Leaders building relationships with young refugees during a sport project

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to examine how social work students (SWs) attempted to enact social work principles to engage in relationship building with young refugees during a Sport for Development project. The project, ‘U on Board’ was built on the assumption that pleasure and enjoyment in physical activity could contribute to the wellbeing of participants. The project took place at a refugee centre in a Dutch midsized city. We drew on Foucauldian notions of pastoral power and dressage to analyze how SWs applied social work principles to engage in relationship building with participating refugees. The Foucauldian based analysis revealed the SWs built positive relationships with the refugees by applying principles they had learned in their social work education through the disciplining power of dressage and of pastoral power.