Stephen Crossley
Biographic Data
| ID | 1435241 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephen Crossley |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephen |
| FAMILY NAME | Crossley |
| SIGNATURE | CROSSLEY S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6537-9021 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The (un)politics of ‘sportswashing’: What’s the problem?
To date, much of the focus on sportswashing has been trained on those allegedly intent on ‘cleansing’ their reputation. Some literature has also explored the responses of fans and spectators of clubs, competitions, and/or events associated with sportswashing activities. Despite recent calls for a more relational and ‘bidirectional’ approach to scholarship surrounding ‘sportswashing’, there has been little attention paid to how sportswashing activ…
The absence of anger: ‘Lived experience’, emotions, and framing techniques in UK anti-poverty work
The concept of ‘lived experience’ has become increasingly important in activities such as campaigning, research, and policy design. Concurrently, and in slight contrast, ‘framing approaches’, have also become more popular. Whilst empirical work around emotions within social policy development remains limited, there have recently been a number of calls for compassion, kindness, and hope to form the basis of political and policy-related discussions…
It’s a far cry from small boys in the park, jumpers for goalposts. Isn’t it?’ the changing space of informal youth football in the UK
It is often remarked that all that is required for children to play football are ‘jumpers for goalposts’. Space is also required, however, and so is permission to play, and to see the game through. Some of the spaces associated with British youth football through history include private school playing fields, villages, back streets, leisure centres, artificial pitches, and concrete sports courts or ‘cages’. This article explores some of these gre…
Sports Cages as Social Infrastructure: Sociality, Context, and Contest in Hackney's Cages
The concept of social infrastructure has experienced a rapid rise to prominence in recent years, both in academia and in policy. In this article, we explore a case study of cages (also known as Multi‐Use Games Areas) in Hackney, North‐East London. We argue that cages are forms of urban infrastructure which can facilitate multiple forms of sociality—especially for young people—and can thus be deemed valuable social infrastructure. However, this va…
They Tarred Me with the Same Brush”: Navigating Stigma in the Context of Child Removal
Child removals are increasing in England and Wales. Family court involvement is particularly common among women with multiple disadvantages, and the rates are higher in economically marginalised areas. This article aims to explore women's narratives of child removal within life stories of homelessness and examines how stigma, power and State surveillance manifest in their experiences. Data drawn from qualitative interviews with 14 mothers in the …
Social capital and women’s narratives of homelessness and multiple exclusion in northern England
Women experiencing three or more co-occurring issues (homelessness, substance misuse, mental health) are a highly vulnerable population associated with multimorbidity. Taking women's life stories of trajectories into social exclusion in the north of England as its focus, this paper aims to explore the complexity of social contexts in which women navigate extreme health inequalities. Of the few studies that have examined women's experiences of hom…
You either go on the gang life, or you go on that football life’: Class, race, and place in imaginaries of South London’s sports cages
In considering the spatialization of race and the racialization of space, this article explores dominant media representations of sports cages in the UK. To date, media interest in these cages, often found on social housing estates, has revolved around the role they have played in the childhoods of a small number of young, almost exclusively Black, footballers, primarily from London. In the first academic article to engage with these issues, we a…
Responsibility, resilience and symbolic power
The reciprocal nature of the relationship between the concepts of responsibilisation and resilience appears, in policy and political circles at least, almost natural. Whilst both concepts have been subjected to sustained academic critique for their presentation as largely individual or familial qualities, and their negation of social and structural pressures, there has been more limited attention paid to the potential of the concepts if they were…
‘We know it works. . .’: The Troubled Families Programme and the pre-determined boundary judgements of decontextualised policy evaluation
This article draws on the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) to highlight the ways in which particular contexts – such as socioeconomic and symbolic structures – are neglected in forms of evaluation with an establishment orientation. The article problematises two key aspects of decontextualised evaluation: firstly, the privileging of pre-determined relations of cause and effect; and secondly, the unproblematized framing of policy problems. More co…
The UK Government’s Troubled Families Programme: Delivering Social Justice
