Time for ‘resilience’: community mediators working with marginalised young people offer a novel approach

Purpose: Since the 2008 financial crisis, state retrenchment has added to the harshness of life for marginalised groups globally. This UK study suggests community activism may promote human capacity and resilience in innovative ways. The purpose of this paper is to address the relationship between non-normative understandings of time and resilience.

Design/methodology/approach: This research paper is based on qualitative study of the work of a third sector organisation based in an urban area in the UK which provides training in mediation skills for community mediators (CMs). These CMs (often former “gang members”) work with young people in order to prevent conflict within and between groups of white British, South Asian and Roma heritage.

Findings: CMs are reflexively developing temporalities which replace hegemonic linear time with a situationally “open time” praxis. The time “anomalies” which characterise the CMs’ engagement appear related to aesthetic rationality, a form of rationality which opens up new ways of thinking about resilience. Whether CMs’ understandings and enactments of resilience can point to broader changes of approach in the delivery of social care is considered.

Practical implications: This paper contributes to critical understandings of resilience that challenge traditional service delivery by pointing to an alternative approach that focusses on processes and relationships over pre-defined outcomes.

Social implications: Hegemonic understandings of time (as a linear process) can delegitimise potentially valuable understandings of resilience developed by members of marginalised communities.

Originality/value: This paper is original in developing a critical analysis of the relationship between resilience and time.