The history of youth work - volume 5
Lasse Siurala, Filip Coussée, Leena Suurpaa and Howard Williamson (eds.)
Council of Europe, 2016. 978-92-871-8161-9
The “History of youth work in Europe” series aims to achieve better understanding of current challenges in youth work and youth policy. Volume 5 addresses questions like: How have government policies and administrative practices during the past decades affected youth work? What kind of strategies has youth work developed to react to them and to create a positive space for work with young people? Can educational approaches of youth work, like social pedagogy, help mediate between young people in their ever-changing lives and society? Co-operation between youth policy, youth research and youth work has been called “the Magic Triangle” – but is the magic still there?
This publication discusses these and other topics from a variety of perspectives. The authors come not only from Europe, but also from the USA, Australia and South Africa, providing a refreshing comparative reflection on youth work issues and opportunities, which is revealed to be global in nature. They also have diverse and varied backgrounds in youth research, youth work, youth policy making and youth worker training. This comparative historical perspective puts some of the pieces of the “youth work puzzle” together, while many are left unconnected. It also becomes apparent that there is an element on randomness in the historical development of youth work. Many structures, policies, approaches and methods are not “historically necessary”. Rather, many things could have come out differently. This volume on the history of youth work provides many readings: it provides a rich collection of national youth histories to complement and build upon the four earlier volumes, and histories and analyses of youth work for readers to compare with their own experience, sharpen their critical view and inspire their thinking.
Council of Europe, 2019. 978-92-871-8965-3
Why have political, social or environmental causes often been behind the origin and evolution of youth organisations? Have other ideas been influential too? Why have some organisations expanded well beyond their countries of origin? To what extent have they held firm to their original values and purpose, and to what extent have they adapted and evolved in changing circumstances? How have they related to youth policy or youth work agendas? How vulnerable have they been to ideology, context or political influences? Which of their characteristics have persisted over time? These are some of the questions that are explored in this book, which draws on contributions from the last seminar on the history of transnational youth organisations and their relation to youth work today.
This book has three parts. The first explores the evolution of transnational youth organisations and movements over the past 100 years. The second adds two more country histories of youth work to the body of knowledge already established in earlier volumes in the series. The third and final part focuses on 12 “trilemmas” and reflections that have emerged from the 10-year History of Youth Work in Europe project. This anchors an invitation to the youth work community to consider and debate each trilemma, independently and in relation to each other, in the context of both the local environments of youth work delivery and across the wider European youth policy context, in anticipation of the 3rd European Youth Work Convention.