“Locked out of Lynn”: A portrait of youth symbolic creativity in a gentrifying city

Abstract

In the United States, lower-income urban youth are coming of age in community contexts marked by widespread gentrification and deepening inequality. Yet, the initial changes associated with gentrification are subtle and are often celebrated in local media discourse—creating added uncertainty for youth as they endeavor to make sense of the changes they see. In this article, I investigate how youth from disparate backgrounds began to make sense of urban change through the lens of gentrification. Drawing on concepts from the field of cultural studies, I discuss three kinds of meaning-making that unfolded as the young people in my study began to co-construct shared understandings about the interlocking symbolic, political, and spatial inequalities that comprise gentrification. In turn, I argue that creating space for youth’s creative symbolic work can provide a forum for youth to develop the shared understandings needed to pursue collective action.

Keywords:

• Gentrification
• community-based learning
• youth culture
• arts education
• cultural production

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Throughout this article, I use pseudonyms to refer to my field site and study participants. However, I name the city in which my study took place. I do so for two reasons. First, it would be impossible to effectively mask the fact that my study took place in Lynn, Massachusetts without also removing details that are critical to my analysis. Second, I believe it would be harmful to render Lynn as a placeless “Anywheresville” and to extract what I have learned without properly attributing it to the context that it emerges from.

2 At the time of this study, Jia used they/them pronouns. As per the human rights council, the term gender-expansive refers to persons with “a wider, more flexible range of gender identity and/or expression than typically associated with the binary gender system. [The term is] often used as an umbrella term when referring to young people still exploring the possibilities of their gender expression and/or gender identity.”

3 The Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 ruling overturned decades of legal precedent allowing public sector labor unions to collect fees from non-members to support collective bargaining efforts. Legal experts estimate that the Supreme Court’s decision will significantly undermine the strength of labor unions in the United States.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raquel Jimenez

Raquel Jimenez is an Arts Research with Communities of Color Fellow at the Social Science Research Council. Her work explores what young peoples’ artmaking practices reveal about their deepest sociocultural concerns. In 2022, she earned her PhD in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, with a focus on human development, learning, and teaching.