Social network sites are online spaces that can be used for interaction between young people and youth work practitioners. The focus of this thesis is social network site interaction that falls outside the guidance of the local authority, through unsanctioned interaction on practitioners’ personal but also work profiles. Twenty one practitioners and fourteen young people were interviewed, using a semi-structured interview guide. Three inter-linked themes emerged through the research process; space and place; trust development and boundary management. Young people wanted to interact with some practitioners through the practitioners' personal profiles but the majority of practitioners would rather interact with young people through work profiles. Young people viewed and trusted these practitioners as friends and were willing to share their personal, but also socially intimate information with them. Most practitioners viewed their relationship with young people as a professional relationship and aimed to maintain personal and professional boundaries. However, practitioners did not extend this same awareness to the boundaries of young people. This was further confirmed by the practice of client searching through a variety of profiles to access socially intimate information of young people. Where practitioners and volunteers lived and worked in the same geographical spaces, these multiple relationships increased uncertainty with regards to unsanctioned SNS interaction. Other practitioners were either fearful or opportunistic of these relationships and used them to gain further socially intimate information about young people or turned a blind eye to these relationships due to uncertainty of how to respond. This thesis extends knowledge and theory concerning youth work practice at a time of change, and also new spaces for interaction online. Civic courage and incentives that outweigh deterrents lead to unsanctioned connections for practitioners. For young people this interaction was based on the type of friendship they perceived they had with practitioners. Studying perceptions regarding this interaction revealed cycles of perpetual negative practice, personal and socially intimate boundaries and different views on the type of relationship that young people and practitioners developed with each other.

For Christian professional youth workers, the transition from student to employee positions them at the interstices of convergent and competing discourses. This thesis argues that Christian youth workers can position themselves within these discourses by articulating an authentic faith integrated with professional practice. This positioning is produced and reproduced by performative expectations and the influence of relations of power. The notion of one, unitary professional identity is deemed futile as Christian professional youth workers mobilize a complex range of identities within a range of liminal spaces. Youth workers are suspended within an extended liminal state, which opens up different possibilities for professionalism within Christian professional youth work. This thesis contributes to knowledge particularly for the sociology of the professions and specifically with regard to training and subsequent employment of those within professional occupations. Theoretically, this thesis develops Turner’s thinking in relation to the three phases of separation, liminality and reincorporation and how they apply to the understanding of transition from training to employment. Turner’s phases appear to be incomplete for the understanding of the particular issues that individuals face in the forming of identity in late modern contexts. His thinking on separation and liminality adopt a more nuanced meaning in that the statuses are not as clearly defined as would be initially thought. Likewise, reincorporation is elusive, since Christian professional youth workers are suspended within a permanent state of liminality. This thesis redeems the notion of professionalism from a secular liberal ideal, allowing spirituality to flourish once again. A Christian professional can, and does, express an authentic sense of self within different discursive domains. The crossing of discursive boundaries allows for creativity and experimentation that enriches faith and professionalism. The two influence each other in productive ways. Professionalism as the profane becomes the sacred through the experiences of Christian professionals. Of course, professionalism becoming sacred is not the domain of the Christian only. This is pertinent for a person of any faith belonging to a professional occupation and seeking to express their faith through their work.

This research is a case study of the Stoneleigh Group; a partnership of voluntary youth work organisations that piloted a spiritual development programme for young people aged 18 to 25. The purpose of the research was to examine the claims made by the Stoneleigh Group to have developed a radical approach and outcomes of personal and social transformation within a programme of informal education out of doors. The research was undertaken in the contexts of reviews of research concerning outdoor education, informal education for young people, and youth transition. An ethnographic study of the retreat programme and its impact on the lives of the young people was combined with a critical study of the advocacy work of the Stoneleigh Group within the development of the National Youth Work Curriculum. The analysis was undertaken with the aid of Bernstein’s theoretical framework for curriculum and pedagogic critique. The study of the programme claims that the pedagogic approach was radical in its ideology and practice. However, it is argued that the impact on the young people depended on the ideology of the youth organisation for which they volunteered. A range of claims for a radical outcome are identified and discussed. The research argues that, despite the claim that the outcomes of social transformation were only partially achieved, the practices of the Stoneleigh Group were contested because of their perceived radicalism. The study of the advocacy work suggests that, despite these challenges, the Stoneleigh Group's contributions to the national discussions concerning the spiritual development of young people within the youth work curriculum resulted in proposals that supported a more radical pedagogic approach than currently practised. The research indicates that the Stoneleigh Group influenced statements made in the consultation. It is argued that the Group provided support for the concept of young people as agents of social change. In particular, it is suggested that the pilot was used to support a view of young people as capable of, and valued for, their challenges to the established norms of society.

