| Popis: |
This article looks into how mentors deal with their biographies and social embeddedness to make sense of their engagement in mentoring before they are matched. It draws on a qualitative investigation carried out during a pilot youth mentoring program for “unaccompanied refugee minors” in Austria. This article reveals how already trained, local adult volunteers actively relate to “family,” “migration” and “previous activities” in their meaning-making. It shows how they negotiate their personal life and existing relationships in the process of turning into a future “godparent.” The discussion of findings against the state of the art leads the way to two heuristic claims: firstly, the study provides grounded arguments for an extension of the conventional mentoring concept on the side of the mentor. Secondly, for a more relational and processual approach towards the mentors’ side, both biographical and social network dimensions need to be integrated in methods and designs of youth mentoring research. |