This article examines and reviews the evidence surrounding the UK Government’s Troubled Families Programme (TFP), a flagship social policy launched in 2011, following riots in towns and cities across England. The programme aims to work with over 500,000 ‘troubled families’ by 2020, using a ‘whole family’ intervention. It has been beset by controversy and criticism since its inception, but it has been described by the government as ‘promoting soci…
Getting with the (troubled families) programme’: A review
The commitment of the appointed Director General of the Troubled Families Unit, Louise Casey, that the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) was ‘an opportunity not to repeat the failed attempts of the past’ masks several enduring continuities (Casey, 2012: 3). This review article argues that the TFP should be seen as part of a wider spectrum of policies which locates ‘troubles’ or ‘problems’ in the family itself and emphasises behaviour as the targe…
The ‘troubled’ case of Rotherham
In March 2015, David Cameron announced that social workers may face up to five years’ imprisonment if they ‘wilfully neglect’ child abuse. This announcement was made following the release of an independent inquiry report into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham. The author of this report was Louise Casey, Director General of the Troubled Families programme. Casey’s findings not only raised a number of concerns about the way in which child sexu…
The ‘official’ social justice: An examination of the Coalition government’ concept of social justice
This article examines the official concept of social justice, as advanced by the Coalition government in the UK between 2010 and 2015. The article begins with a discussion of some traditional comprehensions of social justice and summarises its recent use by political parties prior to 2010. A short section on methodology precedes a sketching out of five interconnected themes of: dehistoricised; localisation and individualisation; residualisation; …
Some Useful Sources
This useful sources section focuses on four key areas related to the Troubled Families Programme: official government documents and sources of information relating to the programme; emerging academic research relating specifically to the implementation of the programme; sources which help to locate the programme in its wider historical context; and international perspectives which provide information on how ‘troubled families’ are viewed in diffe…
Introduction: ‘Looking for Trouble?’ Critically Examining the UK Government's Troubled Families Programme
The Troubled Families Programme (TFP) was launched by the UK Coalition Government in December 2011. Following the riots that took place in towns and cities across England during that summer, the then Prime Minister David Cameron promised to put ‘rocket boosters’ under plans to ‘turn around’ the lives of the country's ‘most troubled families’ by the end of the Coalition's term of office in May 2015. In his ‘fightback’ speech, delivered just a week…
Underclass: A history of the excluded since 1880 (2nd edition)
In August 2014, the front page of The Sunday Times proclaimed that the UK government’s extension of the Troubled Families Programme could be understood as evidence of the ‘rise of [a] new underclas
The 'troubled families' numbers game
Antisocial Behavior
Realising the (troubled) family’, ‘crafting the neoliberal state’
This article examines the development of the ‘troubled families’ narrative that emerged following the riots in England in 2011, drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant. Their work is briefly discussed before the current concern about ‘troubled families’ is located in its wider historical and political context. The response to the riots and the emergence and development of the official concept of ‘troubled families’ is then examin…
Realising the (troubled) family’, ‘crafting the neoliberal state’
This article examines the development of the ‘troubled families’ narrative that emerged following the riots in England in 2011, drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant. Their work is briefly discussed before the current concern about ‘troubled families’ is located in its wider historical and political context. The response to the riots and the emergence and development of the official concept of ‘troubled families’ is then examin…
Responsibility, resilience and symbolic power
The reciprocal nature of the relationship between the concepts of responsibilisation and resilience appears, in policy and political circles at least, almost natural. Whilst both concepts have been subjected to sustained academic critique for their presentation as largely individual or familial qualities, and their negation of social and structural pressures, there has been more limited attention paid to the potential of the concepts if they were…
Introduction: ‘Looking for Trouble?’ Critically Examining the UK Government's Troubled Families Programme
The Troubled Families Programme (TFP) was launched by the UK Coalition Government in December 2011. Following the riots that took place in towns and cities across England during that summer, the then Prime Minister David Cameron promised to put ‘rocket boosters’ under plans to ‘turn around’ the lives of the country's ‘most troubled families’ by the end of the Coalition's term of office in May 2015. In his ‘fightback’ speech, delivered just a week…
You either go on the gang life, or you go on that football life’: Class, race, and place in imaginaries of South London’s sports cages
