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Journal of Social Work
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Making Organizations Work

Exploring Characteristics of Anti-Oppressive Organizational Structures in Street Youth Shelters

Jeff Karabanow

Dalhousie University, Canada

• Summary: Human service organizations are often viewed by clients as bureaucratic, formal, oppressive and insensitive environments. Through structured interviews with 42 service providers and 65 street youth in Toronto, Montreal and Guatemala, and participant and non-participant observations in all three locations, this analysis explores tenets of antioppressive organizational structures within the youth shelter construct.

• Findings: Anti-oppressive organizations allow for the emergence of meaningful and vibrant community settings by embracing grass-root social development, active participation, a structural analysis of the problem, consciousness raising and social action. These findings can be interpreted as lessons from the field – noting what seems to work best for hard-core and marginalized street youth populations. The current academic discourse concerning notions of anti-oppression has tended to focus upon pedagogy and/or practice; this analysis moves the discussion to a new realm involving organizational behavior. Anti-oppressive organizational structures attempt to build safe and respectful environments for marginalized populations.

• Applications: Such findings can hopefully impact the manner by which social work administrators and practitioners understand service delivery within their particular organizational setting and more specifically, how they conduct meaningful social work within their day-to-day practices.

Key Words: anti-oppression • homeless street youth • human service organizations • youth shelters

Journal of Social Work, Vol. 4, No. 1, 47-60 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/1468017304042420
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