Power: Participation or control in youth work practice.

The research presents the tension between participation and control in the youth work setting. The ethnographic studies, conducted with two contrasting groups of young people, were used to look at the centrality of power in the values of the youth worker, the youth work agency and the young people; the way power was used in different cultural settings; how the conflict between control and participation could be resolved when working with young people within the brief of the funding agency. The contrasting groups, formal and informal, of young people were from the North and South West of England. The studies were carried out consecutively over a period of three years. The first was a broad sweep and the findings provided a theory which formed the basis of the second study. Power emerged as the key concept and was seen to be operating in three distinct ways through control, self determination and changing attitudes. The findings show that in most situations control is dominant and self determination can be negotiated. The youth worker in the role of informal educator may introduce the third and be seeking to change attitudes. Intervention strategy, when informed by this theory, could go some way to resolving the tension between participation and control. To place the study in context the policy, theory and practice of youth work are reviewed together with an overview of the areas of youth studies which informed the work and includes a critical discussion of research on deviance. Different understandings of power and how these affect relationships within the group and in the local community viz. gender, territory and aggression are also examined.