The Involvement of Social Work in Negotiations of Urban Poverty and Deviance in Public Space

这一研究项目调查了德国各城市的外展社会工作者参与谈判社会参与和排斥与公共空间中的贫困和越轨有关的社会群体的程度和方式。在城市社会学和社会工作研究的交叉点上，采用关系互动主义的视角，通过多个参与者的互动，以及三个谈判场景的相互作用，重构公共空间空间秩序的产生：地方话语的问题化、治理安排和街道层面。特别是，将调查社会工作者在这一过程中采取了哪些不同的立场，因此，可以观察到对边缘化社会群体的代表性和参与以及空间排斥的影响。因此，将分析外联工作的不同合理性和做法，这些工作在各种研究中被描述为，例如，要么是压制性的，要么是包容性的，或者旨在管理冲突，但其具体的可能性条件尚未得到充分的了解和解释。通过考察地方和城市的具体情况，将探讨外展社会工作者在面对类似的问题化现象时，如何可能采取不同的行动，并对其客户及其可能使用的公共空间产生不同的后果。首先，在对德国每个主要城市的市政行政行为者进行的标准化在线调查中，将审查是否可以在解决公共空间问题的城市政策中确定社会工作的相关性增加。其次，为了找出各自社会工作者的理性和做法的具体当地情况，将在两个城市进行定性的案例研究，分别区分三种类型的问题空间(市中心购物区、贫困地区以及士绅化社区)。在多方法案例研究设计中，分析当地媒体话语和政治或行政文件，不同的定性访谈(分别与治理行为者、有问题的人)。将结合三个相关层面的谈判及其相互作用，重新构建三个相关层面上的谈判。最终，这些案例研究将以跨案例比较的方式进行分析，目的是确定社会工作合理性和做法的差异，并研究是否以及如何通过特定地点和城市的星座来理解和解释这些差异。

This research project investigates the extent and the ways in which outreach social workers in German cities are involved in processes of negotiating social participation and exclusion of social groups associated with poverty and deviance in public spaces. At the intersection of urban sociology and social work research, a relational interactionist perspective is adopted to reconstruct the production of spatial orders of public spaces through interactions of multiple actors and at the interplay of three arenas of negotiation: local discourses of problematization, governance arrangements, and street level. In particular, it will be investigated which different positions social workers adopt in this process and, as a result, which effects on the representation and participation as well as spatial exclusion of marginalized social groups can be observed. Thus, different rationalities and practices of outreach work will be analyzed, which in various studies have been described as, for example, either repressive or inclusive, or aimed at managing conflicts, but whose specific conditions of possibility have not yet been sufficiently understood and made explainable. By examining place- and city-specific contexts, it will be explored how it becomes possible that, facing similarly problematized phenomena, outreach social workers act differently and with different consequences for their clients and their possible uses of public spaces.First, in a standardized online survey of municipal administrative actors from every major German city, it will be examined whether an increase in the relevance of social work can be identified within urban policies that address problematized public spaces. Second, in order to identify specific local conditions of the respective social workers’ rationalities and practices, qualitative case studies will be conducted in two cities, distinguishing three types of problematized spaces each (inner-city shopping zones, places in disadvantaged as well as gentrified neighborhoods). In a multi-method case study design, the analysis of local media discourses and political or administrative documents, different qualitative interviews (with governance actors, problematized persons resp. clients, and social work professionals) as well as ethnographic go-alongs will be combined to reconstruct negotiations on the three relevant levels and their interplay. Ultimately, these case studies will be analyzed in a cross-case comparison with the aim of identifying variations in social work rationalities and practices and examining whether and how these can be understood and thus explained through place- and city-specific constellations.