An action research study of the development of disadvantaged young people's social learning as a means of preventing social exclusion and marginalization.

Participants:
Mette Bladt - in collaboration with the consulting firm SPUK

Project objectives:
The project aims at examining how work on democratic education and learning processes among the disadvantaged young people of the `street’ can help disadvantaged young people's active and positive participation in the local everyday (work, education and leisure), institutional and urban life, and thus in democratic processes and in society at large.

Brief description:
The project is an action research project, and the empirical knowledge is gathered through participation in and facilitation of experiments in connection with young people's involvement in local everyday, institutional and urban life. The project has a special focus on how disadvantaged young people's participation in development and establishment of democratic social experiments may represent social learning processes and whether they can support and improve young people's opportunities for participation in local everyday, institutional and urban life - as active, participating, and non-marginalized citizens.

The project thus examines the following:

How can disadvantaged young people’s participation in and design of social experiments connected with the theme: the local everyday-, institutional- and urban life be established and practiced, as to create learning processes that support disadvantaged young people’s opportunities to see themselves as an important non-marginalized part of society?

What are the disadvantaged young people's ideas for positive change-potentials in the interaction between the `two worlds' - themselves and the "normal" - thus creating other alternatives than just adjustment or marginalization? In this context: what new actions and practices, can the disadvantaged young people help to launch, so that the `two worlds' can converge?

What are the disadvantaged young people's ideas for new interaction potentials for urban spaces, institutions, everyday life, local environment and people, and are there potentials in these to create new inclusive everyday life, institutional and urban spaces? In connection with this: can the disadvantaged young people’s nascent experimental acts point to new social practices and new social orientations framed in connection with urban spaces, institutions, everyday life, local environment and people, and then what happens concretely in terms of new movements in these new orientations?

The PhD project is part of a larger development project initiated by the consultancy firm SPUK under the heading "Disadvantaged young people and democracy". The project will involve a group of 25-30 young people in a change process consisting of a series of workshops and activities. Hopefully, the process of change will result in a number of concrete social experiments conducted by the young people themselves. The project is implemented in close collaboration with the Municipality of Copenhagen’s preventive interventions for socially disadvantaged young people, which among other things provides a special focus on method development in relation to social learning processes and helps secure support for the work of the project.

Contact:
Mette Bladt: mbladt@ruc.dk