Youth Responses to Neoliberal Erosion of Solidarity

Abstract

In spring 2015, I had the privilege of giving a lecture about social work in a Nordic welfare state context at a College in the Bronx, New York. I was at that time in the very beginning of my analytical thoughts concerning my thesis (Bak Nielsen, 2017) about unemployed and socially vulnerable young people at the margin of the Danish society. I had the opportunity to present some of the thoughts, I had done working with my empirical material, about how these young people act on the social situation, they are facing. The target group for my Ph.D. research project is a group of young people, whom I have also been working with during my 20 years as a social worker. A group of young people at the age of 18 to 29, who in relation to their unemployment in the Danish welfare system is categorized as having other social problems, that makes it difficult for them to connect to education and work. Young people who in their everyday life are struggling with different degrees of complex social problems and personal challenges; poverty, homelessness, lack of education, dyslexia, anxiety, depression, adhd, substance abuse, violence, and crime. They receive cash benefit against demands for participation in activation projects or unpaid internship. At the end of my presentation of my preliminary empirical observations, one of the students in an evening social work class, a young black man raised his hand for a comment: “Maybe they just have to get older, grow up and learn, what it means to do education, have a job and make an effort in life?” He could have said, “What is the problem?” And it became clear to me, that some of these students knew very well the importance of poverty, social problems, and personal challenges I was talking about, but without having access to the same health care opportunities, cash benefit and financed education as the group of young people in my research. Young Americans struggling to have an education and find their way in life. Working in the daytime and doing their studies in the evening. So, what was the problem? The question related to a dominant neoliberal discourse, which also can be identified in a Nordic welfare context, when it comes to political and institutional understandings of and solutions to the challenges these young people are facing. In these understandings, the reasons why this group of young people