Introduction

Youth work and other forms of informal education have consistently played a role within broader social and educational strategies. However the focus of youth work and other forms of informal education has not been a fixed entity. In the case of youth work, for example, the equilibrium has constantly shifted: now upon ‘the social question’, how to preserve social cohesion in a society; and then upon ‘the youth question’, how to support young people's positive development. Participation is in both approaches a key concept. The social question refers to the necessary (re)distribution of resources in order to be able to participate in society. The youth question refers to the necessary skills to access those resources. Neither foci are ever fully eclipsed but the tension between them never fades. Rather we find the alternating attention given to each by governments, practitioners and others ensures an enduring ‘field of tension’ and ‘war of position’ between the two ‘questions’. The former has historically focused on the social role of youth work whilst the latter on the pedagogical function. This illustrates how the inherent tensioned concept of social pedagogy is at the heart of youth work: transforming social problems into pedagogical questions and relating pedagogical questions to social contexts. As other social pedagogical professionals youth workers face a permanent challenge not to prioritise the pedagogical function above the social and the other way round (Coussée and Williamson, 2011). In youth work these two primary functions were glued together via the recreational function that for both served to make youth work appealing to young people. Gradually this recreational function, once the appetiser or bait, became the meal itself. This has led to an impoverishment of the youth work discussion and in the end makes youth work extremely vulnerable to instrumentalisation from external aims or objectives.

Informal education in an activating welfare state

Especially following the establishment of the welfare state and spread of universal schooling, recreation and activities increasingly constituted the prime focus of youth work. The social and pedagogical functions so crucial prior to the creation of universal schooling and universal welfare services were now to be the responsibility of others and youth work appeared to be left with the residual role of universal leisure provider.