Emerging Multi-Professional Assemblages of Precision Guidance Producing the Resilient and Future-Oriented Citizen

Abstract

In this paper, we examined how EU-initiated ‘integrated approach’ to youth social exclusion is manifested in local contexts and in the ways in which youth problems and solutions come to be defined in particular schemes of thought. Inspired by assemblage theory we looked at local multi-professional youth guidance networks as assemblages consisting of multiple organisations, interests, steering, discourses, and knowledge formations. In this article we were especially interested in seeing which ‘lines’, understood as trajectories of assemblage components, produce both ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ for seemingly complex life situations of young people considered at risk. This article is based on the analysis of interview data produced in the context of an ongoing Academy of Finland project Interrupting Youth Support Systems in the Ethos of Vulnerability (2017–2021) exploring cross-sectoral policies and practices of youth support systems in the ethos of vulnerability. Based on our analysis, the new assemblages framing multi-professional guidance and support have given rise to more precise neoliberal governing mechanisms that we have named precision guidance. Precision guidance focuses on young people’s vulnerability, resilience and future potentiality while leaving societal and structural problems largely unaddressed.