forces that will stop him doing what he needs to do in order to generate enough income to survive. K makes some money selling ‘knock off ’ tobacco and works as a runner for a local drug dealer. He also does cash-in-hand work for builders as a labourer. For this respondent, involvement with NDC would expose his cash-in-hand work, he would lose his ‘soash’. Also, too close a contact with any form of state officials means risking exposure of his illegal activities, as well as the support and friendship of his networks. The point here is not to make value judgements, but to recognise the role that illegal economies play in some individuals’, and communities’, survival strategies and how these strategies necessitate avoidance of the state and, by extension, the NDC programme. Economic survival strategies were not limited to K and other men. Some of the mothers to whom we talked, who are on low incomes, also made additional money through illegal activities—for example, by selling ‘knock off ’ or ‘dodgy’ DVDs and CDs. The example of D (in the next section), another young mother, again demonstrates how financial survival strategies might necessitate avoidance of NDC and also how these strategies are reliant on support networks and their associated knowledge and cultural capital, each of which can be threatened by official discourses and knowledge. Survival Strategies Require Membership of Informal Support Networks

The ‘thick’ RAT model suggests that we need to understand individual actions in terms not only of the individual but also of the contexts within which they are located. Social


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groups and networks determine a person’s sense of identity and, as group bonds become institutionalised, there are roles, functions and models of expectation that determine people’s behaviour within and outwith these groups. Even informal networks may be crucial to how people make decisions. A good example of this is D—one of the young mothers to whom we spoke. D had had bad experiences with health visitors and had decided to stop going to the child clinic, but she did pay attention to some of the health promotion leaflets that she read whilst there. SJ met with this young woman on many occasions, usually in the company of other young mothers and their children who form a friendship network. When SJ met with them over the summer months, D always paid attention to putting sun block on her daughter and to keeping her hat on. For the other women in the group, D was taking this too far, being overanxious. The children were given drinks, and also sweets, to keep them quiet whilst we [field researcher and residents] talked. D would sometimes refuse the sweets for her daughter, giving her raisins instead. This was seen by the other mothers as being posh and critical of what the others were doing. D recognised that her position in the group was becoming precarious by standing out, by doing and being different. She needed the support of the group, both emotionally and economically. As already mentioned, D makes some money selling ‘dodgy’ DVDs and CDs. On low incomes, these women need to be able to borrow money from friends, as well as relying on other ‘services’—for example, child minding. For D, this friendship network is crucial to her survival strategies. D changed her behaviour in order to maintain the friendships and support of the group. Here, the knowledge and practices offered via official discourses challenged and delegitimised those shared by the friendship group. To adopt expert practices threatened D’s position within her

friendship group, thereby threatening her survival strategies. The point here is also relevant to the previous example of the NDC breast-feeding initiative. As R pointed out, she was not the only young woman on the estate to have a child. Most of her friends did as well and they received support and advice from their friendship networks of other, often older mothers. These mothers—regarded as experts not only in motherhood but also in surviving in the area—did not breast-feed.

Discussion The Government and NDC officers clearly acknowledge the role of residents in urban regeneration as the ‘experts at living around here’. This recognition, however, does not stretch to the reality that some residents have developed survival skills that seek to avoid the gaze of the state and which are based in appropriate cultural capital and knowledge, and rely on social support networks. The NDC threatens these strategies by being perceived as another arm of the state, through giving preference to conflicting (expert) knowledge and, ultimately, by failing to recognise the importance of local social networks and the need for residents to retain membership of them. Non-participation in NDC activities in these instances is not necessarily the result of a lack of capacity on the part of the residents concerned, but rather a rational reaction based on their socio-cultural context. For these residents, the costs in terms of threats to their survival strategies outweigh the benefits that they or the NDC may see from any change in their behaviour. In this paper, we have reported work from one NDC area and we recognise the limitations in attempting to generate theory from single case studies. Similarly, we acknowledge that the ‘types’ of resident who participated in this work are not representative of the diversity of the population resident in this NDC area.



Inevitably, the networks we were able to access reflect in part the characteristics of the fieldworker and her ability to relate her own life-experiences to participants. However, the people with whom SJ spent time are often deemed ‘hard-to-reach’ and may be the target of social exclusion and related policy interventions. Indeed, specific programme outcomes of NDC include indicators relating to rates of teenage pregnancies and unemployment (NRU, 2005b). We have focused on stories of nonparticipation and have explored why some residents decide not to engage with NDC Partnership bodies in a manner apparently expected by government. We acknowledge that such a dualistic picture of (non)-engagement is an oversimplification and that resident participation can take a myriad of forms, from engagement with projects, to membership of the Partnership Board. In this paper, we have focused on the lowest rung of the ‘ladder of participation’ (Arnstein, 1971)—engagement with NDC-run projects and services—and thus cannot categorically state that the residents to whom we spoke would not engage at ‘higher levels’. We also recognise that strictly linear hierarchical models of participation are challenged by the emerging body of work that seeks to develop a more nuanced multitiered, spatially grounded analysis of the ‘new geographies’ of citizenship (Burton, 2003, Desforges et al., 2005, Lister, 2007). However, even accepting these challenges, we think it unlikely that the residents to whom we spoke intend to participate more actively in the planning and delivery of the NDC programme locally. As detailed by Brannan et al. (2006), although there have been some early research efforts attempting to understand how active citizenship works in practice in the UK, the need for further empirical investigations to build knowledge in this area is apparent. Within NDC, the National Evaluation Team

