Policy and identity change in youth social work:From social-interventionist to neoliberal policy paradigms

SummaryThis article analyses – by drawing on ideology critical and psychoanalytical concepts from Slavoj Žižek and Glynos et al. – how political, social and fantasmatic logics interplay and form social workers’ professional identities within two youth social work institutions that operate within different social policy paradigms: a social-interventionist paradigm in 2002 and a neoliberal paradigm in 2010.FindingsThe article shows how the current neoliberalisation of public policy permeates social work practices through fantasmatic narratives that create professional identities to heal discrepancies in and conceal the political dimension of everyday life. In one institution, within a welfare state-based ideology a compensating-including social professional identity is created in response to the young people’s alleged deficiencies; in the other institution, within a neoliberal ideology a mobilising-motivating identity is created to meet the young people’s alleged excess. In both narratives, however, the young people risk bearing the blame for the failure of the social professional project.ApplicationsFantasies in both institutions conceal how social workers’ professional identities sustain dominant ideology through dislocating uncertainties, ambiguities and ambivalences implicated in professional social work. Whether rooted in the state-based welfare or market-oriented neoliberal policy paradigms, realisation of these dynamics may expose the basic interdependencies of state, civil society and market actors implicated in the project of professional social work.</jats:sec

Gymnasieelevers sundhed som sanselige, kollektive og kropspolitiske engagementer

Artiklen undersøger gymnasieunges oplevelser med, forståelser af og praksisser omkring sundhed i deres hverdagsliv. Børn og unge eksponeres i dag for sundhedsbudskaber, påbud og overvågning i mange af de sociale sfærer med sundhed forstået som et individuelt ansvar der udøves gennem at regulere sin kost, rusmiddelbrug og motionsvaner. Gymnasieeleverne oplever gymnasielivet stressende og presset, men de formår også – måske som en reaktion herpå – aktivt at skabe sociale og kropslige rum, som de forbinder med sundhed. I disse rum afstresser de, ”er i kroppen” og lader op igen. Disse kropslige og kollektive sundhedsrum er dog ikke identiske med, men står snarere i modsætning til, dominerende individualistiske, biomedicinsk forankrede sundspolitiske påbud og normer. Tværtimod er et væsentligt aspekt af de unges følelse af sundhed, at skærme sig imod disse normer, som også repræsenterer udefrakommende, moralske krav, som virker ikke-kropsliggørende i forhold til deres egne fornemmelser for, hvad der er sundt for dem. Studiet illustrerer vigtigheden af at skoler skaber læringsmiljøer som muliggør at eleverne udforsker deres kropslige og intellektuelle potentialer og kapaciteter, bl.a. gennem at overskride den individualisme som i øjeblikket præger ungdomsuddannelser og sundhedsfremme i Danmark. Gymnasiet bør i stedet søge at skabe rum for kollektiv kropsligt forankret og forankrende læring, i en erkendelse af at motivation, engagement og myndiggørende og styrkende affektive relationer – isundhed, krop og skolepræstationer – hviler på en sam-produktion af engagementer

Perker med no-life i Velfærds-danmark

Migrant youth with no-life in Danish welfare society This article analyses how children and youngsters with ethnic minority background are constructed as ”strange troublemakers” and assume identities as “migrant with no-life” in a social educational leisure institution, ”Baglandet”. Baglandet admits children considered to be ”associationless” and ”at risk of criminality”, and attempts to ease the children back into ”normal” institutions. However, the institution is a part of the Danish social welfare system characterized by contradictory and paradoxical institutional logics as well as professional practices. Dynamics of both inclusion and exclusion are at stake in this system, and therefore Baglandet works simultaneously both with and against its own purpose. One problematic consequence of this is the production and institutionalising of deviant identities for ethnic minority children in Denmark