Dealing with Disaffection:
Young People, Mentoring and Social Inclusion

By Tim Newburn and Michael Shiner (with Tara Young)
Portland, OR: Willan Publishing, 2005

Dealing with Disaffection: Young People, Mentoring and Social Inclusion offers a sobering reflection on mentoring, which the UK New Labour party deployed to ameliorate the troubles confronting ‘disaffected’ youth. Newburn and Shiner’s study, which employs self report and in-depth interviews, is ‘the largest and most rigorous research conducted to date.’ The two groups at the heart of debate around ‘disaffection’ are youth who; (1) have trouble ‘transitioning’ as a result of being truant/expelled from school, (2) are beyond school years, but not working, training or otherwise being educated (p. 23). According to the authors, discerning the nuances endemic to contemporary youth transitions into the adult/work world is inescapable when coming to terms with ‘disaffection’ and, perhaps more important, how best to intervene.

Young people in the UK and, for that matter, Canada face great uncertainty conditioned by alterations in the process and structure of transitions to the adult world brought about by a rapidly constricting youth labour market. The authors write ‘there is a clear social patterning to such youthful disaffection. Low socio-economic status appears to be related to poor school performance, to truancy and disruptive behaviour and to the likelihood of school exclusion’ (p.22). While Newburn and Shiner suggest that neoliberal policies have led ‘to more restricted access to income support and unemployment benefits’, the reader is left to wonder about this ethos and its idioms.

According to the authors, how to deal with disaffection and protracted transitioning has increasingly been answered by calls for mentoring. This strategy, although no widely agreed upon definition exists, is distinguished by its effort to provide role models ‘who offer advice and guidance in a way that will empower both parties’ to marginalized young people (p.1). To evaluate the effectiveness of mentoring, the authors focused their attention on 10 projects run by the charity ‘Crime Concern,’ collectively known as ‘Mentoring Plus’. Designed to ease transition into adulthood or back into education and training programmes, Mentoring Plus boasts a two pronged attack on ‘disaffection’ involving; a mentoring component and ‘a significant education element’ (the ‘plus’) (p. 117). Nevertheless, as the authors contend, providing opportunities for change is unlikely to be enough to condition it. Programmes, such as Mentoring Plus, talk of positively altering the course of troubling/troubled youth without at the same time suggesting how (re)integration is to be actualized. Rather, the implicit assumption underlying Mentoring Plus holds that via education youth will be (re)connected to education and work from which other positive outcomes (i.e. reduced offending) will accrue (p.171).

This book must be read as a cautionary tale about implementing perceived ‘silver bullets’ or a panacea willy nilly. The authors make the point that before their study there was no ‘solid foundation in the UK for any of the claims made on behalf of mentoring’ (p.55). Nevertheless, the absence of empirical support did not hamper its expansion. Without rigorous and systematic investigations, Newburn and Shiner warn, mentoring will almost certainly fall wholly out favour. Perhaps more important, without evidence to suggest otherwise it is impossible to know for certain whether the programme is doing more harm than good, doing harm under the guise of doing good – a familiar story indeed.

The authors’ account leaves many questions about the role of mentoring in the rapidly unfolding neoliberal world unanswered. This was not part of their project, but emerges from a careful reading of it. Newburn and Shiner write that ‘simply providing opportunities for change is unlikely to be sufficient. Multi-modal interventions which recognize the variety of problems that individuals face have been found to be particularly effective’ (p.140). In light of this evidence it is important to question to what extent mentoring programmes, which suggest they are dealing with ‘disaffection’, mask and allow systemic structures (racism, classism, ageism, heterosexism, & etc.) to continue – to grow? – even as the state appears to be taking social problems seriously? Individually tailored programming go only a short way toward untangling the aporetics which feed the neoliberal machine, which are, in the same instance, quite efficient at integrating and/or (r)ejecting alterity.

Newburn and Shiner argue they are ‘interested in young people’s perceptions of participating in a mentoring programme’ (p.57). While evidence of youthful voices is sprinkled throughout the narrative, greater integration of this ensemble extracted via their in-depth interviews would have contributed notably to the book. As it stands, much of this pithy detail is constrained/contained in ‘case studies’ fixed in boxes which, as such, are separated from the main text using black lines which seem to suggest these are inconsequential and tangential to the authors’ task. But this is not surprising given the ideological positioning of youth within/out Western society. Indeed, youth often insist on being heard, but as a result of cultural conventions their voices are often negated by adult ‘listeners.’ Much can be gained from youth mentoring youth. In Edmonton, for example, two highly innovative social justice programmes boasting a mentoring component have been conceived, implemented and are being administered (almost) entirely by young people (YRAP and the fledgling Youth Drug Treatment Court). I am not suggesting that Newburn and Shiner entirely discredit or silence youthful voices, only that youth voices should have been more fully integrated into their narrative and adolescent otherness more widely acknowledged, welcomed and respected within Western society.

This is an important work, one whose dual focus (programme and evaluation) will no doubt resonate with practitioners and Criminologists alike.