Rearranging differential Inclusion through civic solidarity: loose coupling in mentorship for "Unaccompanied minors"

This article looks into a community-based mentoring programme for unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs), launched in 2015 at the peak of refugee movement in Austria. Leaning on a long-term ethnographic study, it sheds light on dynamic developments in refugee support through civic solidarity. The article proposes that examining the programme from the point of view of dialectic processes of organizing provides a better standpoint for asking what was produced on the programme and what influences those outcomes have had on more contentious political dimensions. Following this, the focus is concentrated on "loose coupling" within a pilot youth mentoring scheme. This reveals how inbuilt ambiguities were given structure, how rationality and indetermination were interdependently organized and how the uncertain was ascertained through mentor training and matching. Thus, unequal but personal relationships were brought about and stabilized. The particular institutionalization of "godparenthoods for URMs" offered possible ways of integrating various elements of a support system in a way which could provide better support than other relationships amongst strangers. I argue that these specific forms of loose coupling opened up a corridor in which aspects relating to the differential inclusion of young refugees were (re-)arranged through adults volunteering, but with mixed results

Chapter 6 Extending agency

By regarding children as actors and conducting empirical research on children’s agency, Childhood Studies have gained significant influence on a wide range of different academic disciplines. This has made agency one of the key concepts of Childhood Studies, with articles on the subject featured in handbooks and encyclopaedias. Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood is the first collection devoted to the central concept of agency in Childhood Studies. With contributions from experts in the field, the chapters cover theoretical, practical, historical, transnational and institutional dimensions of agency, rekindling discussion and introducing fundamental and contemporary sociological perspectives to the field of research. Particular attention is paid to connecting agency in the social sciences with Childhood Studies, considering both the theoretical foundations and the practice of research into agency. Empirical case studies are also explored, which focus upon child protection, schools and childcare at a variety of institutions worldwide. This book is an essential reference for students and scholars of Childhood Studies, and is also relevant to Sociology, Social Work, Education, Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and Geography. Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138854192_oachapter6.pd

Soziale Arbeit und soziale Frage(n) / Soziale (Ent-)Sicherung und (Im-)Mobilitäten im Nationalstaat: eine Verhältnisbestimmung von Sozialer Arbeit und Sozialer Frage

Soziale Arbeit lässt sich als eine spezifische, personenbezogene und handlungsorientierte, kulturell und historisch rückgebundene, institutionalisierte Bearbeitung sozialer Probleme beschreiben. Als solche ist sie gleichermaßen Seismographin und Transformatorin gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen. Dazu gehört, dass sich Soziale Arbeit als Disziplin und Profession ihrer etablierten Rollen (selbst) vergewissert und diese gegebenenfalls neu zu bestimmen sucht. So rief bspw. die Jahrestagung der Sektion Sozialpädagogik in der ÖFEB 2016 dazu auf, das „Verhältnis von Sozialer Arbeit und alten bzw. neuen sozialen Fragen“1 zu diskutieren. Im Zentrum stand dabei der Aufruf, historische und aktuelle Entwicklungen in der Sozialen Arbeit vor dem Hintergrund gesellschaftlich-politischer Entwicklungen zu reflektieren. Dieser Beitrag folgt der Forderung und nimmt dabei den Zusammenhang von „Sozialer (Ent-)Sicherung“ und „(Im-)Mobilitäten“ im Nationalstaat in den Blick. Ausgehend davon soll die konstitutive Rolle von Sozialer Arbeit als Teil gouvernmentaler Sicherungspraktiken im Prozess der nationalen Verwohlfahrtsstaatlichung seit Mitte/Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts kritisch reflektiert werden. Erst von einer solchen Analyse aus so das Argument lässt sich fragen, was das Neue an einer „neuen sozialen Frage“ überhaupt sein kann und was es nicht mehr sein kann und was dies für Soziale Arbeit bedeutet.(VLID)362219

