ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the application of the model to a qualitative study-in-depth interviews outlining the experiences of eight young adults that have been placed into out-of-home care and finally to reform schools by child welfare agency due to their disruptive and norm-breaking behaviour. It examines the personal experiences of the subjects of the child welfare intervention and how their positions are affected by the dynamic relations of their own agency and the surrounding agents and institutions. The chapter describes how a position model, constructed with the help of Roy Bhaskar's texts, helps to organise the complex relationships between institutional and social structures and individuals' agency in a temporal context, and how we should more carefully perceive the individual's experiences of different positions. It reveals how the social positions of eight former reform school students were shaped in the social and institutional contexts that they were present in, and how the young people have experienced these positions themselves.