This thesis constitutes a critical evaluation of the changing relationship between youth work and young people classified as NEET (or at risk of becoming NEET), through an analysis of youth practitioners’ perspectives on employability provision. The thesis locates youth work within its sociohistorical and political context to illuminate three competing discourses which have underpinned and shaped it as a practice – these are discourses of care, social control, and economic competitiveness. These ideas are used as a conceptual framework through which to analyse youth work employability provision. The data was drawn from seventeen student youth workers across a range of youth work provision, using a variety of qualitative methods, including interviews, observations and field notes. Some of the data reinforces existing literature inasmuch as it shows that contemporary youth work has been redefined and reoriented along increasingly instrumental lines, suffering from a simultaneous narrowing of its focus and broadening of its practice. These new arrangements are conceptualised as something of a triage operation, utilised by neoliberalism to control and contain marginalised and dispossessed sections of the working class. Evidence of this is apparent within the practitioners’ employability training as it incorporates a generic pedagogy which, it is argued, only serves to perpetuate disadvantage and bond NEET young people to marginalisation. Moreover, some of the practitioners in this research endorse official discourse on NEET, in which they incorporate a pedagogy of control into their practice. All the practitioners, however, believe they are caring for NEET young people, meaning significant conflict arose between care and control. It is argued nevertheless that the practitioners’ practice is underpinned by a discourse continuum which is primarily mediated by their perspectives on NEET young people. So, whilst some practitioners reinforce deficit views of NEET which drives their practice towards control, others reject deficit views on NEET based upon a critical consciousness which, in turn, enables them to take a middling position, whereby they interweave between different positions on the continuum and maintain care in their practice. It is, therefore, a critical consciousness that enables some practitioners to navigate and negotiate the discourse continuum more effectively.
| Date of Award | 18 Apr 2024 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Robin Simmons (Main Supervisor) & Jo Bishop (Co-Supervisor) |
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