This study is about the manner in which ‘ethnicity’, ‘race’, ‘racism’ and ‘anti-racism’ are understood in contemporary France and how this affects the ways in which racialized young adults experience their schooling and early working lives. I explore the ways in which young people living and working in Paris and its surrounding suburbs understand the opportunities and barriers they face. I ground these narratives in an historicized account of the emergence of recent formulations of debates about the appropriate place of immigrants and racialized communities in public political culture in France. I do this through both an examination of the controversy surrounding the use of the categories ethnicity and ‘race’ for the purpose of monitoring discrimination as well as an analysis of a recently inaugurated national museum dedicated to the contribution of immigrants to the French nation. I argue that highly mediatised discussions in France revolving around the meaning of the French national identity, immigration and integration, youth unrest in the banlieues and the place of religion in French society are all implicitly discourses of ‘race’ and racism, despite the concerted and explicit avoidance of the deployment of racial terminology. I draw together an analysis of racialization processes as they take place at different scales and arenas from the denial of the significance of racialization in intellectual milieus, to the process of invisibilisation of racialization and colonialism at work in museum displays and memory narratives to the individual and collective everyday lived experience of racism of relatively high achieving young racialized adults. While rooted in human geography, I rely on a variety of qualitative methods and contribute to a range of academic fields, including the study of racism and anti-racism, the sociology of statistics, museum studies and political science.

This thesis explores the desistance promoting potential of professional relationships between male youth workers and young men involved in violence. It adopts a psychosocial methodological and analytic frame to examine a common-sense proposition: that male workers who are colloquially described as 'down with the kids' are especially well suited to engage and mentor young men involved in violence. Five intensely observed longitudinal case studies follow the trajectories of young men and their youth workers over six years. Each case utilises different conceptual tools to offer different insights into their relationships, including: the presence of gendered, generational and unconscious dynamics between young men and male workers; how reciprocal identification can lead to male youth workers not seeing how young men neutralise their violent offending; worker reflexivity as a pre-requisite of the youth work role in late modernity and how this can be fractured by the biographical experiences of too-wounded healers; the importance of male workers with resources of street-social and masculine capital creating a third space where they and young men can examine their own intersectional identities, and; how worker self-disclosure can shift doer done-to dynamics within professional relationships and organisations. The thesis concludes that the male worker as mentor and role model discourse generates both assets and potential shortcomings in terms of desistance promotion. Embodying a 'down with the kids' worker subjectivity can provide a ready route into youthful, masculine subcultures and a means for male workers to meet their own need for generativity. But without proper training and supervision there is a risk that workers with their own history of offending can be ineffective at best, and at worst descend into professional burn-out. In this sense being down with the kids can lead inadvertently to workers going down with the kids. Reconceptualising youth work relationships incorporating psychodynamic and post structural perspectives (i.e. as psychosocial) offers a way to work through these issues productively and can usefully inform youth work practice and policy.

Arising out of widespread concerns that incidents of street violence amongst young people in the UK were spiralling out of control, this research draws on feminist deconstructions of the public-private space divide to emphasise the importance of a social constructionist perspective on street violence; street violence as it is experienced, understood and constructed by young people. Methodologically this research combines ethnography with Critical Discourse Analysis in what has been referred to as critical ethnography (Fairclough, 2001). Adopting a practitioner research approach within a primarily street based youth work setting, accounts were drawn from a range of sources, including interviews and participant observation with youth workers, young people and local public figures. This study draws out the implications for young men’s subjective experiences of the inner city streets near where they live, focusing on the construction of masculinities in the context of political pressures and institutionalised discourses of young people. The young men in this research experienced uncertain and often fearful public spaces in which the ability to construct a credible propensity for violence was an essential part of a successful masculine identity. It is suggested that a significantly greater focus is required on critical gender identity work with young men, specifically in relation to their identity constructions in public space.

