Introduction

This article explores the experiences of young workers in Australian national environmental workfare programs. While government reports and media releases produced a somewhat confected picture of young people marching off to a romantic struggle for the environment, academia has neglected this significant chapter in the Australian histories of workplace relations, environmental management, and youth work.

This paper aims to present a more genuine account of the experiences of young participants in these programs. Informing this project have been questions over the relationship of the programs to climate action; how young workers (including both team members and their supervisors) have understood the purpose of their work; and what were their expectations for the future. It was never the intention, and is beyond the scope of this paper, to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of these programs. However, it is hoped that by documenting some history and sharing the genuine experiences of young workers, it may enhance future responses to any new program proposals.

At the end of 2018, the most recent incarnation of national environmental ‘workfare’Footnote 1 programs, the ‘Green Army’, was terminated, ending a three-decade history in which both the environment and young people have been a combined focus. This paper presents, firstly, how this youth program was misrepresented for political purposes. Secondly, drawing upon Bourdieu (2000, p. 160) and the concept of ‘hysteresis’, this paper reveals how both team supervisors and their young team membersFootnote 2 recruited from the history of Green Army and previous programs have experienced their own versions of the ‘Don Quixote Effect’. Team supervisors, possessing skills and qualifications in the environmental sciences, placed in command of teams of young people, found themselves as ‘accidental youth workers’. Young team members experienced a different series of challenges from their working conditions. This paper summarises their combined experiences and responses.

Literature and Policy Review

Drawing upon policy analysis, personal experience, and literature from the fields of youth studies and environmental sociology, this section considers the application of environmental workfare programs to address perceived challenges of youth ‘at-risk’ and the climate crisis. To do this, it examines the political positions informing, and policies devised to implement, the programs. Finally, it introduces the theoretical framework upon which analysis of the experiences of workers in these programs was conducted.

Workfare programs have been used to extend youth transitions and to cloud the very definition of what it means to be a worker. The portrayal of young people ‘at-risk’ is a long-term project of those in power (Threadgold 2020), and fashioning good citizens out of young people is undertaken by regimes of experts extending the work of the state (Kelly 2000, 2003). Environmental workfare programs, delivered by service providers from the non-government sector, perform this extension. Programs contribute to the construction of the precariat (Standing 2011) by creating liminal spaces between welfare and work. With recent decades seeing a shift for young people in advanced nations away from having relatively short and predictable transitions from school to work (Cuervo & Wyn 2011), these programs contribute to the extension of youth transitions. They have occupied an uncertain space between volunteering, training, salaried employment, and mutual obligation activity. The legislation for the Green Army program even created a new category of worker, a ‘Green Army participant’, with an ambiguous legal status:

Certain persons participating in the Green Army Programme will 18 not be workers or employees for the purposes of various 19 Commonwealth laws (for example, the Fair Work Act 2009). (Commonwealth of Australia - The Social Security Legislation Amendment (Green Army Programme) Bill 2014, Section 38G)

Further, Green Army participants were also not allowed to receive social security benefits if they were receiving a Green Army allowance. The Green Army legislation thus established a separate status in which participants were not considered workers, while being simultaneously ineligible for welfare.

There is no formal history of Australian national environmental workfare programs despite it commencing decades ago. The history provided here draws significantly upon personal experience which is otherwise not readily available. The author was employed over decades in roles associated with the programs including as a supervisor, workplace trainer, and project partner. This included the practical application of policy and guidelines such as the Green Army Programme Guidelines (Australian Government 2015) across a sequence of programs.

The list of programs since the 1990s includes the L.E.A.P. (Landcare Environment Action Program), Green Corps (two periods), the National Green Jobs Corps, and the Green Army. Projects have involved young people in practical actions to address environmental issues. Teams are led by supervisors, usually older than the team members. Eligibility for selection as a team member has varied across different programs with the maximum range extending from 17 to 24 years of age. Most participants have been male with about 30% female. The projects have been undertaken with a general emphasis on conservation and land management and have been a mixture of both physical labour and vocational training. Participation has drawn upon the youth of both urban and regional Australia. As a salaried occupation, often offered to ‘low-skilled’ individuals, such environmental work/training programs have introduced many young people to environmental action. Many professionals now working in the natural resources sector have direct experience as team members or supervisors in these programs.

Concluding well before the summer of 2019–2020 and the COVID-19 crisis, the Green Army may be the last national environmental workfare program to be delivered in Australia. The program was officially launched by the conservative political opposition (the ‘Coalition’) in July 2013 as an Australian Federal Election approached. Soon-to-be Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, had expressed the intention to establish a 15,000-strong ‘standing green army’ in Australia years earlier (The Australian 2010). Within a few years, Prime Minister Abbott was deposed and a new Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, was appointed, after which discussions about the cessation of the Green Army appeared in the media (Coorey 2016). The Green Army never reached Abbott’s target of 15,000 participants. Based upon the number of projects approved (Australian Government 2018), a generous estimate is that the Green Army may have reached 4000 participants at its maximum.

