ABSTRACT
The argument in this chapter is that new productive understandings of sustainable community development are potentially emerging in unemployed young people’s responses to changes in social order in a neo-liberal era. An era dominated by a narrative of endless possibilities and young people at risk of marginalisation who respond not only as the perfect neo-liberal self-empowered acting subject but also with resistance. Resistance against individualised understandings as participation and orientation towards action contexts rooted in a diversity of social practices both within as well as beyond welfare system, in which these young people interpret, improvise, and transform their everyday lives This chapter identifies collective and community-oriented mechanisms and processes that give rise to a broader understanding of community than defined by geography or social identity, and the construction of actor-governed community development in social work encounters with young people at risk of marginalisation. This is done by approaching these young people as participating, acting, and negotiating citizen in defining, developing, and carrying solutions through.
