scholarly journals Youth Practitioners Can Counter Fascism: What We Know and What We Need

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 37-67
Author(s):  
Miriam R. Arbeit ◽  
Sarah L. F. Burnham ◽  
Duane De Four ◽  
Heather Cronk
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Young People ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Youth Development ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Theoretical Integration ◽  
Current Challenge

Fascist, White nationalist, and misogynist groups are actively recruiting adolescent followers both online and in person. Youth development practitioners can play an important role in mitigating the influence of fascist ideologies on young people’s behavior and reducing the proliferation of youth-perpetrated harassment and violence. In this paper, we present a theoretical integration that draws on empirical research from multiple disciplines and youth development best practices to examine how youth practitioners can counter fascist recruitment of youth. There is much that youth development researchers and practitioners already know and do, or have the capacity to learn and do, that can mitigate the threat of fascist recruitment and deter young people from developmental trajectories leading them towards harmful ideologies and actions. In order to support youth development practitioners in effectively embodying this potential, we detail 3 sets of activities: (a) immunizing youth to reduce susceptibility to fascist recruitment, (b) intervening in fascist recruitment of specific youth, and (c) counter-recruiting youth into community organizing for social justice. For each set of activities, we describe the goals of each component, propose concrete actions it may entail, and highlight existing research and best practices in the field that can be applied to this current challenge. We then propose next steps in research–practice integration to further improve relevant strategies and point to existing resources for supporting youth in resisting fascist recruitment.

scholarly journals Uniting Resilience Research and Practice With an Inequalities Approach

SAGE Open ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 215824401668247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angie Hart ◽  
Emily Gagnon ◽  
Suna Eryigit-Madzwamuse ◽  
Josh Cameron ◽  
Kay Aranda ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Young People ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Children And Young People ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Health And Well Being ◽  
Research And Policy

The concept of resilience has evolved, from an individual-level characteristic to a wider ecological notion that takes into account broader person–environment interactions, generating an increased interest in health and well-being research, practice and policy. At the same time, the research and policy-based attempts to build resilience are increasingly under attack for responsibilizing individuals and maintaining, rather than challenging, the inequitable structure of society. When adversities faced by children and young people result from embedded inequality and social disadvantage, resilience-based knowledge has the potential to influence the wider adversity context. Therefore, it is vital that conceptualizations of resilience encompass this potential for marginalized people to challenge and transform aspects of their adversity, without holding them responsible for the barriers they face. This article outlines and provides examples from an approach that we are taking in our research and practice, which we have called Boingboing resilience. We argue that it is possible to bring resilience research and practice together with a social justice approach, giving equal and simultaneous attention to individuals and to the wider system. To achieve this goal, we suggest future research should have a co-produced and inclusive research design that overcomes the dilemma of agency and responsibility, contains a socially transformative element, and has the potential to empower children, young people, and families.

Zombies, Truants, and Flash Mobs: How Youth Organizers Respond to and Shape Youth Policy

2015 ◽  
Vol 117 (13) ◽  
pp. 203-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerusha O. Conner ◽  
Sonia M. Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Low Power ◽  
Youth Development ◽  
High Power ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Youth Organizing ◽  
Youth Policy ◽  
Negative Valence ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Positive Valence

Youth organizing groups combine strategies from the fields of youth development and community organizing in order to mobilize young people to take collective action. Significantly, organizing work acknowledges that youth are commonly blamed for social problems that are beyond their control and repositions these youth as agents of positive social change. This approach complicates policy scholarship, which understands stakeholders as “targets” of policy initiatives. In a seminal work on public policy, Schneider and Ingram identify four quadrants in which target populations can be placed by policy formulations: advantaged (those with high power and a positive valence), contenders (those with high power and a negative valence), dependents (those with low power and a positive valence) and deviants (those with low power and a negative valence). Schneider and Ingram point out that young people are generally positioned as “dependents.” However, this chapter draws on empirical data from one youth organizing group to demonstrate how youth assert themselves as powerful stakeholders in important decision-making processes, contradicting policymakers’ construction of them as passive and weak.