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has reviewed qualitative evidence stemming from work across all of the 39 NDC Partnerships, in order to identify potential barriers to and facilitators of community involvement (Macmillan and Marshall, 2005). They identify many factors of potential relevance, including several which relate to the way the policy is organised and delivered within localities. Some seem to resonate with our findings and refer to a lack of trust between ‘communities’, local authorities and service agencies, stemming largely from past experiences on the part of residents. Perhaps most interestingly however, and in the context of this paper, is the observation of attitudes that are ascribed to ‘communities’ in some partnerships as acting as a barrier to participation lack of inclination to get involved; cynicism and apathy; and the perception of neglect of the area fuels low community self esteem (Macmillan and Marshall, 2005; p. 24).

In fact, our conversations with NDC officers working in the area where our ‘nonparticipating’ research participants were resident included similar explanations (reported elsewhere). We would suggest that our findings show that certain residents in these areas, rather than demonstrating a “lack of inclination” or sense of “apathy” towards involvement in NDC activities (at any level), are making an active decision of avoidance. Without consideration from, and recognition of, the residents’ perspective, the sociocultural context within which their decisions relating to involvement are made, remain hidden. As a consequence, explanations of non-participation remain incomplete and may even be skewed. The link between community and place is a central plank in the theory underpinning participatory area-based regeneration initiatives such as NDC. However, the concept of a community as a single homogeneous aggregation of residents sharing similar norms,


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values and customs has been challenged substantially (for example Campbell and Jovchelovitch, 2000; McGhee, 2003). A recent Home Office report notes that Area-based initiatives, while enabling a focused service to be developed, bring with them the potential for conflict over resource allocation and confusion over the area served. The actual area specified can appear arbitrary to residents and professionals alike [and that this is] intensified where different ethnic minority groups were involved (Camina, 2004, p. 46).

Within the NDC described in this study, the majority of the resident population is White British, but while the whole area is geographically distinct being located on the edge of a city and surrounded on all sides by either main roads and greenfields, it comprises three separate housing areas. Discussions with NDC officers indicated that residents from each area tended not to mix and that the Partnership needed to be seen to treat each area equally. In our analysis, we have theorised non-participation to be a rational activity designed to avoid the gaze of the state, but in light of the role played by conflict and power in the participation process (Columbo et al., 2001; Taylor, 2000), it is reasonable to ask whether the choice not to engage relates solely to the state or to engagement with other residents? Our fieldwork was centred primarily within one of the three sub-areas and thus, with regard to geographical locality, the residents to whom we spoke shared similar characteristics. Within this locality, our sampling technique (opportunistic and then snowballing) led us to work with an interconnected group of individuals sharing key identity characteristics (predominantly young mothers and their male contacts). We thus worked with a relatively homogeneous group. We did not encounter evidence of competition or conflict between ‘our’ and other identity groups within the local community that influenced

participation with the NDC. Yet this does not necessarily preclude its existence and the time and resource constraints inherent in our study limited the amount of time we were able to spend in the field and, as a consequence, the potential range of residents with whom we were able to work. There is an important methodological point to consider here. Research which seeks to understand patterns of behaviour should attempt to gain appropriate contextual knowledge of the socio-cultural environments within which that behaviour is enacted. This presents a challenge to researchers and evaluators, especially when working within a timeand resource-limited policy context. Although there is some recognition of this need, as reflected in calls for the use of primarily qualitative methods in case studies attempting to advance our knowledge around community involvement in area-based initiatives (Burton et al., 2004), the explicit inclusion of the ‘excluded’ within research and evaluation may be key to gaining this knowledge. As with attempts to engage the ‘community’, this will not be easy—the term ‘hard to reach’ was coined for a reason. In order to understand more fully the dynamics of participation, demands for further methodological pluralism should be made, as well as for the investment in appropriate skills, time and resources. Active citizenship requires that individuals participate and become engaged, often in aiming to arrive at solutions to deep-seated social problems (Brannan et al., 2006). As shown by our findings, such engagement may in itself be a source of threat to individuals living within multiply deprived circumstances, where the perception of the agencies with which they are to engage is that they are of the state, and where survival strategies necessitate limiting contact with those agencies. Within the Home Office Civil Renewal Research Programme, the role of incentives in encouraging participation in schemes to tackle anti-social behaviour has been investigated



