Utilizing social media for social work: insights from clients in online youth services

ABSTRACT

This study explored and conceptualised service users’ experiences in online outreach projects supported by the Hong Kong SAR government. Fifteen active users were interviewed. The study used thematic analysis to explore service users’ experiences that might not have been possible without technology. Participant utterances were non-mutually-exclusively tagged with a specific theme. Each utterance reflected an aspect of user experience which combined a technical component with a service-need component. Six themes were identified, including: (i) Personalised newsfeeds help identify service information and news, (ii) Online status indicators improve service accessibility, (iii) Online communications enable a disinhibition effect, (iv) Asynchronous communications facilitate continual feedback loops, (v) Incomplete communicative modalities may cause misunderstanding and (vi) Asynchronous communication may disrupt conversations. The findings reveal that there are middle-level concepts between broad social work concepts and ever-changing technology. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Toward a genealogy of the liberal government of youth

While discourses that define and demarcate young people such that they become legitimate targets of negative practices of marginalisation and exclusion have not disappeared, these are no longer the dominant discourses and modes of governing youth. Constructions of youth as self-determining subjects and empowerment polices of youth participation increasingly animate contemporary approaches to governing young people throughout the West and beyond. Until recently, the dominant critique of such developments consisted of accusations of failed attempts to realise certain principles in practice or of their ideological functions. There is however an emerging critical youth studies literature that analyses such developments drawing on the work of Beck and Foucault’s notion of ‘governmentality’. In this paper, I argue that while these studies challenge some of the assumptions upon which such developments rest, they are yet to challenge the extent to which these contemporary ways of constructing and governing youth are new. Using Foucault’s genealogical method my research traces an unacknowledged nineteenth century history of these common ways of constituting and governing youth today. To conclude I consider the strategic usefulness and ramifications of these findings for critical youth studies and policies of youth participation.     

Growing up on the sidelines: identity negotiations of Palestinian youth from ‘collaborating’ families relocated to Israel

By examining the experiences of the children of Palestinian collaborators whose families have relocated to Israel, this study explores how youth negotiate self within the context of marginalisation and cultural dislocation. Due to the actions of their parents, the research participants have become outsiders and outcasts in their Palestinian communities of origin, outsiders in Israel, and outsiders among Israeli-Arabs. Based on qualitative, in-depth interviews with 11 Palestinian male youths, we describe and analyse the experience of identity negotiation in the context of fear and their families’ past deceit. Our findings highlight that the youths’ identities are negotiated by engaging in a dialogue of self on belonging and not belonging that is based on visions of their past, present and future selves. This is accompanied by a forced dialogue with others, explaining who they are in order to fit in with the ‘audience’, a presentation that is then acted out.     

网络时代青年参与社会治理:价值、困境与对策

在互联网对社会的渗透日益深入且全面的今天，青年通过网络参与社会治理已经成为时代趋势。在新冠肺炎疫情的防控治理过程中，青年借助网络工具自发组织起来，积极参与社会治理，实现了从以前在官方组织引导下通过传统途径参与到主动运用互联网平台自发组织参与的创新。当前，青年在参与社会治理的过程中，还存在着专项管理缺失、社会信任度不高、发展性供给保障不足等问题。伴随网络时代的进一步发展，为了更好地发挥青年在社会治理中的作用，激发青年参与社会治理的积极性，需要从完善专项管理、转变观念态度、增强资源供给三个方面寻求破困之道，从而助力社会治理模式创新，提升国家治理效能。     

Community Reactions to Young People Who Have Sexually Abused and Their Families: A Shotgun Blast,Not a Rifle Shot

Data on 117 young sexual abusers were examined to investigate the nature of community responses to young people's abusive behaviour. A wide range of community responses were found, with stigmatisation, social isolation and collateral damage being common. A contagion effect was noted, with community responses extending over time and across contexts. Some young offenders and their families were attacked and forced out of their homes. In some cases, community responses heightened risk factors. The policy and practice implications of the findings are discussed, including the need for caution about the inclusion of children in policies on community notification of sex offenders.     

