Conference Agenda

Research has pointed out the importance of participation in extracurricular activities (EA) in school achievement (Eccles, 2003; Linver, 2009; Meier, 2018), as well as in the development of skills that promotes children and youth wellbeing and social progress (Covay i Carbonaro, 2010; Vandel & col, 2020). It has also identified quality criteria that can substantially modify after-school activities outputs. Among them, we focus the on the capacity to adjust activities and program structures to the diversity of social contexts (Simpkins, 2017).

The literature indicates that social vulnerability significantly impacts children’s participation in organized leisure. A debate has emerged to explain the lower involvement of working-class families in extracurricular activities, attributed to material factors or to class culture patterns (Weininger, E. B., Lareau, A., & Conley, D., 2015). Research has also scrutinized exclusion mechanisms in leisure arising from peripheral conditions associated with poverty, such as mobility, job precarity, complex administrative procedures (Oncescu, J. & Neufeld, C., 2020). Specific barriers to participation in leisure activities arise from family migration status (Shuey, E. A., & Leventhal, T., 2018), becoming evident when we consider the significance of social capital in accessing information regarding activity availability and enrollment (Galindo, C. & Sanders, M., 2017).

The democratization of out-of-school educational opportunities faces specific challenges that are increased in today's scenarios of uncertainty, social polarization and mobility flows, particularly in urban schools. To address these challenges, policies aimed at expanding participation in out-of-school education require innovative, community-centric approaches rather than a narrow focus solely on child development (Bae, 2019). Public supply of extracurricular activities in urban schools offers a chance to mitigate the geographical and economic barriers, promoting collaboration between families and school stakeholders that goes beyond cultural and informational hurdles. However, the functioning of the school-based leisure provision model needs a nuanced approach that enables the identification of factors conditioning their potentialities.

In Barcelona EA supply has often been governed by marketisation logics (Termes, 2020)., which ends up by shaping a territorially unequal distribution of educational opportunities. Mapping studies on this issue (Termes, 2020, Palou, 2021) concluded that school-based EA in disadvantaged neighbourhoods were less divers and mainly tutorial and remedial type, while in other districts activities aimed at personal development were offered, such as languages, arts, science and technology. That is the reason why local administration develops new extended-school policies with the doble goal of fostering desegregation in after school times and spaces and improving equity in the access to EA (Sintes, 2018). On October 2022, the Arts and STEAM extended-school programme “Extra!-Extra!” is launched in 32 primary and secondary schools and 6 municipal facilities. It has the capacity of 2.100 participant. During the first year reaches a 66% of occupation, with significative gaps depending on the school and its surroundings.

This study analyzes the enactment factors of the new policy in schools that may have led to heterogeneous impacts on the overall school community.

"The brand St. Pauli FC is an identification mark. The totenkopf-t-shirt means that you share values with the club. Like me!" (Leni, social worker, Gemeinwesenarbeit (GWa) St. Pauli eV).

This presentation stems from an ethnographic fieldwork carried out in 2023 in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg, Germany, where the local football club, St. Pauli FC, which competes in the 2. Bundesliga, is based.

In the project to which this fieldwork belongs, we examine how traces of formative intervention methods and interactions (bildung) become evident in private football organizations, and what significance this potential pedagogical work holds for the social and community anchoring of football clubs in the local neighborhoods. In this chapter, we are particularly interested in how St. Pauli, both as a district and a football club, leaves its mark on the people who inhabit the area and engage with the fan club or attend matches weekend after weekend. Here, we experience how the place is saturated with values that connote the local belonging of these individuals and become a form of formation that takes root in their bodies and consciousness, thus contributing to their corpus of understanding, their repertoires of action, and their way of being in the world. This is also why we approach our informants from a perspective of bildung when speaking with them.