Youth and Trailer-Park Life

Singlewide ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonya Salamon ◽  
Katherine MacTavish
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Youth Development ◽  
Neighborhood Effects ◽  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Social Stigma ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Status

This chapter examines the potential neighborhood effects of trailer park residence on child and youth development. Using parents’ aspirations that their children have broader life chances than they themselves had, this chapter documents the range of developmental trajectories among children and youth growing up in a rural trailer park. While a few flourish, most often, young people seem set on a course to reproduce their parents working poor class status. Increasingly in adolescence, as the social stigma of park residence emerges, there are developmental costs of park residence that compromises life chances.

Learning, making and flourishing in non-formal spaces: Participatory arts and social justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 174619792097180
Author(s):  
Peter Wright ◽  
Barry Down ◽  
Christina Davies
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Young People ◽  
Identity Development ◽  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Life Outcomes ◽  
Learning Spaces ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Participatory Arts ◽  
Regional Australia

This article considers Participatory Arts and sociocultural understandings of justice and praxis through the example of Big hART, an Australian multi-award winning provider where both artists and participants – often disenfranchised and marginalised young people – co-create the work (Matarasso, 2018). Enacting social justice principles, Big hART works alongside young people to improve their life outcomes through arts practice strengthening young people’s critical capabilities by inducting them as both makers and responders to their own lives and the world around them. Drawing on three years of ethnographic research across three sites in rural and regional Australia we highlight how multidimensional and multi-modal arts-based projects contribute to young people’s lives through theorising the attributes and dimensions of twenty productive conditions and practices identified as essential for social change. These possibilities are important as when these conditions are purposefully enacted, the power of the arts for sense-making and identity development is revealed in non-formal learning spaces. Theoretically unpacking these conditions and practices and linking them with research outcomes helps build understanding of the generative power of Participatory Arts through the ways Big hART builds bridges between young people and their communities and the developmental trajectories they may take through being ‘at-promise’ rather than ‘at-risk’.

Sustaining Youth Participation in a Long-term Tobacco Control Initiative: Consideration of a Social Justice Perspective

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 681-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurie Ross
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Youth Development ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Community Change ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Action Strategy

This article presents an in-depth case study of the Healthy Options for Prevention and Education Coalition’s Teens Tackle Tobacco initiative, a 3-year community-based participatory research (CBPR) project about the distribution of tobacco vendors and tobacco advertising in Worcester, Massachusetts. Using two theoretical frameworks, positive youth development (PYD) and social justice youth development (SJYD), the case reveals personal and community conditions that drove youth to get engaged in this project, how CBPR guided the group’s research and action strategy, and results of the work to date. Analysis of this case highlights factors that facilitate and pose barriers to active youth involvement in a long-term, tobacco-related community change initiative. Specifically, to affect oppressive community conditions, a blend of PYD’s focus on individual skill building, participation, and empowerment— joined with SJYD emphasis on community organizing and building youth’s self-awareness of how race, class, and other dimensions of power affect their lives on a daily basis—is needed.

scholarly journals Leading With Youth of Color: Organizing for Educational Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 110-125
Author(s):  
Rachael Lee Ficke Clemons
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Young People ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Youth Development ◽  
Educational Equity ◽  
Research Question ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Youth Workers ◽  
Youth Of Color

In the United States, young people of color are under attack. The school-to-prison pipeline, poverty, and racism are some of the systems of oppression that young people of color navigate. The challenging conditions that youth of color face have historically been met by their powerful resistance. Young people of color have fought for educational equity for decades. In the community in which this research study was situated, social justice youth development (SJYD) workers supported youth as they resisted unjust educational policies. I set out to answer the research question: In urban communities, how do youth workers engage adolescent youth in social justice activism? I found that adult youth workers at People for Change, a SJYD organization, maintained a consistent and multi-layered approach to supporting youth as they engaged in social justice activism. This paper highlights the ways in which adult youth workers (a) networked adult and youth supporters, (b) engaged in action, and (c) co-constructed knowledge with young people of color.

