‘Embers, and fragments’: social haunting in youth work, impact measurement and policy networks

Abstract

How do education policy processes and networks operate in sectors that have been chronically defunded? This article discusses elements of contestation and doubt in the context of a policy agenda around impact measurement in youth services in England. Drawing on interviews with policy makers, influencers and critics, it combines analysis of a policy network with theories and methodologies of social haunting, as developed by Avery Gordon, Justine Pors and others. Youth policy, in its present denuded form, is haunted by ghosts of policy past: a mourned tradition of publicly funded, practice-led youth work that refuses to disappear; and spectres of policy yet-to-come: an idealised yet somehow unconvincing future of evidence-based practice and social return on investment. We suggest that engaging with ghosts can enrich understandings of policy making by foregrounding the discomforts that haunt policy networks, questioning the assumed rationality of evidence-based policy and highlighting the contested and interconnected nature of policy and practice futures.