This study centred on three local governments which claimed to give priority to youth participation. Two of those municipalities were identified on the basis of employing youth participation officers, while the third was volunteered to participate in the study by the Mayor of the day who claimed that " their Council was streets ahead " of other local governments in their response to the issues of young people from within their municipality. The study was designed to ascertain how the selected Councils engaged with young people and provided opportunities for them to participate fully in the community. I interviewed the key stakeholders of the three municipalities from which I had agreement to participate. During these frank, unstructured interviews, I asked a range of questions about engagement of young people within the community. Each interview was of approximately one hour duration. Interviewees included elected councillors including the Mayor of each municipality; senior staff within Councils including each Chief Executive Officer; and youth work staff including those described as Youth Participation and Youth Development Officers. I also examined corporate documents including Annual Reports, Annual Plans, and Council Meeting Minutes from each of the councils under study. These documents provided valuable information about Council priorities, budgets, achievements and future directions. For another part of the study, I examined back copies of Leader newspapers published in each of the municipalities under study. Using a specially designed data collection form, I collected a range of information about all articles referring to young people, or which had young people as the main focus of the article. Following collection of newspaper data, I entered all of the information into a specially designed template I had previously created in the Statview statistical analysis program. A range of statistical calculations were then performed and frequency tables produced. This part of the study was conducted in response to a claim that newspaper reporting of youth issues in Kimberly was quite generous compared to other municipalities. Such a claim was' not proved to be statistically significant however. Nonetheless, the data showed that contrary to anecdotal evidence and other research related to young people and media, the nature of reporting of young people and their issues in the municipalities unde r study was overwhelmingly positive. Despite the rhetoric espoused by each local government In relation to youth development within their municipalities, two Councils proved to be disappointing in respect to what they actually delivered. This demonstrated that simply hiring a youth worker and giving them the title of Youth Participation Officer will achieve little if the Council is not serious about youth participation. For Athena and Burke City Councils, the rhetoric failed to concur with reality. Athena City Council demonstrated few opportunities for young people to participate in community activities and interviews with Athena staff revealed interference from elected representatives, compromising attempts to empower young people. Such interference has been blamed on Councillors trying to hurry a process to see results on the board for political gain. This study showed that the Council with the least resources and the largest geographical area actually performed far better than the other two municipalities. That particular Council adopted a community development approach to working with young people within the municipality out of necessity. As a municipality comprising a number of towns over a large area, such an approach was the only way that the youth worker could service the community. Despite individual failings, a major finding of this study is that we can conclude that local government does have a valid role in promoting the full participation of young people within their communities. This includes the involvement of young people in the development of programs and services that best meet their needs and wants. , Further, while the focus of this study was largely on the concept of social citizenship, it became apparent that a broader definition of political citizenship than simply voting or standing for office is as important for the development of young people and their participation in the community, and sometimes indistinguishable from, the concept of social citizenship. Gleaned from the study is a range of conditions determined as desirable to be present for maximising young people's full participation in their communities. These conditions are more indicative of young people's development opportunities than any of the geographical or demographic traits. These conditions include a stated policy commitment to young people; a professional framework for delivery of programs and services; a holistic approach to the delivery of services, connected to sound planning and coordination; and a supportive elected leadership team that refrains from interfering for political gain. Further, a dedicated council officer with a commitment to positively promoting and empowering young people, and supported by the organisations' policies and practices is essential. That same officer would also require a liberal dose of autonomy and an approach to the development of young people that sees the participation in a process as important as any outcome, and indeed as an outcome in itself. That local government is seen as key player within the community in relation to youth issues also became apparent from the study. Across Australia, a wide range of programs, activities and approaches were highlighted which relate to aspects of citizenship. This demonstrates an acknowledgement by local government as a sector that youth issues and youth development is no longer an optional extra, but is indeed 'core business'.

