Youth Work, Early Education, and Psychology ― Liminal Encounters

Youth Work, Early Education, and Psychology re-examines the set of relations generally referred to as working with young people. The necessity to reconsider how various modes of praxis are deployed is premised in an acknowledgement that the socio-political landscape, in which this work is embedded, has shifted considerably in the twenty-first century. The editors argue that the traditional modes of civil society designed to integrate and shape young people as functioning members of society such as education, the family, modes of psychotherapy, as well as orphanages and other forms of residential care, are in various stages of crisis and reconfiguration. To this end they propose a series of propositions that highlight politicized strategies to working with young people under current conditions of late liberal capitalism. The book questions ongoing approaches, and provides alternative perspectives drawing on the pedagogical affordances of liminal approaches founded in immanence.

Hans Skott-Myhre is Professor of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University, Canada.

Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw is Professor of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria, Canada.

Kathleen Skott-Myhre is Assistant Professor at the University of West Georgia, USA.