Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter investigates how the emergent crisis of ‘black youth’ in the 1970s violently impressed upon the bodies and affective lives of young black people in urban space. On the one hand, it explores how the political and sociological production of the phenomenon of ‘black youth’ manifested in the criminalisation, and in turn the policing and detention of young black people on a massive scale. On the other, it asks what safety meant and felt like for those subjected to routinised fear and vulnerability in such a context. Using certain black hostels and youth projects as examples, it shows how strategies and spaces of safety and protection coalesced around collective experiences and practices of care and other embodied demonstrations of feeling.</jats:p>