Navigating Partnerships in Field-Based Uncertainty: Examining the Precarious Nature of Youth Work

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

Abstract

Overview, Background & Purpose

Youth workers understand their support of and solidarity with youth as necessary, culturally responsive, and deeply relational work (masked for review, Starr, 2003). However, as youth workers may seek to dismantle or shelter youth from systems of oppression in their lives through youth-adult partnerships, youth workers struggle to navigate these very same systems in their work in youth programs (masked for review; McLaughlin, 2018, Watson, 2012). Youth workers navigate work precarity; they experience low pay, few benefits, poor working conditions, and minimal training and supervision. In this commentary, we consider how field precarity impacts lives and livelihoods of adults in OST settings, and its implications for positive youth-adult partnerships.

Theoretical Framework, Methods, Data

This commentary draws on interviews with youth workers in two independent qualitative studies conducted in the Northeast and Midwest (which we will refer to here as study 1 and study 2). We conceptualize precarity as discussed by sociologist Arne Kalleberg (2014), who defined it as work that “falls below socially accepted, normative standards by which workers have certain rights and employment protections and bear the risks associated with economic life.” (p. 1). Importantly, precarious work is determined “from the point of view of the worker” (Kalleberg, 2009, p. 2).

We further ground our arguments in research that considers the pressures of racialized neoliberal logics on community-based youth work (masked for review). Out-of-school time programs have been deemed “vulnerable” and “malleable” institutions by OST scholar Robert Halpern (2002). The reliance on external funding and in-kind donations as well the competing interests for the purpose of youth programs can ultimately reproduce racist and patronizing spaces that many youth workers seek to dismantle (masked for review; Kwon, 2013).

Findings & Significance
Layers of systemic oppression–– across race, class, and ability –– informs the precarity manifest in youth workers’ professional lives. Youth workers in both studies received low wages, worked multiple jobs, faced housing instability, and struggled to sustain careers in the profession (masked for review). Their precarity was further manifested in absent benefits, and few career opportunities –– including mentorship, organizational advancement, training, and forums for voicing professional rights. In study 1, youth workers of color felt pushed out of the profession based on rising housing costs due to gentrification and crushing student loan debt and shut out from organizational leadership and decision-making from managers. In study 2, Black youth workers shared experiences of workplace cultures that disregarded Black suffering and similarly experienced denial of leadership advancement due to white discomfort.

Over the past three decades a confluence of sociopolitical factors have impacted the tenability of community-based youth work and the possibility of non-hierarchical youth-adult partnerships. This precarity has been exacerbated by racial capitalism in pandemic and the ongoing neoliberal policymaking that privatizes educational opportunities. Together, these findings reveal the importance of centering the rights of adults within OST settings as a precursor to building positive youth-adult relationships and collective wellbeing.

Author

• Deepa Sriya Vasudevan, Wellesley College