Examining Civic Engagement among Urban Youth Experiencing Community Violence: Distinct Resilience Pathways

• In Event: 3-065 - From Perception to Participation: Examining Youth Engagement to Promote Resilience among Urban Youth of Color

Integrative Statement

Community violence exposure has multiple deleterious consequences for youth, yet some urban youth exposed to high community violence help others and improve their communities in exemplary ways (e.g., Hart & Fegley, 1995). Resilience theory sheds light on how youth function adaptively in the face of adversity (Masten, 2015), and some have described civic engagement as a strategy to cope with difficult or marginalizing circumstances (Hope & Spencer, 2017). What qualifies as adaptive functioning is contextually and culturally dependent, and inductive qualitative methods are well poised to identify resilience in context. We examined urban youth of color’s experiences with civic engagement in the context of community violence to identify pathways to resilience. We interviewed 90 youth (Mage = 15, range = 13-19; 59% male) from five recreation centers in the urban center of a mid-sized Northeastern U.S. city, where the violent crime rate is 4 times the national average, high school graduation rate is 51%, and 35% of families fall below the poverty line. The sample was 86% Black, 9% Latinx, and 5% Asian, Native American, or unreported. One-on-one semi-structured interviews lasted 35-60 minutes and covered youth’s experiences and engagement in their communities and views on community problems. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, coded, and analyzed thematically using inductive methods in Dedoose.Community violence including shootings, fights, and gang violence was discussed by 84% of youth. Violence contextualized how youth discussed experiences of civic engagement, and we identified two distinct ways that youth adapt to this context. One resilience pathway was typified by civic empowerment: These youth were motivated to address community violence and described civic engagement aimed at addressed this problem, such as attending peace rallies, helping friends to avoid gangs, stopping fights among peers, mentoring peers and younger children, and cleaning the streets to improve pride in the neighborhood. Youth exhibiting the empowerment pathway commonly expressed that they had access to safe spaces and felt supported and heard by adults around them. As a second resilience pathway, some youth discussed disengaging from community as a survival strategy in response to community violence. Disengagement was described as pulling back from community spaces and events and avoiding close relationships with peers. These youth discussed intentional decisions to disconnect to avoid recruitment into gangs or drug involvement. For example, one youth discussed feeling less stressed and more at peace when he disengages from community. Thus, these youth were displaying an adaptive, self-preservation strategy that illustrated resilience in context. These youth were more likely to be male and to report direct personal exposure to violence and related community problems. Findings illustrate that very different outcomes can illustrate resilience among urban youth experiencing community violence. Divergent paths may be based in part on the amount of support and safety youth feel. Community disengagement as a self-preservation strategy may have adaptive and maladaptive consequences for urban youth in contexts of community violence. Civic engagement may offer urban youth of color opportunities to address community problems and thrive in the face of adversity.

Authors

• Laura Wray-Lake, University of California, Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Laura S. Abrams, University of California, Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author