This presentation seeks to unfold our analytical construct "Paulitics", understood as the seemingly underlying tone of left-leaning political values, constant lurking activism, apparent resistance to authority, and a stick-it-to-the-man attitude, which runs as a distinct community-building and highly diversity-bearing thread throughout the Altona/St. Pauli district in Hamburg. Paulitics is our own analytically constructed concept stemming from a theoretical foundation that understands social innovation as a collective purpose, which, through the reinforcement of social relations and a strong local community anchoring, creates less inequality and more social justice based on the unique history associated with the area (Moulaert, MacCallum & Hillier 2014, 31). Therefore, we understand Paulitics as a unifying collective approach to how the aforementioned social relations and local community anchoring act as a catalyst for the continuous development of communities and the significance of creating these communities for the residents of the local area and their opportunities to become, belong, and undergo formation through their interaction with the area's people, phenomena, ideas, things, and affairs (Rømer, 2019: 5; Tanggaard, 2021: 20, 23-24).

Rural youth face a significant decision at the end of their compulsory education – stay local and join the limited workforce or leave, even temporarily, for further education and qualifications. Often, students are conditioned through schools, parents, and community that leaving is required to be ‘successful’ (Corbett, 2007; Rönnlund et al., 2018), with policymakers ignoring the validity of aspiring to remain in their communities (Cuervo et al., 2019). There are ongoing tensions in rural communities around managing youth outmigration and concern for the future of those who stay (Alexander, 2023) set against a backdrop of uncertainty around the world concerning political, economic, and environmental instability. Alexander (2023) contends that relational connections in rural communities are important in youth’s decision-making regarding their lives post-school. This paper explores how, in Australia, the institution of the local sports club mediates these tensions, providing a point of stability and connection for their youth.

Australian sports clubs govern local teams (here, Australian Rules Football and netball) that participate in regional competitions and maintain facilities. At all ages, participating in sport as a player, official, volunteer, and/or spectator is a social norm in rural communities (Waitt & Clifton, 2015). By focusing on the role of the club, this paper offers new understandings of how these institutions support young people in post-school transitions.

International literature on rural youth transitions and aspirations has identified that community expectations and a sense of belonging are key influences on post-school decision-making (Alexander, 2023; Gore et al., 2022; Tieken, 2016). It is well-established that peers, family, and friends are critical influences on youth aspirations. Sports clubs in rural communities are a confluence of these factors, but its collective role in youth transitions has not been explored. As socio-economically diverse, inter-generational social institutions, these clubs are well-situated to share and build social capital that assists youth in their transition to early adulthood.

In many countries, there are concerns around rural youth having ‘low’ aspirations and their participation in tertiary education trails their urban counterparts (Ennerberg et al., 2022; Halsey, 2018) despite increasing school completion rates and policy interventions. A contributing factor is that rural youth may lack critical social capital to navigate transitioning to metropolitan living (Kilpatrick et al., 2021) where most universities and ‘successful’ careers are located. Existing literature explores school and employer partnerships, university-led outreaches, and normative discourses encouraging youth to leave (Cuervo, 2016; Kilpatrick et al., 2021). To counter the pressures to leave, Alexander (2022) developed a tri-dimensional model of belonging that included spatial, relational, and career considerations, which shape rural youth aspirations, to use in career guidance. This paper continues such push-back work against metro-normative discourses of ‘success’ by exploring how social capital necessary for participation in tertiary education and/or entering the workforce is circulated through involvement with the sports club.

Using Putnam’s (2000) social capital dimensions of bridging (ties between groups) and bonding (ties within groups), the question: how do rural sports clubs support post-school youth transitions, is addressed. The members of the club are a close group based on cooperation which builds bonding capital while the diversity of people coming through the club facilitates bridging capital accumulation. The findings of this paper offer further understanding of the complex phenomenon of the ‘stay or leave’ dilemma facing rural youth by focusing on the types of support (capitals) encouraged by a specific social institution, the sports club. While the paper reports on an Australian example, the role of a social institution in facilitating the building of social capital in local youth can be considered in other, international contexts with their own locally-relevant institutions (Herbison et al., 2019).