Browsing by Subject "kunnallinen nuorisotyö"

The aim of this study was to explore what kind of agency municipality youth work offers to the youth workers. The study also considers how young people are positioned in the views of youth workers on youth work. The starting point for this study is post-structuralist feminist research and I look at municipality youth work as a discursive practice. Previous research has shown that the therapeutic ethos has spread to support systems and political guidance for young people both in Finland and in other Western countries. Therapeutic ethos has been broadly studied from the perspectives of governmentality, but so far has less attention been paid to research on how people engage its practices. The data consist of five focus group discussions and two workshops, which have been carried out as part of the Youth Work Curriculum project of the City of Helsinki Youth Service. I analysed the data using discursive reading. The results of my research showed how the therapeutic ethos both makes youth workers agency possible and restricts it. The agency of youth workers takes on a contradictory position, at the same time it makes young people’s voluntary action possible, but on the other hand, it aims to guide young people to develop themselves and their emotional skills. By cultivating emotional skills, young people have to operate to meet the current social demands that are demanding people to have good self-esteem, emotional skills and find solutions of themselves. In their views of youth work the youth workers positioned young people in various positions of vulnerability and self-responsibility, where young people have to take responsibility of their choices and confess their own weaknesses.