(Bastow et al, 2005). Such interventions are predicated on theory akin to RAT, in that incentives are aiming to tip the cost–benefit equation in favour of the latter, thereby resulting in participation. Our findings clearly demonstrate that the socio-cultural context results in costs which are too high for some residents. The question naturally is how we might consider tipping this balance for these residents. Although there is no easy answer to this, there are two important elements to the cost side of the equation which might be considered: first, the perception of the agencies delivering NDC as an arm of the state; and, secondly, the clash between the knowledge offered via official NDC and partner agency discourses, and that routinely accessed by our research participants as part of their cultural capital. For the first element, in order to reduce the perceived costs associated with participation, it may be necessary to change the perception of the delivering organisation and indeed to shift the organising role to a ‘trusted’ body. This could necessitate a greater role for the community and voluntary sector, separate from the agencies that are seen as the threatening state. Herein lies the difficulty, as described by Foley and Martin (2000); A key problem has been the lack of real power and influence of the voluntary and community sectors. The literature on policy implementation provides numerous examples of an absence of serious commitment to bottom– up policy making (Foley and Martin, 2000, pp. 485–486).

Indeed, the wide-ranging literature on participation within partnerships espoused by modern policy initiatives clearly demonstrates that a real transfer of power to local communities and residents is difficult to achieve within current policy environments (see for example Alcock, 2004; Jones, 2003; Taylor, 2000). Furthermore, some critiques see more widespread public participation as facilitating

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government and official policy agendas via legitimisation of policy directions, or where policy is seen to fail as providing local and/ or community ‘scapegoats’ for such failures (Mayo, 1997; Raco, 2000). Atkinson (1999), in an analysis of the discourse of participation and empowerment within urban regeneration policy, suggests that official discourses maintain existing power relationships between residents and regeneration ‘authorities’ thereby limiting the scope of participation as a result. Additionally, there is often a reluctance on the part of institutional players and officials to cede power and control to community organisations and resident participants (Barnes et al., 2004). The prospect of provision of policy outside the public sector and the true devolvement of power would seem to be remote therefore. It can be argued that the political constraints around NDC have echoed these earlier observations (Wright et al., 2007). Early in its life, the NDC programme was described in policy documents and publicly as being ‘community-led’. Over time, a rhetorical shift has been observed with the policy being described as ‘community centred’ or ‘community at the heart of ’ within later policy communications. Within NDC, as observed in early approaches to participative social policy in development contexts (Cornwall and Gaventa, 2001), much of the policy discourse around participation has justified it as a means of ensuring the efficient delivery of regenerative solutions, better decisionmaking and sustainability, rather than of truly devolving decision-making power to residents (Atkinson, 1999). Thus NDC fails to give residents a real voice in determining the kind of services that they want or need, and which organisations should deliver them. The point here is salient to the individuals with whom we worked as this often precludes provision outside the public sector, minimising the role of the voluntary and community sector. Indeed, it also ignores


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the ‘self-provisioning’ that is evident within the informal social networks that are so important to residents’ everyday lives. Our work with residents demonstrates how individuals draw on informal social capital as part of their survival strategies, capital that works to preclude the involvement that policy would wish. The implications are that views of participation as being about capacity building, engendering social capital and providing sustainability (Raco, 2000) may be blind to the capital provided through well-established social ties and networks, which in turn may work against capacity building aims. In order to reduce the perceived costs of interactions with the state other more radical approaches may need to be considered. As Barnes et al. note There remains a corresponding need for citizens to develop free or ‘popular spaces’ in which alternative discourses and approaches can be developed. On some occasions these ‘popular spaces’ may combine with statesponsored bodies, while in other circumstances ‘popular spaces’ may retain an ‘arms length’ relationship with state institutions (Barnes et al., 2004, pp. 65).

deprived mothers) may stand in direct contradiction to the cultural capital upon which individuals draw. However, to ignore this and persist with messages that bear no relevance to the reality of the lives of the individuals and ‘communities’ targeted by social policy will in all likelihood result in the apparent failure of many policy strands. We need to start looking for the everyday forms of resistance that people use; the strategies that subvert the intentions of regeneration programmes such as NDC. It is not enough to say that NDC as a programme may be failing as it does not fully engage with the very people it purports to be helping. We must look for ways to find, or even create, spaces where the dominant discourse is not that of the state and where other forms of cultural capital are recognised as valid. It is not enough to say that poorer people have no voice, or at best weaker voices; to quote Sampson If, in order to be heard, I must speak in ways that you have proposed, then I can be heard only if I speak like you, not like me (Sampson 1993, p. 1220).

Note Indeed, the biggest difficulties here are likely to be the need for government to allow such autonomy within state-sponsored social policy. Moreover, if government truly wishes to engage with individuals living in multiply disadvantaged circumstances, it may have to do so on the understanding that some individuals are involved in activities that are on the margins of legality. The requirement for space for alternative discourses is relevant to the second element of the cost equation for our research participants —namely, the clash between official NDC discourses and knowledge, and that routinely utilised by the residents we encountered. Again this may be especially difficult as the aims of social policy (for example, to increase rates of breast-feeding amongst socioeconomically

1. However, some of the people to whom we spoke had previously lived in regeneration areas and so had experience of regeneration schemes.

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