This article contributes to a social theory of resilience. It critiques aspects of developmental and individual-level analyses in the resilience literature, arguing for the significance of social identities and collective experience to resilience. Drawing on a study of the experiences of young people from an inner-city public housing estate in Sydney, key themes of the young people’s accounts engage with both classic and constructivist perspectives. Resistance based resilience is claimed to indicate the social constitution of individuals in local relations, suggesting that interventions for resilience building need to recognize the embeddedness of resilience in social inequities, social processes and the differentiated societal and ideological expectations of young people. How resilience is conceptualized is central to resilience building interventions. Here the case is put for the importance of resources to support and strengthen the resilience of marginalized youth.
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