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

本研究项目调查的程度和方式，在德国城市外展社会工作者参与谈判的社会参与和排斥与贫困和越轨行为在公共空间的社会群体的过程。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，通过多个行动者的互动和三个谈判舞台的相互作用来重建公共空间的空间秩序的生产：问题化的地方话语，治理安排和街道层面。特别是，它将调查社会工作者在这一过程中采取的不同立场，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，例如，在各种研究中，这些工作被描述为压制性或包容性的，或旨在管理冲突，但其可能性的具体条件尚未得到充分理解和解释。通过研究地方和城市的具体情况，它将探讨如何成为可能，面对类似的问题化现象，外展社会工作者采取不同的行动，并与不同的后果，他们的客户和他们可能使用的公共空间。将审查在处理问题化的公共空间的城市政策中是否能够确定社会工作的相关性有所增加。其次，为了确定各自社会工作者的理性和实践的具体当地条件，定性案例研究将在两个城市进行，区分三种类型的问题空间（市中心的购物区，在不利的地方以及绅士化的社区）。在一个多方法的案例研究设计中，分析当地媒体的话语和政治或行政文件，不同的定性访谈（与治理行为者，有问题的人，服务对象和社会工作专业人员）以及人种学同行将结合起来，以重建三个相关层面的谈判及其相互作用。最后，这些案例研究将在跨案例比较中进行分析，目的是确定社会工作合理性和实践的变化，并研究这些变化是否以及如何通过特定地点和城市的星座来理解和解释。

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.