This interpretivist research aims to add to the body of knowledge in relation to the impact of managerialism in the youth work sector by investigating the ways in which youth workers and their practices are influenced by systems of accountability, externally imposed targets and measurement. Evaluation in this context is reduced to upward compliance; the professional no longer responsible for defining good practice or determining the outcomes of their work. The concern that the learning and development functions of evaluation are lost warranted the research. Participatory evaluation can offer resistance to evaluation as ‘technology of power’ because of its ongoing process of collective action, reflection and knowledge creation. Using an ‘insider’ methodology, a new participatory evaluation methodology was developed and implemented to explore how this different approach influenced the youth workers’ sense of self and practice. Data were gathered via individual semi-structured interviews before and after the implementation of the participatory evaluation and an inductive thematic analysis was used to identify emergent themes. This research contributes to knowledge by showing that youth workers have been serious challenged by managerialism, and performativity particularly in relation to maintaining their personal and professional values. It confirms that they view accountability metrics as inadequate for capturing the complexity and demonstrating the value of their work. Of particular significance is the knowledge that this study adds in regard to the design and use of participatory evaluation. A new way of thinking about evaluation is proposed. Transformative Evaluation (TE) offers a methodology that supports the learning and development functions of evaluation. In addition, TE was seen to enhance practice outcomes, raise worker confidence and well-being potentially supporting a more agentic response to change.

This thesis overall is concerned with three cardinal considerations in relation to working with young people in a modern and fundamentally demographically changed Britain. These themes include considerations of how young people’s racial/ethnic origins and religious identity continue to shape how mainstream services interact with them as well as understanding how an increasingly globalised world changes how young people from Britain see or are seen in a new way at the personal, local, national and global levels. This thesis argues that the majority of these considerations are not currently well understood; hence the need for practitioners in youth and community development to gain cultural competency and global literacy. It has been evidenced that Black young people continue to be disadvantaged in education, employment, criminal justice and a host of other socialisation spaces in comparison to the rest of society. In addition, the furore raised constantly and continuously in relation to the vulnerability of young Muslims to violent extremism deserves more critical attention. Furthermore, globalisation means that the world is much closer economically, politically, environmentally, technologically and culturally and there is increasing consciousness about the repercussions of these connections at the personal, local, national and global levels. However, questions remain as to whether practitioners who work with young people have the required competency to work across these racial, religious and global considerations. This thesis, consisting of the author’s published works and this overview explores these three cardinal considerations of race, religion and globalisation when working with young people in a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial and multi-faith modern Britain. The thesis comprises an exploration of working with Black young people within a historical and social policy context, as well as presenting research that explores the views of young Black children and parents. The author’s key contributions consist of explaining how cultural relativism and dogmatism, as extreme positions, are constructed, with potentially fatal consequences. The second dimension of working with young people in Britain explored in this thesis is that arena of Global Youth Work within both a theoretical and practice setting, especially in relation to the training of practitioners. This section also reports on research in relation to how Global Youth Work is conceptualised and operationalised in British Higher Education Institutions delivering youth work training. The last section of the thesis focuses on the contemporary issue of working with young Muslims. Against a backdrop of the government’s policy context of the “Prevent" agenda, perceptions of barriers young Muslims face in accessing mainstream services are explored, as well as the wider implications of fostering a culturally and religiously competent way of working with young Muslims.

The past decade has been witness to a growing concern with the political, moral and social capacity of young people to demonstrate ‘active citizenship’. Alongside the introduction of citizenship education in schools there has been evidence of increased political and public anxiety about how young people integrate within their local communities. All of this has taken place in the context of broader social policy debates about how individuals demonstrate social responsibility in late modern, advanced liberal democracies. This study investigated how young people define and experience active citizenship in their everyday, real world settings. It comprised workshops and focus groups with 93 young people aged 14-16 living in the East Midlands. Using an adaptive theory design, the investigation utilised definitions generated by young people to build an applied theory of active citizenship. Young people in this study defined active citizenship in terms of membership and status, social responsibility and to a lesser extent, political literacy. Through a process of deliberation, they determined six concepts to be most important in thinking about active citizenship. These were ‘rights’; ‘responsibilities’; ‘care for others’; ‘control’; ‘making decisions’, and ‘respect’. These concepts were explored in relation to the everyday experiences of young people. Young people experience active citizenship differently within and between each context of their lives (proximate, community and institutional levels) showing high degrees of related skills and awareness. Whilst communities and institutions offer some opportunities for young people to test and develop citizenship identities, they also present significant barriers.