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Grassroots Youth Work: Policy, Passion and Resistance in Practice

Online ISBN:
9781447328612
Print ISBN:
9781447328599
Publisher:
Policy Press
Book

Grassroots Youth Work: Policy, Passion and Resistance in Practice

Tania De St Croix
Tania De St Croix
King's College London
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Published:
7 May 2016
Online ISBN:
9781447328612
Print ISBN:
9781447328599
Publisher:
Policy Press

Abstract

This book provides a rich and detailed understanding of the experiences and perspectives of grassroots youth workers in England. Drawing on three years of qualitative research and written by an experienced practising youth worker, the book paints a picture of passionate and committed practitioners who love their work and care about young people. However, the study finds that their practice is obstructed and transformed by policy in the guise of spending cuts, privatisation, target cultures and surveillance, underpinned by neoliberal ideologies that impose market mechanisms on even the most grassroots forms of youth work. Grassroots youth workers engage in substantial and complex emotional labour and work in precarious situations, and their voices are rarely heard in policy or research. This book takes seriously their critique of target cultures and profit imperatives, as well as their celebration of creating open spaces for young people to be together, exploring their worlds and themselves. The book explores some of the ways in which youth workers engage in everyday forms of resistance in relation to the policy context in which they work: developing counter-discourses, engaging in refusals and rebellion, and creating alternative approaches to practice. The book finishes with recommendations for reclaiming and re-imagining youth work.

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