The primarily empirical contribution examines how the practice of an alternative, innovative youth welfare organization called "Freestyle" is constituted. What can youth welfare services learn from alternative practices? How can they implement and organize educational conditions and relationships, which should be as inclusive as possible? How can educational institutions better fit to the needs of those young people who challenge the youth welfare system? How can educational organizations “lift their roof” and open up when reaching their limits, instead of turning into closed shops or even “total institutions” (Goffman 1973)?
The organization “Freestyle” is an interesting case, as it organizes an alternative practice of youth welfare. From a Foucauldian perspective, in its practice we can find the dispositif of ‘accompaniment’. A dispositif can be understood as “organizing knowledge” (Weber/Wieners 2018, p. 214). Dispositives consist of a heterogeneous interplay of different elements, of "discourses, institutions, architectural facilities, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, [...], in short: the said as well as the unsaid" (Foucault 1978, p. 119). A dispositif thus refers to "ways of thinking and saying in a specific discourse and enters into social action as a mode of rationalization" (Weber/Wieners 2018, p. 215).
The presentation first theorizes organizations from a discourse-analytical perspective (Weber/Wieners 2018) and discusses youth welfare organizations in Germany as normalizing agents for ‘problem youths’ (Villányi/Witte 2009) or nowadays so-called “system crashers” (Baumann 2020). The empirical part of the article locates the organization "Freestyle" in this discourse. In a qualitative, guideline-based interview study, professionals and young people were interviewed. In the presentation we discuss the interviews with professionals, using the documentary method (Nohl 2017). By discussing the minimal contrast of two professionals, we can see cross-personal action orientations pointing to collective action orientations at “Freestyle”. Like this, the general organizational rationality of “Freestyle” becomes visible in the orientational patterns of professionals - especially in dealing with boundary situations.
In total, the presentation reflects on the dispositif of ‘accompaniment’ in the organizational performative practice (Weber/Wieners 2018) of the organization “Freestyle”. While ‘accompaniment’ has to be regarded as marginalized discursive knowledge and organizational practice, it can be discussed as a heterotopic counter-knowledge against the dominant discourse of normalization in youth care – still carrying the potential to “lift the roof” of those normalizing institutions.
