Dangerous spaces, dangerous memories, dangerous emotions: informal education and heteronormativity – a Manchester UK Youth Work vignette

Abstract

This article makes a connection between youth work spaces, emotions and some elements of memory, exploring the construction of spaces dangerous for social justice in both meanings of the term ‘dangerous for’. It investigates the contribution to social justice of lesbian and gay youth work and other non-heteronormative youth work in a British context and considers the spaces of youth work practice as both potentially threatening to the prospect of social justice and also as potentially ‘for’ social justice, that is, capable of proposing social justice and therefore replete with danger for current social relations. The argument seeks to engage with recent discussions of how collective subjectivities emerge and become politically active, of how lives become liveable and indeed what counts as a life.

Keywords:

• Heteronormativity
• Social Justice
• Boundaries
• Informal Education