Tag Archives: precarity

IDYW Response to the APPG Inquiry – What are the key issues and challenges faced by young people being addressed by current youth service provisions?

by Tony Taylor

YWalive

The second question asked by the NYA on behalf of the All Party Parliamentary Group.

What are the key issues and challenges faced by young people being addressed by current youth service provisions?

‘Have we got a vision of the future that is optimistic and democratic?’ This fundamental question facing society at large is one most keenly felt by young people, for whom life is increasingly precarious. After four decades of the neoliberal emphasis on the self-sufficient individual and the rule of the market young people are to be found in the mire of its contradictions, not least the the consequences of the policy of austerity upon families and communities. The impact of cuts in Public Services have been particularly disproportionate on what we once knew as the Youth Service, The figures of these cuts are now well known, so we don’t need to repeat them here, suffice to say there is a dearth of places for the free association of young people, of spaces to explore and create for themselves collectively visions of their future, to struggle with the issues they experience whether this be lack of meaningful employment, concerns about climate change, dilemmas in their personal and home life, sexual choices, opportunities for arts, music or sport or needing somewhere to live. In short there is a lack of provision, wherein young people explore self-critically the purpose and direction of their lives

Currently, we are all aware of the increase in concern over the mental health of young people – their anxiety,, their loneliness, their failure to be happy or well. The overwhelming political and professional response is to individualise, making the young person responsible for their alleged condition. If the isolation and fragmentation of young people’s lives are not seen as a collective or community issue, the tendency is to move to a case-work deficit model at odds with a young people-centred, process-led youth work. In this context we would argue that present youth services provision is losing its identity, shifting towards behavioural modification programmes, which focus on compliance with rather than criticism of the status quo. Young people need spaces, which are not experienced as being about regulation and surveillance.

The emphasis on conformity is at odds with a commitment to the nurturing of the questioning and informed young citizen, essential to the defence and extension of democracy in these increasingly authoritarian times. We believe that youth work can play a significant part in this struggle for democracy, provided it is granted a level of autonomy, which allows it to be responsive and improvisatory. To take the classic question of young people’s participation impressive work has been done through the mediums of youth councils and parliaments but in many ways these only scratch the surface. As the important PARTiSPACE research argues there is a fundamental flaw in many efforts to get young people to participate – ‘young people are being seen as not knowing or not wanting to participate and therefore needing education. There is little attention paid to structures of inequality and dominance or to young people’s competences and ideas. Rather than through teaching and training, participation is learned by ‘doing’. In our view, youth workers, operating outside of the formal structures of schooling, training, social services and youth justice, can support young people’s self-determination in a distinctive manner and thus enhance the democratic character of society as a whole.

Fighting against Casualisation in Education

by Tony Taylor

I’m wondering how casualisation is impacting on youth and community work courses.

Casualisation

FACE’s 2nd National Conference will be held from 10:30 to 18:00 on November 21st at the UCL Cruciform Building, University College London, Gower St, London WC1E 6BT.

Amongst the issues being discussed are:

Insourcing and Outsourcing
For many universities, insourcing and outsourcing are their go-to tools for creating a more flexible, casual, and low-paid workforce. One of the great victories of the past year, was at the University of Warwick where local and national organizing forced the University to halt its attempt to insource workers and force the university to bargain with them as direct employees. One of the most important battles on the casualisation front is to make sure that everyone who is working for the university is recognised as a University employee. This breakout session will provide an opportunity to discuss how insourcing and outsourcing works at our campuses and how we can strategize against it.

Citizenship, Borders and Surveillance
Casualisation has a disproportionate affect on non-EU workers whose residence in the UK is often dependent on their employment with the university. This means non-EU workers are particularly vulnerable as they can be threatened not just with unemployment, but deportation and recent changes to visa requirement exacerbate this effect. At the same time as non-EU workers are becoming increasingly vulnerable, universities are also increasing their surveillance of non-EU workers and students as the University and begun to work increasingly closer with the UK Border Agency. These issues affect us all. As teachers, we are now being asked to monitor all of our students, and are ourselves being increasingly monitored, while the university’s often inhuman treatment of non-EU workers offers a worrying precedent. This breakout session will provide a space to discuss the relationship between casualisation, and increased surveillance, monitoring, and border controls. We will also discuss how we can organize within and around this culture of surveillance, monitoring, and precarity.