Interventions focused on mediation with young people in vulnerable conditions, including youth street groups, particularly of a minority origin, have proliferated in past decades, mostly engaging youth work practitioners in convergence with European Youth Work Agenda (2020). Nevertheless, critical reflections from youth studies and social work have notably lagged behind. This themed issue aims to bridge this gap and contribute to the debate about the evolution, scope, and limit of mediation targeted at youth groups in a wide range of geographical, sociocultural, and political contexts as embedded in present-day neoliberal capitalism and its varied forms of youth governance.
The aim of this themed issue of European Journal of Social Work is to bring together a set of theory-driven but empirically grounded articles that analyse mediation in the context of social intervention with young people in conditions of vulnerability, with a particular weight on community- and intercultural mediation. The themed issue keeps a focus on collective processes of transformation, with special attention to the practitioners and community groups, both who participate taking up different mediation roles, as well as those who do not, in the process.
We aim to contribute to the debate about mediation with youth from a critical perspective. Thus, we invite original contributions addressing one or more of the following central questions. Both case studies and comparative accounts are encouraged, from a broad range of geographical, social and political contexts.
- Potential effects and unexpected costs of mediation that target young people. To what extent can youth in conditions of vulnerability become the protagonists of mediation?
- How do youth practice mediation within their groups, and what are the culturally accepted practices that they utilize based on their backgrounds? How to avoid that mediation becomes an instrument for social differentiation within communities or groups?
- How is mediation related to resistance/resilience, autonomy and agency? Can mediation trigger processes of political transformation? How can experts negotiate dilemmas of dis/empowerment and co-optation within the mediation process?
- How can professional mediators negotiate “mano dura” policies and institutional demands?
- How can community mediation strengthen the perspectives of social pedagogy and youth work within social work? What tensions emerge and what learnings may result from interdisciplinary processes, particularly for social workers? How do different knowledges and powers interact?
- To what extent is mediation with youth in conditions of vulnerability integrated into public policies? Does it remain segregated due to specific forms of action?
- Who are the young people that play the role of brokers within and between groups and their communities? What skills and knowledge do they possess, and how do they obtain these?
- Who are the individual, collective, and institutional stakeholders that are – voluntarily or involuntarily – absent from mediation processes? How are their perspectives taken into account – or overlooked – in mediation policies, processes, and evaluation?
- How are class, gender, ethnicity/race, and citizenship issues taken into account in the mediation processes with youth?
- How can non-institutionalised, natural, or peer-mediation processes be acknowledged as legitimate forms of mediation?
