In this chapter we argue that ideas drawn from existentialist philosophy could buttress youth workers’ vision of professional practice in the area of youth violence and thereby help them respond to this issue in a more meaningful way. We use our data to show how existential needs can form part of the aetiology of violence and lead to nihilistic violence. We then discuss how worker attitudes and practices as well as policy regimes can both prevent and assist youth workers as they seek to support young people to actively re-orientate their sense of self. Finally, by contrasting the work of atheistic existential philosophers like Sartre with Christian existentialists like John Henry Newman, we show how both these world-views might serve to sustain workers in their practice and relationships with young people in the midst of communities where violence persists.

Existential hopelessness and lack of choice

The research participants painted a picture of young people's lives in which existential human needs (such as hope, meaning and purpose) were in deficit or entirely absent. Youth workers we spoke to reported that some young people's sense of having control over their future, or any desire to understand the meaning of their personal reality, seemed to have been stifled, and in some cases extinguished entirely. This, in part, lay behind young people's involvement in crime and violence:

Young people had been brutalised by an environment of constricted opportunities where the option for legitimate pathways through life had been blocked. Some workers felt that this hopelessness was permanent, universal and getting worse.

In many cases young people were set on a path into violence from an early age as a result of familial and community influence, which extinguished any sense of choice over their own lives or future possibilities.