‘Nothing to do and nowhere to go’
‘Nothing to do and nowhere to go’: leisure, social infrastructure and the erosion of youth belonging on the East of England coast. Journal of Youth Studies. doi:10.1080/13676261.2026.2677036
This article considers how young people’s sense of belonging is shaped by their relationship with place. Our place of interest is English coastal towns. These are unique sites that often embody peripherality (geographical, social, economic, cultural and political), deprivation (individual- and area-level), transience (from tourism and temporary workers) and recent histories of economic decline. As we shall see, these features have eroded the built environment and social infrastructure of coastal places and, we argue, are weakening young coastal residents’ sense of belonging to their towns. To make this argument, we draw on interview, workshop and visual data generated with 63 young people (aged 15–20) from two seaside towns in the East of England. These data highlight the lack of safe and youth-friendly spaces for leisure and social connectedness in some coastal towns. Feeling safe and accepted are two key dimensions of belonging. The absence, therefore, of safe and welcoming spaces undermines coastal youths’ connectedness to their local area, contributing to their sense of marginalisation, and highlighting the need for investment in youth-friendly social infrastructure which supports belonging. Our findings draw on and contribute to existing work on youth belonging and place-based sociology of youth.