Beyond the neoliberal subject? Identity, practice and struggle in the youth services sector of England and Wales, 2007-2022

This thesis contributes to knowledge surrounding recent changes in the youth services sector in England and Wales, 2007-2022. Incorporating the age of austerity, this period saw significant policy and service developments impacting the so-called Lost and COVID Generations. With this as backdrop, the thesis critically explores how a community of educators - youth workers - experience, navigate and seek to go beyond the neoliberalising logics associated with these developments. The thesis draws on work associated with the Essex School of Discourse Analysis to develop a theoretical framework and case-based research strategy to critically compare the National Citizen Service in England and the Youth Service in Wales. The former is delivered to young people aged 15-17 through a competitively tendered programme. The latter’s remit is young people aged 11-25, through a partnership of local authorities and the voluntary sector. A bespoke methodological bricoleur approach is developed in which documentary and interview material from the cases are gathered and organised around pairs of paradigmatic images. A logics-based nodal framework is then used to analyse the logics for each service’s provision, distribution, delivery and governance. The thesis shows - in considerable detail - how the ‘roll back’ (austerity) and ‘roll out’ (marketisation) phases of neoliberalisation have impacted this sector. It provides analysis of variations, commonalities, contestations and spaces of agency across the cases. Furthermore the thesis identifies a set of alternative logics that are characterised as nurturing a post(-)neoliberal outlook. This thesis contributes to existing literature: substantively - with this cross-national and systematic piece of comparative work of variegated neoliberalisation within the youth services sector; methodologically - by deploying an image-based bricolage in conjunction with a logics-based nodal framework analysis; and, theoretically - by introducing a post(-)neoliberal framework to articulate alternative practices and to acknowledge spaces of institutional and professional agency.