Neuroqueering Digital Youth Work: Reimagining Participation, Inclusion, and Digital Literacy Through a Neuroqueer Lens

Abstract

What does it mean to neuroqueer digital youth work? How might we move beyond rigid expectations of participation, inclusion, and digital literacy to create spaces where neurodivergent and queer young people can engage on their own terms? The objective of this chapter is to initiate a dialogue on these questions, inviting youth workers, young people, researchers, and policymakers into the conversation. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature, practitioner insights, and my own positionality as a researcher and youth worker, I examine how dominant structures in education and youth work often reproduce neuronormative and heteronormative ideals—particularly in the framing of youth digital participation through constructs such as employability, digital literacy, and social integration. Building on Walker's conceptualisation of neuroqueering, I propose a neuroqueer approach to digital youth work as a liberatory practice that centres fluidity, self-determination, and diverse, non-normative modes of engagement.