Sara Andersson

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Policyarbete i fritidens gränsland

Preventive interventions targeting children and young people in marginalised urban neighbourhoods have gained growing political attention in recent decades. This dissertation examines a municipal initiative seeking to improve the living conditions of children in the city’s disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The initiative, Meaningful Leisure, is designed to provide free, organised leisure activities during after-school hours for children aged 10-12. In the neighbourhood of Stensöta, Meaningful Leisure has taken the form of a municipality-led partnership network of local sports clubs, national organisations, and study associations that jointly plan and organise children’s leisure time. The overall aim of this thesis is to explore the policy processes through which leisure is organised within Meaningful Leisure. Drawing on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork and informed by Policy Enactment Theory, the work of the partnership network is understood through the concept of policy work. In this perspective, organised leisure for Stensöta’s children is shaped through processes of interpretation and translation, where policy is put into action. The findings show that creating organised leisure in Stensöta is a complex and contested process. The network’s meetings reveal struggles over meaning concerning leisure, the children involved, and practitioners working with them. Stensöta’s position as a disadvantaged neighbourhood shapes what is possible for the network to do, influenced by prevailing ideas of “good” leisure and by politically conditioned funding. Power and resistance become visible in these policy processes, particularly when the children do not participate in the after-school activities as expected. The policy work also reveals what in the dissertation is conceptualised as a profession of leisure. Here, the youth workers involved in Meaningful Leisure are positioned as key actors in shaping and sustaining the organised activities. The dissertation further underscores the importance of allowing children and young people to influence the activities they take part in. It problematises preventive interventions in marginalised urban neighbourhoods, contributes to broader debates on children’s living conditions, and illuminates the significance of professional social and pedagogical work during children’s leisure time.