Child and Youth Services / How “Godparents” Are Made for “Unaccompanied Refugee Minors”: An Ethnographic View into the Training of Future Youth Mentors

There are many qualitative studies on interactions and activities within mentoring, including on organizational processes. This article concentrates on one pivotal aspect regarding the “doings” of mentorshipthe training of future voluntary mentors (known as "godparents") for separated young refugees in a pilot program. The underlying study looks at knowledge production in mentoring. The explorative research done in Austria started during the so-called refugee crisis in Europe in 2015. Using data from participant observation, the “triangle of godparenthood” is reconstructed as a core structure underlying the overall pilot program. Thus the ideal-type figures of the “family-like,” the “professional,” and the “committed contractual” godparent become visible. The interpretation discusses youth mentoring as a form of social problems work. Accordingly, the study shows how social protection is organized based on particular social problematizations and on the construction of voluntary mentors from civil society. The training “teaches” future mentors what kind of young people their counterparts are. It offers a problematization according to which particular “needs” are defined. This allows mentors to legitimize, rationalize, and moralize what is, in the end, a pedagogical approach. By relating the problematization to a personal level, the training provides future mentors with a particular idea and moral obligation regarding what they personally can be for those young people who are categorized as “unaccompanied refugee minors.”(VLID)298629

‘If we want, they help us in any way: how ‘unaccompanied refugee minors experience mentoring relationships

Little is known about the growing phenomenon of ‘mentorship for “unaccompanied refugee minors”. This article looks into one serious gap, based on a case study in Austria, asking: How do these young people, most of them seeking asylum, represent relationships in a mentorship programme? Here, youth mentoring is understood as a community-based form of social intervention carried out by an organisation that connects trained adult volunteers with young people. The findings from two multilingual group interviews focus on various dimensions of social support and social capital, e.g. with regard to settling in and life course transitions. Reacting to calls for methodological reflection in studies on the refugee experience, the article presents in detail the setting and approach, which partly built on the concept of the ‘tripled Otherness of “unaccompanied minors”. An analysis of their narrations is discussed against the wider context, particularly that of systematic discrimination by welfare agencies and efforts by various actors to rearrange URMs differential inclusion. The conclusion proposes that research should better reflect the political dimension in mentoring for marginalised populations. It argues that the potential of such programmes should be tapped to develop progressive protection arrangements extending beyond the limits of the welfarist nation state.(VLID)356515

Chapter 6 Extending agency

By regarding children as actors and conducting empirical research on children’s agency, Childhood Studies have gained significant influence on a wide range of different academic disciplines. This has made agency one of the key concepts of Childhood Studies, with articles on the subject featured in handbooks and encyclopaedias. Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood is the first collection devoted to the central concept of agency in Childhood Studies. With contributions from experts in the field, the chapters cover theoretical, practical, historical, transnational and institutional dimensions of agency, rekindling discussion and introducing fundamental and contemporary sociological perspectives to the field of research. Particular attention is paid to connecting agency in the social sciences with Childhood Studies, considering both the theoretical foundations and the practice of research into agency. Empirical case studies are also explored, which focus upon child protection, schools and childcare at a variety of institutions worldwide. This book is an essential reference for students and scholars of Childhood Studies, and is also relevant to Sociology, Social Work, Education, Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and Geography. Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138854192_oachapter6.pd

Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood: New perspectives in Childhood Studies / Extending agency : the merit of relational approaches for childhood studies