scholarly journals Social Justice Youth Work: Actualizing Youth Rights

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-148
Author(s):  
Monica McDaniel
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Young People ◽  
Youth Development ◽  
Young Person ◽  
Youth Work ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Youth Rights ◽  
Work Model

This article explores models of prevention/intervention and positive youth development within the context of social justice. Both of these models seek to support young people, but they have vastly different methods and goals. The author argues that these models fall short of effectively supporting youth because they neglect to interrogate how power, privilege and oppressive forces shape a young person's identity and how that young person engages with society. Therefore, a new approach to working with youth is needed: a social justice youth work model. The author proposes this model as a means for youth and adults to work together to achieve a high quality of life in an equitable world. The paper outlines three steps to enact this approach with young people: 1. develop self-awareness within youth and adults; 2. build solidarity across differences; and 3. take action towards dismantling unjust systems. In order to do this work successfully, adults must first interrogate their own motivations for engaging in social justice work with youth.

Youth Development in Europe

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 372-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katariina Salmela-Aro ◽  
Ingrid Schoon
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Relationship Quality ◽  
Youth Development ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Transition To Adulthood ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Integrative Framework ◽  
Reciprocal Interactions ◽  
The Family ◽  
Key Players

A series of six papers on “Youth Development in Europe: Transitions and Identities” has now been published in the European Psychologist throughout 2008 and 2009. The papers aim to make a conceptual contribution to the increasingly important area of productive youth development by focusing on variations and changes in the transition to adulthood and emerging identities. The papers address different aspects of an integrative framework for the study of reciprocal multiple person-environment interactions shaping the pathways to adulthood in the contexts of the family, the school, and social relationships with peers and significant others. Interactions between these key players are shaped by their embeddedness in varied neighborhoods and communities, institutional regulations, and social policies, which in turn are influenced by the wider sociohistorical and cultural context. Young people are active agents, and their development is shaped through reciprocal interactions with these contexts; thus, the developing individual both influences and is influenced by those contexts. Relationship quality and engagement in interactions appears to be a fruitful avenue for a better understanding of how young people adjust to and tackle development to productive adulthood.

Restructuring Educational Systems and Promoting Social Justice for Young People Involved in Drug Trafficking in Brazil

2019 ◽  
Vol 227 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Sandro Gomes Pessoa ◽  
Linda Liebenberg ◽  
Dorothy Bottrell ◽  
Silvia Helena Koller
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Young People ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
2030 Agenda ◽  
Development Goals

Abstract. Economic changes in the context of globalization have left adolescents from Latin American contexts with few opportunities to make satisfactory transitions into adulthood. Recent studies indicate that there is a protracted period between the end of schooling and entering into formal working activities. While in this “limbo,” illicit activities, such as drug trafficking may emerge as an alternative for young people to ensure their social participation. This article aims to deepen the understanding of Brazilian youth’s involvement in drug trafficking and its intersection with their schooling, work, and aspirations, connecting with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4 and 16 as proposed in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the United Nations in 2015 .

RAISE IT UP!! Youth Arts and Awareness

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natasha Thomas-Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Community Leaders ◽  
Youth Engagement ◽  
Literary Arts ◽  
Systemic Oppression ◽  
Creative Self

RAISE IT UP! Youth Arts and Awareness (RIU) is an organization that promotes youth engagement, expression, and empowerment through the use of performance and literary arts and social justice activism. We envision a world where youth are fully recognized, valued, and supported as artist-activists and emerging thought leaders, working to create a world that is just, intersectional, and inclusive. Two fundamental tenets shape RIU’s policies, practices, and pedagogy. The first is that creative self-expression and culture making are powerful tools for personal and social transformation. The second is that social justice is truly possible only if and when we are willing to have transparent and authentic conversations about the oppression children experience at the hands of the adults in their lives. We are committed to amplifying youth voices and leadership and building cross-generational solidarity among people of all ages, particularly those impacted by marginalization. Though RIU is focused on and driven by the youth, a large part of our work includes helping adult family members, educators, and community leaders understand the ways in which systemic oppression shapes our perceptions of and interactions with the young people in our homes, neighborhoods, institutions, and decision-making bodies.

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