Capital,distinction, and racialized habitus: immigrant youth in the educational field

Chinese Canadian youth are usually represented as a model minority and are therefore rendered invisible in identity debates. Drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of capital, field, habitus, and distinction, this paper examines how racism affects the identity construction of Chinese youth in different school fields. Particularly, I raise and discuss a theoretical concept, racialized habitus, which is manifested as both intergroup exclusion and intragroup distinction. This theorization is grounded in interview data with 36 first- and second-generation Chinese Canadian youth in Alberta, Canada. This study indicates the continuing significance of research on racism. It calls for challenging racism as an act of distinction, habitus, and action, as well as a discursive practice of discourse.     

Exploring youths' perceptions of the hidden practice of youth work in increasing social capital with young people considered NEET in Scotland

This small-scale research explores the generation of social capital in young people growing up in one urban area and one rural area in Scotland via community-led youth work projects that aim to re-engage young people categorised as NEET (Not in Employment Education or Training). By looking at their varied and complex biographies, it considers young people's experiences and perceptions of their communities and their transitions from education to the workplace. Using social capital as a theoretical lens, we examined the impact that youth work can have not just on these important transitions but also upon the young people themselves. By visiting two different sites of engagement we were able to explore whether the type of initiative (media or sports) or place (urban or rural) had an impact on the generation of capital for young people. The youth work practice in both areas acted as a glue between the young people and their communities, creating opportunities where the two could be bound together and relationships created. This occurred in both sites regardless of the area or type of initiative and confirmed in this study that youth work acts as a site of capital building.     

In the path of heroes: second-generation Tamil-Canadians after the LTTE

This paper explores how second-generation Tamil-Canadian university students have modified their ‘cultural heritage’ in the period after the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009. Using a generational framework suggested by the work of Karl Mannheim, I show that the events of May 2009 situated second-generation Tamil-Canadian political activism as a response to the ambivalence of their parents to the conflict in Sri Lanka. Second-generation Tamil-Canadians are also shown to have altered the key LTTE symbol of the Maaveerar (great hero) to better fit a transnational social field that is framed by the new realities of post-LTTE Sri Lanka and by intolerance to imported conflict in Canada. I argue that the Tamil second generation is highly engaged with the politics of their cultural identity, and that this engagement may have a lasting influence on transnational Tamil identity and on the political status of the Tamil community within Canada.     

Language,multiple authenticities and social media: The online language practices of university students in Mongolia

This paper seeks to contribute to the current discussion of the sociolinguistics of globalization by revealing youth linguistic diversity from the perspective of the online mixed language practices of university students in contemporary post‐socialist Mongolia. Drawing on sets of Facebook data, the paper firstly argues that the online mixed youth language practices should be understood as ‘translingual’ not only due to their varied recombination of linguistic and cultural resources, genres, modes, styles and repertories, but also due to their direct subtextual connections with wider socio‐cultural, historical and ideological meanings. Secondly, online users metalinguistically claim authenticity in terms of their own translingual practices as opposed to other colliding language ideologies such as linguistic dystopia. How they relocalize the notion of authenticity, however, differs profoundly depending on their own often‐diverse criteria, identities, beliefs and ideas. This shows that, with mixing and recombining at its very core, the translingual practices of modern young speakers provide us with a significant insight into the co‐existence of multiple authenticities and origins of authenticity in an increasingly interconnected world.     

Transitions to adulthood in contexts of economic crisis and post-recession. The case of Argentina

The possibilities that are available to youth in contemporary Western societies are highly sophisticated and related mostly to the transition between secondary school and higher education, the first job placement, independent housing, lifestyle construction and the consumption of goods produced by cultural industries in a globalist world. Secondary education represents a main factor in terms of socialisation, training, access to employment, citizenship and youth identity construction, making it a key for public policies aimed at youth in Latin America. The article presents the initial results of a research project on transition processes from secondary school to employment in Argentina. The findings are based on statistical information and the empirical analysis of data gathered in two very different economic and social contexts: the first was one of the worst social and economic crisis in the country's history (1999–2003), and the second was a long period of economic growth and increased social welfare (2004–2012). The data are presented in response to the following question: How do different economic contexts influence the transitions of youth in different social class contexts? By answering this question, the significant role of public policies in generating better living conditions for youth becomes clear.