Current discussions on the concept of agency in the inter- and multidisciplinary field of Childhood Studies are a reaction to the deficits revealed in the way the New Sociology of Childhood has viewed agency: as an attempt to gain a more nuanced, differentiated understanding of agency on both an empirical and a theoretical level. My intention here is to contribute to the current reconceptualisation of agency, but not in the sense of providing a better or more nuanced understanding of individual or human agency. Quite the contrary, I argue for a different understanding of agency as social and collective, which allows for different sensitivities and methodologies in research on childhood. I will bring into play selected contributions on agency in the social theory and social anthropology of the last two decades that share a relational/ relativistic approach towards the social. The core argument that I want to push forward is that a relational conception of agency can be one productive reaction towards the claim by Prout and others that we need to reflect on existing understandings of agency in the field, all the time striving for a qualitatively different approach toward agency. This perspective turns away from predominantly intentional and cognitive understandings of agency. Hence, agents are not substantialised agents, but often consist of overlapping entities or fabrics, which are complex and in motion. Consequently, agency can be seen as a realised, situated and permuted capacity, which can be accomplished through the combination of various interconnected “persons” and “things”.Eberhard Raithelhuber(VLID)205483

The intersection of social protection and mobilities: a move towards a ‘Practical Utopia research agenda

Currently, a number of contributions in mobility studies are looking for fruitful intersections with other ‘adjacent approaches . In this spirit, our theoretical paper argues to study one particular aspect: the intersection of social protection and mobilities. Currently, the provision of social services in the ‘West is strongly entrenched within nation-state logics, which assume that clients immobility is a precondition of service delivery and that national citizenship is the desirable conditionality of gaining social rights. To overcome such a wide-spread conflation of social security with state security, we introduce the heuristic concept ‘social protection. It allows social security to be imagined beyond a state-centric perspective and avoids the pitfalls of either a citizenship or a migration approach by taking on a mobility perspective. Thus, for scholars anchored in mobility studies we propose how to develop a social security perspective in a progressive way. For readers from other areas, e.g. citizenship, migration or social policy, we will show how a mobility perspective enriched by a No Border approach can overcome a narrow Western, statist and static perspective on social security. Our goal is to conceptually open up what we call a ‘practical utopia research agenda, one that expands our political horizons for future and present socialities.(VLID)298630

Österreichisches Jahrbuch für Soziale Arbeit : Konsequenzen der Kinder- und Jugendhilfe / Consequences of Child and Youth Welfare

Das Österreichische Jahrbuch für Soziale Arbeit Annual Review of Social Work and Social Pedagogy in Austria (kurz: ÖJS) erscheint mit dieser Ausgabe erstmalig. Die neue Zeitschrift versteht sich als Publikationsort für fachlich-disziplinäre Diskussionen und für den wissenschaftlichen Diskurs in und um Österreich. Ziel ist es, Entwicklungen der Sozialen Arbeit auf einem wissenschaftlich hohen Niveau abzubilden und Fachdiskussionen weiterzuentwickeln. Mit dem Themenschwerpunkt „Konsequenzen der Kinder- und Jugendhilfe“ nimmt das Österreichische Jahrbuch für Soziale Arbeit Bezug auf öffentliche Debatten und wissenschaftliche Diskurse, die die österreichische Soziallandschaft in den letzten Jahren maßgeblich beeinflusst haben. Das Österreichische Jahrbuch für Soziale Arbeit fragt im Schwerpunkt seiner ersten Ausgabe nach neueren Erkenntnissen und Konsequenzen dieses historischen Erbes für die Gegenwart der Sozialen ArbeitThis is the first issue of the Annual Review of Social Work and Social Pedagogy in Austria (Österreichisches Jahrbuch für Soziale Arbeit, OeJS). This new journal sees itself as an outlet for the publication of discussion by scholars and professionals, and for scientific discourse in and about Austria. It aims to present developments in social work at a high academic standard and to advance debates. In focusing on the topic of “Consequences of Child and Youth Welfare”, the Annual Review of Social Work and Social Pedagogy in Austria is picking up on public debates and academic discourses that have significantly influenced the Austrian landscape of social service provision in recent years. The first issue of the Annual Review of Social Work and Social Pedagogy in Austria OeJS takes up this subject as its central focus, looking into recent findings and the consequences this historical legacy has for contemporary social work and social pedagogy.Annual Review of Social Work and Social Pedagogy(VLID)357755