Solidarity is made from moment to moment: Practices of a labour pedagogy in and through youth work

There has been an ever-increasing crisis in which vocational education and training (VET) finds itself, both in Flanders and internationally. On one hand, the importance of VET for both the economy and (technological) innovation is emphasized in public discourses. On the other hand, in the eyes of the average Flemish individual VET is not an attractive educational prospect and more and more youths do not seem interested in the kind of labour that is being taught in vocational schools. However, in Flemish youth work another development seems to be taking place: more and more programs and initiatives directly engage with labour and work. These programs and initiatives range from offering a “first” labour experience in youth houses, to also specific art- or labour market focused initiatives. In these initiatives youths are being engaged with and through labour.

This thesis has different approach to youth work than has been made in youth work research up until now. A lot of youth work research either very quickly essentializes the practice of youth work, or mythologizes what it is “supposed to be” and any practice that does not adhere to that ideal is not studied. Furthermore, these expectations very often lead to youth work practices being approached purely in terms of their social or policy functionality. In these cases, if youth work is researched, it is often researched in terms its methodologies or to what extent youth work succeeds in fulfilling these assigned functions. Thus, youth work is often under many expectations, which are also very often at odds with one another. However, my research focus is not on youth work as a social practice as such, but rather as an educational practice in its own right. In other words, my aim is to understand what currently happens in youth work and why it is meaningful to the youths who attend it, rather than trying to optimize the methodologies of youth work. Therefore, the aim of the research is to explicate a pedagogical consideration of youth work that both respects the concrete practice of the modern day empirically, while acknowledging the many difficult and often paradoxical theoretical and societal expectations that are hoisted on the shoulders of youth work. As such, this thesis works from a empirical basis and uses widely varied conceptual underpinnings to both clarify the daily vocational practice of youth work and the paradoxical functions these daily practices try to fulfill.

The hypothesis of this research is that youth work performs a particular public pedagogy that not only engages all youths who participate in it with labours that are different from the kind of labour that is offered in formal VET, but also that youth work does so from a unique educational character of a solidarity with the present. In this case I define solidarity as the possibility for anyone who is part of the collective environment of youth work to engage, contribute, and be acknowledged for that contribution in the daily practice of youth work, no matter who they happen to be.