In considering the spatialization of race and the racialization of space, this article explores dominant media representations of sports cages in the UK. To date, media interest in these cages, often found on social housing estates, has revolved around the role they have played in the childhoods of a small number of young, almost exclusively Black, footballers, primarily from London. In the first academic article to engage with these issues, we a…
It’s a far cry from small boys in the park, jumpers for goalposts. Isn’t it?’ the changing space of informal youth football in the UK
It is often remarked that all that is required for children to play football are ‘jumpers for goalposts’. Space is also required, however, and so is permission to play, and to see the game through. Some of the spaces associated with British youth football through history include private school playing fields, villages, back streets, leisure centres, artificial pitches, and concrete sports courts or ‘cages’. This article explores some of these gre…
Sports Cages as Social Infrastructure: Sociality, Context, and Contest in Hackney's Cages
The concept of social infrastructure has experienced a rapid rise to prominence in recent years, both in academia and in policy. In this article, we explore a case study of cages (also known as Multi‐Use Games Areas) in Hackney, North‐East London. We argue that cages are forms of urban infrastructure which can facilitate multiple forms of sociality—especially for young people—and can thus be deemed valuable social infrastructure. However, this va…
The ‘official’ social justice: An examination of the Coalition government’ concept of social justice
This article examines the official concept of social justice, as advanced by the Coalition government in the UK between 2010 and 2015. The article begins with a discussion of some traditional comprehensions of social justice and summarises its recent use by political parties prior to 2010. A short section on methodology precedes a sketching out of five interconnected themes of: dehistoricised; localisation and individualisation; residualisation; …
The 'troubled families' numbers game
Antisocial Behavior
Realising the (troubled) family’, ‘crafting the neoliberal state’
This article examines the development of the ‘troubled families’ narrative that emerged following the riots in England in 2011, drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant. Their work is briefly discussed before the current concern about ‘troubled families’ is located in its wider historical and political context. The response to the riots and the emergence and development of the official concept of ‘troubled families’ is then examin…
Some Useful Sources
This useful sources section focuses on four key areas related to the Troubled Families Programme: official government documents and sources of information relating to the programme; emerging academic research relating specifically to the implementation of the programme; sources which help to locate the programme in its wider historical context; and international perspectives which provide information on how ‘troubled families’ are viewed in diffe…
Introduction: ‘Looking for Trouble?’ Critically Examining the UK Government's Troubled Families Programme
The Troubled Families Programme (TFP) was launched by the UK Coalition Government in December 2011. Following the riots that took place in towns and cities across England during that summer, the then Prime Minister David Cameron promised to put ‘rocket boosters’ under plans to ‘turn around’ the lives of the country's ‘most troubled families’ by the end of the Coalition's term of office in May 2015. In his ‘fightback’ speech, delivered just a week…
Underclass: A history of the excluded since 1880 (2nd edition)
In August 2014, the front page of The Sunday Times proclaimed that the UK government’s extension of the Troubled Families Programme could be understood as evidence of the ‘rise of [a] new underclas
The 'troubled families' numbers game
Getting with the (troubled families) programme’: A review
The commitment of the appointed Director General of the Troubled Families Unit, Louise Casey, that the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) was ‘an opportunity not to repeat the failed attempts of the past’ masks several enduring continuities (Casey, 2012: 3). This review article argues that the TFP should be seen as part of a wider spectrum of policies which locates ‘troubles’ or ‘problems’ in the family itself and emphasises behaviour as the targe…
The ‘troubled’ case of Rotherham
In March 2015, David Cameron announced that social workers may face up to five years’ imprisonment if they ‘wilfully neglect’ child abuse. This announcement was made following the release of an independent inquiry report into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham. The author of this report was Louise Casey, Director General of the Troubled Families programme. Casey’s findings not only raised a number of concerns about the way in which child sexu…
The ‘official’ social justice: An examination of the Coalition government’ concept of social justice
This article examines the official concept of social justice, as advanced by the Coalition government in the UK between 2010 and 2015. The article begins with a discussion of some traditional comprehensions of social justice and summarises its recent use by political parties prior to 2010. A short section on methodology precedes a sketching out of five interconnected themes of: dehistoricised; localisation and individualisation; residualisation; …
The UK Government’s Troubled Families Programme: Delivering Social Justice
