Under Pressure: Analyzing Tensions of Authentic Youth-Adult Partnerships in Our Sociopolitical Present

• In Event: In Solidarity With Youth: The Possibility and Precarity of Youth Work Through Pandemic and Protest

Abstract

Objectives
Studying the complexity of community-based youth work in education requires interrogating the multiple systems of oppression that impact young people’s lives. It also demands examining the sociopolitical context of youth work, including how race logics and economic pressures inform the construction of community-based organizations, and how these forces surface and intersect with market logics and educational policy reform. Minoritized communities have long-established programs and organizations to support youth and buffer against a racially-hostile society and inadequate schooling (masked for review; Ginwright & James, 2002). Within these communities, community-based youth organizations (CBYOs) often focus on empowerment and resistance, responding to participants’ lived realities. CBYOs have been effective in developing youth holistically while promoting equitable academic and career preparation (Ginwright & James, 2002; Riggs et al., 2010). Among many documented benefits for the youth involved in CBYOs, youth-adult partnerships and connections have been widely celebrated (masked for review; Hirsch, Deutsch, & DuBois, 2011). However, tension does arise from the inherent paradox that exist within the field in which CBYOs can both disrupt and reify racism and deficit narratives in education. Taking a critical-reflective approach, this theoretical paper examines the inherent tensions in creating authentic connections between youth and adults within social-justice-oriented CBYOs.
Theoretical Framework & Methods
Community-based youth organizations can be loosely-coupled or distinct from traditional school spaces. This affords them greater flexibility to incorporate youth voice, reflect youth interests in programming, and promote authentic youth-adult partnerships. Yet, like schools, CBYOs are shaped by the socio-political context they exist within, which can lead them to reproduce inequalities and harm (masked for review). As researchers and practitioners within community-based youth organizations, we analyze and present several tensions that pose obstacles to establishing authentic youth-adult partnerships while simultaneously producing harm within CBYOs.

Findings and Significance
The political context shaping community-based youth work has forced social-justice-oriented CBYOs to function more like schools that are rigidly controlled (masked for review). This trend reduces the capacity of CBYOs to provide holistic education and flexible structure, limiting development and opportunities to engage authentically with adults. First, we explore the framing of youth as a category to interrogate the construction of youth-adult partnerships in community programs. Second, we discuss the ways deficit framing and white fragility disrupt authentic youth-adult partnerships. Last, we explore how funding stressors weaken youth-adult relationships. In addition to examining these tensions, the authors consider potential opportunities to disrupt and mitigate tensions in establishing authentic youth-adult partnerships as a result of the nature of the paradoxical nature of these spaces
Within this current sociopolitical context, CBYOs and the processes by which they are funded are linked to and shaped by market-based education reforms––rooted in privatization, individualism, and competition––which impacts organizational culture and practices (masked for review). These socio-political pressures have the power to influence the organizational culture and the practices of youth workers which can ultimately reorient, weaken, or change youth-adult partnerships in CBYOs.

Author

• Bianca Jontae Baldridge, Harvard University