Lost at sea: Navigating entrepreneurship together in Flemish youth work

Abstract

There is a need for co-production and experimental practices within academic research and social work for new imaginaries to come into existence. This article addresses this need by providing a co-written reflection on an experimental action research project between an academic researcher and a youth work researcher. Through a dialogue between the authors, the article answers two key questions that arose during the project. It concludes that there is a possibility for Flemish youth work to create different and particular educational spaces. The aim of this article is to show how cooperative research projects make a specific form of shared orientation possible through a shared focus on youth work practice. In this way, new possibilities for navigation through educational landscapes can emerge. This allows researchers and practitioners to think together beyond solutions that are already given within existing policy order. In doing so, they experience commonality, as they become able to navigate the structural inequalities they face and imagine how their shared emancipatory practices can be further constituted.