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The 2010 UK Home Office ‘Sexualisation of Young People’ Review: A Discursive Policy Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2012

ROBBIE DUSCHINSKY
ROBBIE DUSCHINSKY*
Affiliation:
School of Health, Community and Education Studies, Northumbria University, Coach Lane East Campus, Coach Lane, Benton, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE7 7XA email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper offers a discursive policy analysis of the 2010 UK Home Office Sexualisation of Young People Review, authored by Linda Papadopoulos (2010a). It will scrutinise the narrative presented by the text of the danger posed by cultural representations to healthy development, and trace the way that the text links this danger to catastrophic outcomes: child sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking. Examining this narrative, the article will propose that the UK Review deploys spatial metaphors to naturalise a gendered account of childhood, sexuality and danger, evoking the creeping influence of a corrupting culture on a girl's most private self. The article will also demonstrate that this spatial narrative underpins the epistemological structure of the text – its separation of the primary from the secondary, the real from the artificial.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 715 - 731
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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