Youth Work,

Where do we come from, where do we think we’re going?

Supported by

Quote

“With some important exceptions, most social science literature about youth

continues to be produced according to white, Western perceptions of reality, and Western traditions of social and

cultural analysis …”

Quote

“If the public schools produce gentlemen prepared to lead, youth

work must produce young men ready to follow”

Table of contents

1. Social pedagogical perspective

2. Historical roots

3. Empowering the powerful

4. Going beyond the paradox?

1. Investing and empowering

Council of youth ministers => 27.11.09 ‘on a renewed framework for European cooperation in the youth field’

Welcomed with open arms by the youth field: Young people are targeted as main priority Youth work is recognised as important actor to contribute to objectives

But: investing in what and to which purposes? Promoting their social and professional integration as an essential

component to reach the objectives of Europe’s Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs, at the same time as promoting personal fulfilment, social cohesion and active citizenship?

A-historical?

1. Investing and empowering

It is of vital importance to enable all young women and men to make the best of their potential. This entails not only investing in youth, by putting in place greater resources to develop policy areas that affect young people in their daily lives and improve their well being, but also empowering youth by promoting their autonomy and the potential of young people to contribute to a sustainable development of society and to European values and goals.

A-political?

A-pedagogical?

A-theoretical?

A-social?

Good framework for youth work?

1. Investing and empowering

-historical: indivual development in line with social cohesion

-pedagogical: risk aversion and developmental management

-theoretical: pragmatical, logical, sensible, rational, … not open for debate

-social: societal challenges individual tasks

-political: participation, a matter of individual motivation and support?

1. Investing and empowering

A technical debate risking to strengthen existing situation

Reinforced by policymakers, practitioners and researchers

At the most: upwards mobility for individuals, societal status-quo

Youth work as a methodical question of “incomes and outcomes”The accessibility of youth workThe efficiency of youth work

1. Investing and empowering

Increasing two track policyMainstream work: working with young people – access

is a problem

Targeted work: working on young people – efficiency is a problem

The work that works is not accessible, the accessible work does not work

Two strategies across EuropeUpgrading young people

Upgrading youth work

1. Investing and empowering

Risk of decontextualisation cf. unstructured youth work has

counterproductive effects Unorganised people should be organised,

etc.

Evidence based policy? Or speculation?

Magic triangle?

Discovering or constructing?

2. The saint: social work

Poverty relief and social work

Oratorio, Patronages, ...

“a genius” who realised that the social issue was fundamentally a question of education

Invest in young people and empower them and you will prevent social problems what’s new?

2. The poet: youth movement

Starts at school Youth as a cultural vanguard

Self-realisation

Self-government

Camping, hiking, nature

Cultural renewal, no social conflict

Youth work avant la lettre

Social care work for young people: participation in youth work

Youth movement:participation through youth work

Adapting society to the needs of young people or …

2. The lord: An instrumental synthesis

Social work + youth movement = youth work as an instrument for social education

Woodcraft, Public School, Boer War, Jungle Book, Boys Brigade

Single concept of boyhood (and youth work)3rd educational environmentdisciplineLearning by playingAsk the boy

Cultural renewal Better “results”!

2. The priest: A social pedagogical synthesis

Social work + youth movement = social movement youth work as social educational practice

A dignified approach of the working youth Cardijn’s Young Cahtolic Workers Traditional? Collective social action

Methodical= Abstraction of context

-do you know that there are young working class people with problems of their own?

- I do not know young workers, I only know young citizens and I want to create strong-willed young men.

-do you know how young workers have to survive in factories, how they are influence by “workers’ milieu”. How could we help them to stay “good” or even to have a good influence in their milieu?

-I don’t know the workers’ milieu!

2. The psychological fundaments

The framing of the social question into the youth questionThe youth movement as a method

Underpinned by Developmental psychology Compulsary formal

education vs informal learning

Moral panic

2. Youth Workers upgrade themselves

Scouting method as model: from action groups and study circles to youth movement or (scouting)methodology

AKVS KSA Patronages Chiro The Young Worker YCW Socialist Young Guards Red Falcons

Emancipation is disconnected from social class.Where have all the working class kids gone?

2. Establishment of instrumental discours

Flanders // Europe 1922: Catholic Action 1945: National Youth

ServiceYouth movement is better

Organised - unorganised

Strategy of moving on

2. The Youth Organisation

The foreign observer is struck by the great diversity of youth movements in Belgium, and, if he has been in the country before, by their immensely increased importance in national life since the recent war. (Picalausa & Vanderbruggen 1946)

Through governmental measures and through their own initiative, the leaders of the youth movements are now taking responsibility towards the needs of youth in this changed world: physical health and fitness, moral and character education, vocational guidance and apprenticeship, education toward family responsibility, an adequate civic education adapted to the technical and moral needs of democracy.

2. The Youth Organisation

The youth movements are firmly decided to help solve all these problems by the influencing of the public opinion and of the government, by a co-operation with one another, by the extension of their action to the mass of youth, and by the complete and well-integrated education they aim to give to their members, alongside the family and the school, so as to enrich their personality and equip them to accomplish the great task of rebuilding their country and helping to make a better world.

2. Sociological fundaments

‘The most convincing reply to the charge that the youth organization is a redundant institution was that given by the boys and girls who were themselves members. Those adolescents who belonged to a society were definitely easier to come to terms with than the non-members. They were not only willing but able to talk, and they generally had something worth saying. And were not those youngsters who were active members a shade more reliable, a shade more open-handed than the rest?’ (Jephcott 1954, Smits & Elchardus 2004).

3. Empowering the powerful

Tackling the problem of becoming accessible to Tackling the problem of becoming accessible to non-organised or marginalisednon-organised or marginalised young people is young people is now felt by al key players to be essential to now felt by al key players to be essential to increasing participation by young people increasing participation by young people (Commission of the European Communities 2006).(Commission of the European Communities 2006).

Working class young people? Vulnerable Working class young people? Vulnerable young people?young people?

3. Empowering the powerful?

New open forms of youth work: vulnerable young people, vulnerable youth work (‘not yet people’, ‘not yet youth work’)

Youth work is being redefined as a ‘method’

Youth workers exclude (themselves) from the social debate on the “pedagogical responsibility of society”

Contextualization is re-introduced as a method, not as a principle (=> not emancipatory, but disempowering):

No direct action: Employment Employability Failure of school Failure at school

Youth work method works: motivation and access

3. The work that works is not accessible

Working with youth?universalNeeds-ledProcess‘holistic’social education?

Working at youth?Targeted Budget-led output en outcome focused‘taylorized’prevention

Dividing lines between mainstream youth and deviant youth

,

private publicSOCIALSOCIAL

Transit zone

Forum

How to resocialise the youth question?

4. Going beyond the paradox

Youth work = Social work The (re)invention of the social: post-communist,

post-colonial, post-welfare The social as a transit-zone: guiding young

people to integrate in the social order Youth work instrument for social education

The social as a forum: discussing the way we relate to each other and the conditions that structure those relationships

Youth work social educational practice

Keeping up the tension!

We make the road by walking

Paolo Freire and Myles Horton