ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 analyses the socio-pedagogical practices of welfare workers in the North West through two case studies: (1) The Child Protection Office and its transformation into Family Guidance as these two institutions of the state transformed and functioned between the 1930s and the 1970s; and (2) contemporary social workers’ perception and evaluation of and intervention into the neighbourhood. Based on archives of child welfare agencies and qualitative interviews with a sample of social workers, the chapter analyses the boundaries of citizenship, cultural distinctions, and social hierarchies involved in the pedagogisation of urban marginality in the North West. Moulded by the class relation between the working classes and the middle classes, the emergence of the figure of the ‘friendly social worker’ between the 1930s and 1960s contributed to concerted efforts to create the North West into a proper place for decent families and a child-friendly place, a place of balanced families. Prevailing until today, the chapter also shows that pedagogisation of urban marginality is not a stable phenomenon because the state itself is subject to transformation, and that internal battles are waged to define the mission and methods of the management of marginality in the North West.
