‘I Don't Really like It Here but I Don't Want to Be Anywhere Else’: Children and Inner City Council Estates

This paper explores the experiences of children living on inner London council estates. Prevalent discourses of social exclusion position such children as both ‘at risk’ and a risk to others. They are portrayed as a mixture of deviant delinquent and passive victim. In contrast, this research study found that children have a reflexive awareness of the places they inhabit which recognises the estates as harsh and restricting, yet the same time encompasses more positive feelings of identification and belonging. Most children shared a sense of feeling ‘at home,’ but one which was infused with both a recognition of the stigma associated with ‘sink’ estates and a fascinated horror with regard to the behaviour of a delinquentminority.