The emerging concepts of participation and belonging in social pedagogy

Abstract

During the last few decades, the concepts of participation and belonging has frequently been used within the social welfare field in general, and within the field of disability research specifically. Additionally, in Scandinavia the concept of participation has become increasingly used in social work and social pedagogy programmes at universities. However, there’s rather little known about how participation can be understood and related to social pedagogy, since the concept has a broad range of meanings, e.g. a sense of belonging. This paper aims to identify and discuss understandings of participation and belonging with relevance for social work and social pedagogy. Empirical illustrations have been gathered with ethnographical methods and analysed in accordance with an interpretive tradition. It is argued that the concept of participation can be attributed to different meanings in different ideological, theoretical, and institutional practice contexts (e.g. schools that offer special needs programmes, the transition to working life, online social networking). Consequently, it’s a challenge to provide adequate definitions of the concept. The inference drawn is that the aspect of belonging as it relates to social participation can be attributed to its particular importance for social pedagogy. An implication for professional practice is the need to pay attention to alternative identifications that are not based on notions of a stable, constant sense of belonging to a categorical group.