The baseline problem and needs analysis for the project ‘Learning from the Margins’ (LEMA) show that marginalised youth in European urban areas display low levels of inclusion and participation in the societal arenas that we know develop the individual and which can also contribute to bringing individuals out of marginalisation. At the same time, it is clear that on the professional level we are more or less checkmate compared to working with precisely the inclusion of the most marginalised young people. This is partly due to societal inequality structures, but it is also because the professionals are not yet trained in understanding the extent of the young people's situations, which are particularly complex in urban settings.
By professionals we refer to all those working professionally with marginalised youth in urban areas and they encompass social workers, pedagogues, social educators and teachers. The lack of professionalism in this field is probably because until now it is not common practice to understand social and educational work as a matter of planning individual, social and contextual (including socio-spatial) solutions concerning young people at risk.
The overall goal of the LEMA project is therefore to develop a sustainable pedagogical model for working with extremely marginalised youth – a model for Participatory Social Planning (PSP), which includes:
• The development of a participatory context-sensitive social pedagogy for innovative solutions (cross-national)
• A wider knowledge on the connection between an urban setting and the marginalisation processes of young people
• Repertoires of practice for professionals, welfare officials, NGOs, policy makers, educators and researchers in relation to understanding, recognising and responding to the complex social problems that marginalised young people have to face.
The participatory aspect will be crucial in that context-specific solutions must always take their point of departure in the parties involved. It is therefore significant that the marginalised young people are key partners in the development of new innovative solutions. They are, as it were, the real experts, and learning from their marginalised position is essential to the innovative solutions of this project. The target groups of the project are thus both youth at risk in urban areas and the professionals and educators working with them.
Thus, the project partners are higher education institutions and organisations working with marginalised youth in three different urban contexts: University College Copenhagen and 3B Housing Association in Copenhagen, Denmark; Malmö University and Malmö City in Sweden; University of Malaga and the NGO Asociacion Marroqui in Malaga, Spain. The partners all share a mutual interest in connecting social work and participatory design concerning at-risk youth in urban settings. At the same time, their common interest is in the transferability of actions research methods and values to social work and professional development.
In order to change the realities of the marginalised youth and thereby the structures of inequality, the professionals need profound new knowledge and repertoires of practice. Both the field of research and the field of social practice have need of the international exchange of practice-based knowledge, research and the innovative spin-off from the different urban contexts to respond effectively to the challenges of inequality. The shared reality is that the local solutions are not sufficient in bringing young people at-risk out of marginalisation and a transnational innovative initiative is therefore necessary.
The absolute social innovation of the LEMA project is to bring marginalised young people, professionals and researchers together in an analytical work that can create and develop a new international practice within pedagogy and social work. This will be composed in the Participatory Social Planning model (PSP). The model will enable professionals in working with overcoming marginalisation of youth in urban areas. At the same time, the new approach of this model will be implemented locally in the organisations of the participating partners. Additionally, the impact of the LEMA project is directly transferable and complementary to the everyday work in both HEI and in the kinds of organisations represented by the participating partners.