Community Servive Learning and the issue of power: University Students' engagement with disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Amsterdam

The VU (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) is increasingly looking for
more opportunities for cooperation between academia and societal
organisations in the form of engaged scholarship and Community Service
Learning. The grassroots organisation VoorUit works with the VU and
other institutions, offering students the chance to assist in providing
community service in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Amsterdam. In this
chapter we show how the initial phase of the project – which focused on
integration (that is, empowering disadvantaged groups through students’
contributions) – shifted toward a more challenging approach questioning
the one-way conceptualisation of engaged scholarship. This led to a limited
experiment to explore different ways that society and academia could
mutually benefit through engagement. We used the frame of discursive
power to discuss and analyse the normalised notions of engagement in
academia. This chapter aims to provide some reflections on the debate
and practice of academic engagement but also furthers the discussion
of integrating Community Service Learning activities in the university’s
curriculum and research agenda.