Child and Youth Care To-Come

Abstract

The intent of this article is to follow deconstruction as a way to think about the questions that are currently being asked in Child and Youth Care (CYC). As a graduate student in the School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria (SCYC), I am challenged to think my position and identity in terms of my location within, or on the borders of, a CYC community. In this article I bring together deconstruction and contemporary issues in CYC to propose a way forward in terms of conceptualizing CYC identities. The first part of this follows deconstructive thinking through an analysis of CYC as a context and the practice of “contextualizing” in CYC. The second movement of the article weaves in the notions of community, community identities, tradition(s) and relationships to demonstrate how linguistic representations may limit our possibilities for theory and practice. I end by proposing hospitality (Derrida, 2000) as a way to negotiate the borders of CYC and open toward a “Child and Youth Care To-Come.” This article is specifically engaged with the conversations sparked at the Child and Youth Care in Action III Conference and the subsequent special issue of the International Journal of Child Youth and Family Studies, 3(2-3). I situate this critical analysis within the current conversations of my local CYC community and explore how deconstruction can help to open our community to its own future.