Befriende ungdomsfortællinger

om unges bevægelse gennem det sociale arbejdes landskab

Abstract

The article is a revised edition of the original thesis:” The new self. Liberating youth stories about personal life barriers and community driven social work” (Worre West & Møbius Sørensen, 2016). The article focuses on young people’s participation within different kinds of social work, because research indicates that the ‘becoming’ of subjects are either unfolded or restricted though discursive and political agendas. Therefore the article explores young people’s experience with ‘seeking help’ within different kinds of social work and their ‘becoming’, as a result of their contact and interaction with different social interventions – that currently practice within the welfare institu- tions or alongside as alternative social work. The article presents selected empirical data, that was generated through in-depth interviews from a particularly and privileged youth perspective using a combined theoretical framework of poststructuralism and social construc- tionism (Foucault, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c, 2005; Rose, 1998, 1999, 2009; Davies & Harré, 1990; Davies, 2004). The analytical aim is not to evaluate social work overall, but to reflect how different social interventions become important for the young people’s construction and becoming as subjects, their self-understanding and their personal life barriers.