Conflict and coexistence: challenging interactions, expressions of agency and ways of relating in work with young people in the Minority World

Abstract

This paper draws on observations of challenging interactions in work with young people to show how relations between young people and youth workers rely on a process of sharing control. I explore what it means for individuals to exert agency in this process, when actions are inter-dependent and ‘of the moment’, and consider the relational dimensions of expressions of agency. I conclude by considering the implications for those working with young people perceived to be challenging and for conceptualising children's (and adults’) agency in understandings of child–adult relations within childhood studies.

Keywords:

• agency
• challenging behaviour
• childhood
• child–adult relations
• youth work

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number PTA 031200400155]. I am grateful to the participants of the youth club who were involved in the research reported here. Thanks also to my PhD supervisors Kay Tisdall and Liz Bondi and the anonymous reviewers who offered much insight into the argument and data presented.

Notes

Names of the youth workers are in italics to distinguish them from the young people. All names used are pseudonyms.

The term ‘young people’ is used in this paper to refer to the younger research participants (aged 11–14). Whilst this social group could also be classified as ‘children’, the use of ‘young people’ reflects the terminology used in the UK youth club where the research study was based.

Aside from adults considered to have an intellectual disability, it is rare to hear the phrase ‘adults with challenging behaviour’.

I am grateful to the first anonymous reviewer for this observation.

The new social studies of childhood is ‘a catch-all term for research from different disciplines in the social sciences and humanities’ (Wells 2009, p. 4) and its establishment is usually accredited to the sociological work of James and Prout (1990) and James et al. (1998). In this paper, the term childhood studies is used to refer to work that spans those different disciplines, in particular, those who would position their work within the sociology of childhood and/or children's geographies.

The childhood studies’ literature referred to in this paper is mostly UK based. As Mayall (2012) notes, European contributions to the sociology of childhood do not emphasise agency to the same extent as UK research and there is a much wider set of concerns in their work.

For a fuller discussion of these issues and for further information on the methodology and ethics in this study, see Plows (2010).

This is similar to the notion of ‘rubber boundaries’ used in the literature on teaching challenging pupils and refers to the ‘structures, routines and systems for all which bend to meet and absorb individual needs but never break’ (O'Regan 2006, p. 48). In the youth club, these flexible boundaries emerge and evolve in interaction.

I am grateful to the second anonymous reviewer for highlighting this point.