The Working Experience of Marginalized Youth:An Interpretive Interactionism Study

• Main Authors: Ta-Hua Yeh, 葉大華
• Other Authors: Tsen-Yung Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/22h53k

碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 衛生福利研究所 === 92 === This study is aimed to explore the working experience of five marginalized youth through the interpretive interactionism approach, developed by Denzin(1989), in order to deconstruct the dominant discourse of constructing the marginalized youth as ‘a problem’ among the helping professionals working with the youth in Taiwan. It is composed of four parts. In the first part, the ‘youth as a social problem’ paradigm is described and analyzed from the first account of the author’s working experience as a youth worker. In the second part, working histories of five marginalized youth are analyzed to conceptualize the coping strategies of these youth under the constraints of social structure. In the third part, we explore the effects of welfare as well as labor policy upon the lives of these marginalized youth. Policy recommendation is proposed in the last part. The study adopted participation observation, in-depth interview and telephone interview methods to collect date and interpretive interactionism method for data analysis. One male and four female youth participated in the study. All had rich working experience, whose age varies from 17 to 22. They had suffered from family violence, sexual abuse or drug abuse. The study identifies four major finding. First, five marginalized youth had to work must earlier than their peers because they had no family support and were taken under the custody of the state welfare system. Second, because of their low education status and limited social contact, they were most likely to work under conditions of low wage, long working hour, heavy physical strain which is characteristics of secondary labor market. These jobs were not regulated by the state and operated under the so-called ‘informal economy’. Third, whether or not these youth are able to upgrade themselves along their career path depends upon the capacity to develop occupational or professional identity. Fourth, despite of their personal traumatic experiences, these marginalized youth have developed multiple strategies in their career. The study proposed two major suggestions. First, the dominant discourse of constructing the youth as social problems reinforces the inferior status of marginalized youth and reproduced social exclusion of these youth. The state policy should be aimed to assist the development of the subjectivity of these youth by providing alternative choice beside formal education. Second, the helping professional need to recognize the importance of informal economy in the career development of marginalized youth. The malicious effects of state policies need to be identified and reflected. The helping professional should seek to identify possible ways to self-empowerment and collective advocacy.