Revisiting Sheppey and the Sheppey archive: Ray Pahl

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Revisiting Sheppey and the Sheppey archive Ray
Pahls Divisions of Labour 30 years on

• Dawn Lyon (University of Kent) and Graham Crow
  (University of Southampton)

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The original study

• Divisions of Labour (1984) based on an extensive,
  mixed methods project
• Methods included essays written by 142 school
  leavers in May 1978 (mainly 16-year-olds, 90
  boys, 52 girls), imagining themselves towards the
  end of their lives and looking back
• Essays now archived at UK Data Archive
• Speedy publication of Living without a job how
  school leavers see the future New Society 2
  November 1978 259-62 focus on themes of work,
  unemployment and family

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(No Transcript)
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The original study

• Pahl acknowledges that article doesnt do full
  justice to essay material which would be
  extremely hard to interpret without some
  knowledge of the local context. As this improves,
  I may wish to modify my present interpretation
  (1978 262)
• Analysis of young people developed further in
  Claire Wallaces For Richer, For Poorer (1987),
  based on ethnography and questionnaires
• Analytical theme of contrasting myth and reality
  (Pahl 1984 ch.7 Wallace 1987 14)

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The original study
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The original study
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The original study

• One of the things about the Isle of Sheppey is
  that there does appear to be a slight low
  self-esteem amongst people, it tends to get put
  down by a lot of people, Islanders, and theres
  lots of myths floating around. What was good
  about his Pahls report was that it cleared up
  a lot of those myths, showed them to be
  unfounded. One of the myths was that young people
  never want to travel off the island so their
  employment prospects are very low because they
  want to stay on the Island, they dont want to
  travel.

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The original study

• But in his report he found that a tremendous
  lot of people commuted off the Island. A lot of
  young people went to Canterbury College and to
  schools in Rochester and what have you, so that
  wasnt really proved to be true. Its true that
  if you ask young people if they havent been off
  the Island much, theyve been schooled on the
  Island and their first thought is if theyve got
  to get on a train and change here and change
  there, its going to be a mission, but that would
  be the same for anybody leaving school. (2009
  interview with an original adult study
  participant)

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The original study

• Important implication that responsibility for
  high levels of unemployment on Sheppey, including
  youth unemployment, in a period of recession are
  not because of lack of ambition that would be
  blaming the victim
• Need to be cautious around folk wisdom one of
  the first things I was told about Sheppey was
  that there were some people still living there
  who had never been off the Island (Pahl 1984
  144)

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What do the 1978 essays say about space and time?

• Revisiting archived material allows previously
  undiscussed themes contained in the essays to be
  explored, such as time and place
• Some reproduction of negative local images,
  suggesting ambition to leave Sheppey
• this domp of a place (Essay 64, male)
• living in a dump like Isle of Sheppey (73,
  male)
• I was now living in London away from the
  increasingly boring Isle of Sheppey (28, male)
• I would also dream of the day that I would leave
  the island for good (110, female)

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What do the 1978 essays say about space and time?

• Not all essays locate their authors imagined
  futures, but 55 of the 142 envisage geographical
  mobility beyond Kent
• London (12 essays)
• Scotland (3 essays), Cornwall (3 essays)
• Crawley, Derby, Devon, Doncaster, Dorset,
  Hampshire, Newcastle, Newmarket, Northampton,
  Norwich, Portsmouth, Reading, Wales (1 essay
  each)
• USA (4 essays), Australia (3 essays), Germany (2
  essays)
• Cyprus, France, Italy, Tibet (1 essay each)
• Overseas seeing the world with Armed Forces (11
  essays)

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Mobility envisaged within the UK
31 of 142 essays
Image from Digimap. Used with permission
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24 of 142 essays
Mobility envisaged beyond the UK
Image from maps-world.cn
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What do the 1978 essays say about space and time?

• But indications also of the pull of the Island
• we decided to stay on the island being as we
  both had our families here (99, female)
• me and my wife decided to move to the Isle of
  Sheppey back to my home (42, male)
• When I retired I bought a house in a quiet part
  of Minster and I settled down to laze away the
  years I had left (85, male)
• Working-class Islanders do have a strong
  commitment to their locality (Pahl 1984 193)

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What else do the 1978 essays tell us?

• Essays written as a teenager may not be very
  realistic
• Archive includes Ray Pahls notes about the
  essays, including (on a few)
• total fantasy (on 8)
• totally unrealistic idea of what he earns and
  what he gets own house, car etc. (on 38)
• And author of essay 64 asks how can you right
  about something that has not happan or may never
  happan

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What else do the 1978 essays tell us?