This article examines and reviews the evidence surrounding the UK Government’s Troubled Families Programme (TFP), a flagship social policy launched in 2011, following riots in towns and cities across England. The programme aims to work with over 500,000 ‘troubled families’ by 2020, using a ‘whole family’ intervention. It has been beset by controversy and criticism since its inception, but it has been described by the government as ‘promoting soci…
‘We know it works. . .’: The Troubled Families Programme and the pre-determined boundary judgements of decontextualised policy evaluation
This article draws on the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) to highlight the ways in which particular contexts – such as socioeconomic and symbolic structures – are neglected in forms of evaluation with an establishment orientation. The article problematises two key aspects of decontextualised evaluation: firstly, the privileging of pre-determined relations of cause and effect; and secondly, the unproblematized framing of policy problems. More co…
Responsibility, resilience and symbolic power
The reciprocal nature of the relationship between the concepts of responsibilisation and resilience appears, in policy and political circles at least, almost natural. Whilst both concepts have been subjected to sustained academic critique for their presentation as largely individual or familial qualities, and their negation of social and structural pressures, there has been more limited attention paid to the potential of the concepts if they were…
They Tarred Me with the Same Brush”: Navigating Stigma in the Context of Child Removal
Child removals are increasing in England and Wales. Family court involvement is particularly common among women with multiple disadvantages, and the rates are higher in economically marginalised areas. This article aims to explore women's narratives of child removal within life stories of homelessness and examines how stigma, power and State surveillance manifest in their experiences. Data drawn from qualitative interviews with 14 mothers in the …
Social capital and women’s narratives of homelessness and multiple exclusion in northern England
Women experiencing three or more co-occurring issues (homelessness, substance misuse, mental health) are a highly vulnerable population associated with multimorbidity. Taking women's life stories of trajectories into social exclusion in the north of England as its focus, this paper aims to explore the complexity of social contexts in which women navigate extreme health inequalities. Of the few studies that have examined women's experiences of hom…
You either go on the gang life, or you go on that football life’: Class, race, and place in imaginaries of South London’s sports cages
In considering the spatialization of race and the racialization of space, this article explores dominant media representations of sports cages in the UK. To date, media interest in these cages, often found on social housing estates, has revolved around the role they have played in the childhoods of a small number of young, almost exclusively Black, footballers, primarily from London. In the first academic article to engage with these issues, we a…
Sports Cages as Social Infrastructure: Sociality, Context, and Contest in Hackney's Cages
The concept of social infrastructure has experienced a rapid rise to prominence in recent years, both in academia and in policy. In this article, we explore a case study of cages (also known as Multi‐Use Games Areas) in Hackney, North‐East London. We argue that cages are forms of urban infrastructure which can facilitate multiple forms of sociality—especially for young people—and can thus be deemed valuable social infrastructure. However, this va…
It’s a far cry from small boys in the park, jumpers for goalposts. Isn’t it?’ the changing space of informal youth football in the UK
It is often remarked that all that is required for children to play football are ‘jumpers for goalposts’. Space is also required, however, and so is permission to play, and to see the game through. Some of the spaces associated with British youth football through history include private school playing fields, villages, back streets, leisure centres, artificial pitches, and concrete sports courts or ‘cages’. This article explores some of these gre…
The (un)politics of ‘sportswashing’: What’s the problem?
To date, much of the focus on sportswashing has been trained on those allegedly intent on ‘cleansing’ their reputation. Some literature has also explored the responses of fans and spectators of clubs, competitions, and/or events associated with sportswashing activities. Despite recent calls for a more relational and ‘bidirectional’ approach to scholarship surrounding ‘sportswashing’, there has been little attention paid to how sportswashing activ…
The absence of anger: ‘Lived experience’, emotions, and framing techniques in UK anti-poverty work
The concept of ‘lived experience’ has become increasingly important in activities such as campaigning, research, and policy design. Concurrently, and in slight contrast, ‘framing approaches’, have also become more popular. Whilst empirical work around emotions within social policy development remains limited, there have recently been a number of calls for compassion, kindness, and hope to form the basis of political and policy-related discussions…
Sociology (17 works) · Political science (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Criminology (5 works)