The rise of a neo-communitarian project: A critical youth work study into the pedagogy of the National Citizen Service in England

Abstract

This article draws upon recent empirical data from a series of in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with professional youth work practitioners. It is focused upon contemporary practice experiences of social action and youth citizenship projects across North East England. The research provides a more nuanced understanding of the National Citizen Service programmes to make sense of the meaning of citizenship in the twenty-first century. The findings contribute towards a critical appraisal of the National Citizen Service as a vehicle for youth social action in the changing social, economic and political landscapes in a post-Brexit society. It offers some useful insights into approaches to practice interventions, the impact on young people and contests the type of citizen envisaged within the NCS curricula and pedagogy. It adopts a critical perspective to explore recent government rhetoric and seeks to identify the salient assumptions and ways of seeing youth citizenship today. It suggests that we are witnessing the emergence of a form of neo-communitarian citizenship, which can be characterised as a distinct form of ‘active citizenship’ premised on neoliberal economic imperatives, resulting in a reconfiguration of youth work practice and accelerating the demise of young people’s entitlement to universal service provision.

Feeding young people to the social investment machine: The financialisation of public services

“…From an assemblage perspective, this allowed us to explore the emergence of a 'machine' -a conjunction of policy 'parts' that has its own productive effects. While research on NCS to date has focused on the process of its formation ( de St Croix, 2011) and gathered the perspectives of young people, practitioners and policy makers (Mills and Waite, 2017;Murphy, 2017), our documentary analysis approach enables us to focus closely on the conjunction of policy on social value and evaluations of the NCS. We want to show that social investment, as a particular idea of how services generate public value, is being used to legitimate state spending in a prominent public service area.…”

Citizenship, Othering and Learning: A Comparative Study with Groups of Young People from Pembrokeshire and Cardiff

“…Some of these such as Hart (2009) and Geboers (2014) look at the engagement of young people as citizens and their role and development as citizens. Other studies investigate the effect of citizenship programmes such as the National Citizenship Service in England upon young people (Murphy, 2017) and the Welsh Baccalaureate in Wales (Hayden & Thompson, 2007). What these studies concentrate on is young people's roles or reactions to an adult's pre-determined set of parameters of what citizenship is.…”

“…Barber (2009) explains that a move towards a civic form of citizenship places an expectation upon citizens to carry out acts that may have previously been regarded as the responsibility of the state such the increased role of charities. Murphy (2017) and Sinclair et al (2010) refer to this a neocommunitarian form of citizenship that quantifies and measures citizenship. Sinclair et al (2010) talks about how these tools of measurement can include hard outcomes such as gaining paid employment but also about individual responsibility and self-responsibility.…”

“…This notion of one nation citizenship can be seen in recent incarnations of citizenship education in the UK. Murphy (2017) reviewed the Conservatives government's flagship National Citizenship Service (NCS). He found that it was a programme which concentrated on citizenship acts rather than exploring what young people thought it meant to be citizens.…”

“…This is very much an execution of the de facto or substantive citizenship. Murphy (2017) found the NCS to be a neo-communitarian approach, which focused on the civic and ignored political and legal rights; "it fosters compliance with a form of practice which offers little scope for critical thinking and enquiry about existing power relations and structural inequalities" (Murphy, 2017:89). The main practice is that of gaining employment or participating in activities that would help gain employment i.e.…”