Status Updates From The Making of a Teenage Ser...

“It is then worthwhile to question why urban ethnographers, policy makers, and the public continue to place “risk behaviors” at the center of understanding and targeting poverty without fully acknowledging how populations are constructed as at-risk, whether avoiding risk behaviors will indeed break the cycle of marginalization, and what problematizing certain behaviors means for ‘at-risk populations’” 16

“community organizations and institutions that provide resources to marginalized youth can also constrain teens’ opportunities... they also adopt a culture of control, policing youth constantly …They regularly instill fear in the youth by implying that they could very easily become teen parents, gang members, or drug users…They justify the close policing of the teenagers as necessary to future success” (8)