The Many Spaces of Counter-Radicalisation: The Enactment of Prevent in England

The 2015 Prevent Duty placed a huge number of professionals on the front-lines of delivering the UK’s Prevent counter-radicalisation strategy, including educators. This paper draws on policy sociology to explore how Prevent is made and re-made in different spaces as it moves from the desks of policy-makers, to practitioners at the local authority level, through to the classroom. Drawing on qualitative interviews with practitioners and educators, it argues that the practice of counter-radicalisation in England is markedly shaped by regional, professional and institutional contexts. However, through an analysis of the twin concepts of control and creativity, it finds that the agency of those tasked with delivering Prevent is somewhat constrained by the decisions and actions of policy-makers who are far-removed from front-line practice. It therefore concludes by arguing that further empirical research is required to investigate this interplay between top-down control and bottom-up creativity as it plays out in specific spaces and different local contexts.