Suchergebnisse

In Denmark, secure institutions are the most intrusive form of out-of-home placement. This article explores how children and young people experience participating in decisions involving secure placement. The analysis draws on a qualitative study, which includes interviews with young people, their case manager and case file data. The young people have all been placed in a secure institution for either observation or on grounds of being a danger to themselves or others, typically defined as a range of behavioral problems like absconding, abuse of drugs, transactional sex and/or crime involvement. Young people's experiences of participating in these decisions provide important insights for understanding the barriers and factors, which facilitate participation for some of the most vulnerable children and young people in the child welfare system. Drawing on a three-dimensional definition of participation inspired by Kloppenborg and Lausten, the analysis shows that young people in the 'deep-end' of child welfare services navigate an adult-centered system of assessment and decision-making, which curtails their possibilities to have a voice and influence decisions. The analysis contributes to a limited research field studying case work practices in relation to care orders, restrictive measures and the confinement of children and young people, where young people's perspectives are largely missing. Their voices provide important insights for the development of a child-centered approach to service provision, that balances their right to participation, protection and care.

The article explores how violence as actuality and potentiality shapes the lives of Danish at-risk girls and young women. The article draws on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork in Copenhagen and includes 25 girls and young women aged 13 to 23 who have all experienced using physical violence. Centering on a single young woman's narrative, violence is analyzed as a meaningful social practice intimately linked to navigating violent social terrains and managing precarious everyday lives characterized by instability and marginalization. Drawing on the concept of potentiality, it is argued that violent interactions are shaped by both the fear of oncoming danger and the desire for powerful social positions. This perspective opens a micro-longitudinal perspective, which explores situational dynamics of violence through time, hereby contributing to micro-sociological studies of violence.

The study explores the gendered institutional practices and rationalities applied to young people placed in Danish secure institutions. The study draws on ethnographic research, combining participant observation and interviews to gain insight into professionals' gendered practices and rationalities, and young people's experiences of confinement. Drawing on Foucauldian power analytics and post-structuralist feminist theory on subjectivity, the study finds that the disciplining practices are gendered to promote working-class masculinity for boys and normative femininity and (hetero)sexuality for girls, with minorizing effects on some boys and girls. The study provides unique insights from a gender-integrated context for confined young people and supplements scholarship on the gendered logics that underpin interventions operating within the penal–social work nexus.

The article reflects on teaching gender theory to students who are not enrolled in a gender programme. It argues that learning can be facilitated to social work students by tapping into their own gendered experiences and by linking gender to wider concerns about social inequality. The article draws on personal notes from teaching gender and social diversity to social work students. In this context, two main obstacles are identified: anti-feminism and individualization. Theseobstacles can be addressed productively. First by bringing students' gendered experiences and social categorisations into play, and second, by demonstrating how social problems are shaped by gender structures and unequal power relations.

AbstractThe article presents a metasynthesis of qualitative studies, which have described and analysed adolescents' experiences of coercion in institutional contexts such as psychiatric care, child welfare and juvenile justice. The study finds that coercion is an ambiguous practice, mainly used for protection and treatment purposes, while it is often experienced as punitive. Acknowledging the ambiguities of coercion can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of practice and experience, which is useful for reducing the harmful effects of coercion and strengthening participatory methods of care and treatment.

This article explores the strengths and limitations of doing ethnographic research with young people in confinement. The article draws on two studies from Scotland and Denmark, and reflects on critical issues such as getting access, obtaining informed and voluntary consent, emotional challenges, safety, positionality and situated ethics. While a substantial body of literature addresses the methodological challenges of doing ethnographic research in prisons, the literature on doing qualitative research with young people confined in locked residential institutions and youth remand centres is very limited. The article demonstrates the continued importance of doing ethnographic research in penal institutions, by showing how sensory data and lived experience of penal practice and materiality, contributes to our understanding of how young people experience confinement. By drawing on fieldnotes and interviews, this article aims to inspire and lay the grounds for new researchers in the field.

This article explores temporality in young peoples' narratives of confinement on welfare grounds in Danish secure institutions. The analysis draws on data from two qualitative studies on young people's experiences of confinement. Drawing on Michael Flaherty's conceptualization of 'making time' (Flaherty, M. G., 2002, Symbolic Interaction, 25, 3, 379–388), we explore the unsteady passing of time, the agentic practices of manipulating and obliterating time and how bureaucratic power is exercised by depriving young people control of their time and subjecting them to slow or even 'dead' time in isolation or waiting for release. While secure institutions are closed institutions, this article explores the permeability of closed institutions by looking at temporality as a dimension that links the inside and outside while also contributing to create specific experiences of temporal and spatial divisions. This perspective on young people's temporal experiences contributes empirically to scholarship on the confinement of young people and it has practical implications for the service provision for troubled and troublesome young people.

This article reviews and compares the use of confinement and other restrictive measures against young people under 18 in child welfare and/or the criminal justice systems in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Young people are confined for a variety of reasons, including protection, care, treatment, and punishment. However, confinement of young people is a contested issue because it can be viewed as necessary but also potentially harmful. Comparison of legislation and practices reveals that while there are some similarities in the service provisions for young people, there are also significant disparities among the four countries regarding the organization, function, and frequency of the use of confinement and restrictive measures. While Denmark and Sweden use secure welfare institutions, Finland and Norway apply other restrictive measures. Despite the differences in approaches to confinement in the Nordic countries, the use of confinement is guided by the principle of the child's best interest, and the child welfare system is the main frame for confinement and intervention. The article discusses these disparate practices from the perspective of children's rights and identifies new avenues for research and practice. ; publishedVersion ; Peer reviewed

This article reviews and compares the use of confinement and other restrictive measures against young people under 18 in child welfare and/or the criminal justice systems in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Young people are confined for a variety of reasons, including protection, care, treatment, and punishment. However, confinement of young people is a contested issue because it can beviewed as necessary but also potentially harmful. Comparison of legislation and practices reveals that while there are some similarities in the service provisions for young people, there are also significant disparities among the four countries regarding the organization, function, and frequency of the use of confinement and restrictive measures. While Denmark and Sweden use secure welfare institutions, Finland and Norway apply other restrictive measures. Despite the differences in approaches to confinement in the Nordic countries, the use of confinement is guided by the principle of the child's best interest, and the child welfare system is the main frame for confinement and intervention. The article discusses these disparate practices from the perspective of children's rights and identifies new avenues for research and practice.

Sex is often regarded as a dangerous business that must be rigorously controlled, regulated, and subjected to rules. Sexual acts that defy acceptable practices may be seen as variously defiling, immoral, and even unnatural. They may challenge and subvert both cultural preconceptions and the social order in a politics of sexual transgression that threatens to transform permissible boundaries and restructure bodily engagements. This collection of essays explores acts of sexual transgression that have the power to reconfigure perceptions of bodily intimacy and the social norms of interaction. Considering issues such as domestic violence, child prostitution, health and sex, teenage sex, and sex with animals across a range of settings from contemporary Oceania, the Pacific, South Africa, and southeast Asia to Euro-America, this book should interest all those who question the "naturalness" of sex, including public health workers, clinical practitioners and students of sex, sexuality, and gender in the humanities and social sciences