ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on how changes in youth policy impact upon youth work. It charts the competing philosophies which have underpinned youth work since its initial development in the nineteenth century and shows how social fears about ‘dangerous youth’ have consistently fed into the practices of youth workers. The chapter argues that, across a range of policy areas which impact upon young people, we can discern emerging and wide-ranging, government-led attempts to control ‘underclass’ youth. Within youth work, underclass ideologies have helped shape a new authoritarianism which now jeopardises its long-standing democratic and educational principles and threatens to become the principle philosophy directing work with all young people.
