In the discourses of the outreach youth workers, it seemed to reveal a discourse and practice gap in their work with 'youth-at-disadvantage'. At the discourse level, many workers had quite high consciousness to the impacts of the broader social, contextual and familial related changes to the behaviours of young people though they did not deny young people's individual responsibility for their behaviours. However, in their actual practice, many workers felt inadequate and were not confident enough both in working with family and intervening into the social and contextual factors including their clients' participation to advocate for their needs. Moreover, in the complex relation of power with the policy demands on the work focus and output standards of the service and the service directions of their agencies, workers' discourses on the situations of young people were usually subjugated. As a result, what workers could do still remained at the person and remedial level handling young people's problem behaviours and their relationship with peers. Indeed, when so many workers had such high consciousness to the social impacts to the problem behaviours of young people and did not prefer to be strict social control agents, they could be a force for social change. However, when what they could do were still person and remedial oriented without the vision to facilitate necessary social or structural changes, what they did was still a kind of confessional control regulating young people's behaviours to conform to norms of society only. / This study is a discourse analysis on the construction of 'youth-at-disadvantage' in the context of outreaching social work service in Hong Kong across the turn of the new millennium. Instead of taking 'youth-at-disadvantage' pre-existingly as problematic and destructive in nature, Foucault's discourse analytic approach was used as a framework of conceptualization and a method of data analysis (1) to unmask its constitutive nature and (2) to reveal the discourses and complex relations of power at work in the process of its constitution. In the study, fifteen pairs of 'youth-at-disadvantage' and outreach youth workers with different lengths of service and positions were widely recruited from ten out of the sixteen District Youth Outreaching Social Work Teams in Hong Kong. Each youth interviewee and the workers were interviewed twice successfully. / Though a discourse of individual deficits is usually constructed in society to talk about the problem behaviours of young people, in the revelation of this study, both the youth interviewees and the workers considered their problem behaviours as natural and common at their adolescent phase of life. In talking about their problem situations, obvious gender differences were revealed in the language uses of the male and female youth interviewees. While peer companionship and harsh control from parents were drawn upon by the female youth interviewees as the key reasons leading to their problem behaviours, the males attributed it to their poor performance and low interest in study, their employment situations and use of pocket money. Though family influence was not the key reason initiating them begin to play or associate with peers, eventually when their relationship with parents was further affected, it became the key reason leading to the continuation of their problem behaviours. In the service, many youth interviewees revealed that they could debate with their workers with alternative discourses. However, in the face of the adult society, what they could do was either to rebel or escape with their bodies. They hoped that the adult society could assure their abilities and respect what they were thinking and doing. / To a certain extent, the discourses revealed in this study are not only reflexive and worth to be heard for the adult society, but also critical and worth to be reviewed in the actual practice of the workers. Based on the discourses rehabilitated in the study, recommendations are made in five areas: social work practice and research on 'youth-at-disadvantage', social work training, related policy changes and the general public's understanding to the situations of young people. Though this type of social research is not so common in social work, it is hoped that this study can begin the debate and more similar researches with rich empirical data support can be done to disrupt the apparently taken for granted problematic discourses on young people and the possible regulatory effect of social work practice. / Tam, Hau Lin. / "March 2008." / Adviser: Ngan Pun Ngai. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-03, Section: A, page: 1035. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 526-553). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:cuhk.edu.hk/oai:cuhk-dr:cuhk_344161 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Contributors | Tam, Hau Lin., Chinese University of Hong Kong Graduate School. Division of Social Work. |
| Source Sets | The Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| Language | English, Chinese |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, theses |
| Format | electronic resource, microform, microfiche, 1 online resource (xi, 553 p. : ill.) |
| Coverage | China, Hong Kong, China, Hong Kong, China, Hong Kong |
| Rights | Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International” License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) |
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