• But also some distancing from fantasy
• The author of essay 96 imagined herself working
  in a shirt factory and dreaming that she would
  go off to Canada and marry a rich millionaire
  andlive happy ever after.but instead I met
  Robert, who was a year younger. Married and
  moved to near Doncaster and had 4 daughters,
  working as a bar assistant. Husband a motor bike
  racer. Although I didnt mind Robert going
  racing, I was always sure some kind of accident
  would happen and it did. Robert confined to a
  wheelchair and needed care so author gave up job
  to look after him, but said this was all she ever
  really wanted. She imagined by the end of her
  life having 4 daughters all grown up with
  children of their own.

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What do the 2009-10 essays tell us?

• Issues further complicated by bringing in
  material collected in 2009-10 from a more diverse
  group of different ages not simply comparing
  like with like
• In addition, modes of communicating have changed
  as technology has developed
• Patterns of youth transitions have changed in the
  intervening 3 decades, e.g. greater chances of
  going to University, and longer life expectancy
  several are written by people imagining
  themselves living into their eighties

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What do the 2009-10 essays tell us?

• Interesting continuities e.g. in geographical
  mobility, with moves envisaged to Australia,
  Alaska, California, Miami, Canada, New Zealand,
  Spain, Greece, Italy, Africa, and (within UK)
  Scotland, Yorkshire, London, Liverpool,
  Colchester, Stoke, Sussex
• Rich imagination I became an inventor and
  designed many objectsWhen I was 32 I designed
  the very first hover-car (male)
• Career as palaeontologist I discovered a new
  type of dinosaur, it was even named after me, a
  Suddsapophalus (34, male)

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What do the 2009-10 essays tell us?

• Continuities in importance of family,
  especially children and grandchildren as focus of
  attention
• Im going to have a family a boy and a girl,
  girl called Alice and dont no about the boy,
  have a proper white wedding get a big house and
  support my family (male)
• Im a widow with 4 children and 8 grandchildren
  and love our get togethers (female)
• When I turned 26 I had the best boyfriend ever
  and I was pregnant. I had my baby and I called
  her Hope. I got married when I was 37 and my 11
  year old was my bridesmaid (female)
• Continuing relevance of discussions from
  1970s/1980s study about family and marriage and
  how these are affected by economic change

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What do the 2009-10 essays tell us?

• Continuing importance of family as a route into
  work
• Finally getting through collage with all my
  grades including a A in product design, all I now
  had to do was get a job at my grandads work
  (male)
• After being at college I started work on the
  farm where my dad got me a job (male)

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What do the 2009-10 essays tell us?

• And strong ambition to own ones own business
• At 32 I opened my own café in Sheerness High
  Street (female)
• Then I started my own company. It was very
  successful. I made millions (male)
• After a few years and many promotions, I had
  enough money to start up a business of my own
  (male)
• by the age of 24 I had fulfilled my dream of
  becoming my own boss (6, male)
• I dont want to just work for someone in a
  hairdressers, I want to be able to have my own
  salon (63, female)

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Concluding thoughts

• Material links in to wider on-going debates
  generated by use of this and other techniques
  about young peoples ambitions, aspirations,
  plans, strategies, expectations, dreams,
  fantasies, and the best ways of capturing these
• Different interpretations by different members of
  the research team regarding hope and
  constraint
• It would be fascinating to get accounts of what
  actually happened in the lives of the 1978 essay
  writers now aged 48
• In particular, what would they say about views
  expressed on ageing at 40, I can safely say my
  life had ended (4, male) by 50 I was old
  (129, female)?

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References

• Anderson, M. et al (2005) Timespans and plans
  among young adults Sociology 39(1) 139-55
• Brannen, J. and Nilsen, A. (2002) Young peoples
  time perspectives From youth to adulthood
  Sociology 36(3) 513-37.
• Brannen, J. and Nilsen, A. (2007) Young people,
  time horizons and planning, A response to
  Anderson et al Sociology 41(1) 153-60.
• Himmelweit, H. et al (1952) The views of
  adolescents on some aspects of the social class
  structure, British Journal of Sociology 3(2)
  148-72
• Pahl, R.E. (1978) Living without a job how
  school leavers see the future New Society 2
  November 1978 259-62
• Pahl, R.E. (1984) Divisions of Labour (Oxford
  Basil Blackwell)
• Thompson, R. and Holland, J. (2002) Imagined
  adulthood resources, plans and contradictions
  Gender and Education 14(4) 337-50.
• Veness, T. (1962) School Leavers Their
  Aspirations and Expectations (London Methuen)
• Wallace, C. (1987) For Richer, For Poorer
  Growing up in and out of work (London Tavistock)