During the development and delivery of the Green Army, its aims and objectives were adjusted by the Coalition. For example, the target of a 15,000-strong ‘standing army’ became a target for 7500 participants and team supervisors in the first 2 years (Australian Government 2017, p. 72). The original ‘Policy for a Green Army’ (Liberal National Coalition 2013a) stated:

The objective of the Green Army is to combat land degradation, clean up our waterways, provide real and practical solutions to cleaning up riverbanks and creek beds, re-vegetate sand dunes, re-vegetate mangrove habitat and a host of other environmental conservation projects. (p.5)

None of these aims or objectives specifically mention a reduction of carbon emissions or other climate targets. However, the Coalition consistently associated the Green Army with climate action. The previous government, led by the Australian Labor Party (ALP), had implemented a package of economic measures collectively known as the ‘Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme’ (CPRS). A significant section of the Policy for a Green Army (Liberal National Coalition 2013a) is devoted to ‘The Choice’ between the Coalition and the incumbent Labor government and was focussed on climate policy. In contrast, the Coalition’s Policy for a Green Army emphasised an action-oriented approach to environmental problems including climate change. Further, in the Coalition’s ‘Direct Action’ climate policy released in 2010, 3 years before the policy for a Green Army, the program was already being nominated to implement the ‘20 Million Trees’ target (Liberal National Coalition 2010, p. 10). This was repeated in the Policy for a Green Army (Liberal National Coalition 2013a, p. 4). Although funded separately, both the Policy for a Green Army and the ‘Direct Action’ policy mention how they ‘complement’ each other. In the Coalition’s 2013 ‘Real Solutions Plan’ (Liberal National Coalition 2013b), the Green Army was attached to climate policy. As one of the ‘Coalition’s top policy priorities’, they nominate:

10. We will take direct action to reduce carbon emissions inside Australia, not overseas – and also establish a 15,000 strong Green Army to clean-up the environment. (p.5)

This wording was echoed in parliament by the Environment Minister, Greg Hunt (Commonwealth of Australia 2014, p. 871). An associated media release (Hunt 2014) was regularly repeated by Coalition members. The Coalition regularly linked the Green Army to present it as an action-oriented response to climate change in contrast to the ALP’s CPRS. Yet, while the Green Army was nominated to ‘clean up the environment’, no specific carbon reduction or other climate change outcomes were specified or quantified.

The conflation of Green Army with climate policy is significant because it underscores how those in both government and opposition, the public, and participants in the program have understood its role in addressing climate change. While the Green Army was used by the Coalition to present the appearance of taking tangible action on climate change, it also presented opportunities for disciplining at-risk youth. The Coalition’s policy emphasised job training, career development, physical health, and connection with nature while presenting Green Army as an alternative to unemployment or as a ‘gap year’ between high school and university. At the political level, an attractive picture was being produced in which the Green Army was fighting climate change and young people were being given opportunities. On the ground, the conflation with climate policy was merely one of many challenges facing participants and testing their dedication to the work.

Theoretical Framework

To explore the experiences of young people in these programs, after considering alternatives, Bourdieu’s social physics and its wide array of concepts emerged as the most appropriate theoretical framework to apply to the data. This is because observations revealed tensions between environmental concerns (from the field of science) and humanitarian concerns (from the field of youth work). As a global physical phenomenon, climate change is affecting the physical world and consequently affects all social fields. For example, while the field of science produces knowledge about the crisis, in the field of economics, the normal ‘rules of the game’ are being questioned. The adage ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’ has been applied by politicians to climate policy. As Bourdieu (1977, p. 169) points out, ‘crisis is a necessary condition for a questioning of doxa’. Crises are disasters but they are also opportunities. Some will see opportunities in the disaster of climate change. This paper introduces an example of how the opportunities of a crisis can be taken or lost.

An environmental workfare project introduces participants to several social ‘games’ or ‘fields’, yet it is not in itself a social field in the Bourdieusian sense: rather, it is a situation established by the interaction of various fields. A project or program is also a setting in which struggles within and between fields can occur. ‘Hysteresis’ is applied by Bourdieu (2000, p. 160) to describe a mismatch between habitus and field. The term ‘hysteresis’ was derived from the disciplines of physics of magnetism and economics for application into social sciences (Elster 1976) to describe a form of lag remaining present in an object or system after the initial causes are removed. In social science, it is during the time lag that agents adjust their habitus, reorienting their trajectory in ways to gain an advantage from the field conditions or, alternatively, choosing to avoid the conditions and not undertake opportunities. Hysteresis should not be confused with the ‘symbolic violence’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992) which might be deployed to highlight differences in cultural capitals between competing agents. In contrast, hysteresis has a potentially positive outcome. It implies a choice of interest to pursue one field over another. In making a choice, agents may encounter the shock of needing to deploy unfamiliar capitals, but they may also encounter potential opportunities arising from the new conditions. Bourdieu describes this mismatch as the ‘Don Quixote Effect’ drawing upon Cervantes’ (1604–1605) tale of a deluded ‘Knight Errant’, self-appointed to restore chivalry to the world:

… in what might be called the Don Quixote effect, dispositions are out of line with the field and with the ‘collective expectations’ which are constitutive of its normality. This is the case, in particular, when a field undergoes a major crisis and its regulations (even its rules) are profoundly changed. (Bourdieu 2000, p. 160)

In the story of Don Quixote, our protagonist embarks on a series of struggles. For example, Quixote engages in a fight against a windmill which he perceived to be a menacing giant. This is the basis of the cautionary phrase of ‘tilting at windmills’. The word ‘quixotic’, meaning to be extremely idealistic, has its etymology in Cervantes. Like Don Quixote, adherents of any world-saving struggle can pursue idealistic aims: environmentalism and youth work are no exception. In Cervantes’ novel, Quixote eventually recognises his adventures as delusional and is left somewhat adrift and jaded. This research project helps to reveal the ways in which in environmental workfare program participants (team supervisors, team members, and also some managers) interpreted their noble adventures.

Methodology

This research project was a combination of auto-ethnography, textual analysis (such as media releases, social media discussion, government policy, Hansard, program and employment guidelines, and program reporting), and qualitative data collection including both focus groups and individuals. This combination produced a case study focussing on participants (both team members and supervisors) in Australia’s national environmental workfare programs. Originally, a research proposal was made to the Australian Government and Conservation Volunteers (the largest Green Army service provider and my employer at the time) to interview team members while the program was in operation. Due to being employed in delivering the program, this would have presented concerns to both my employer and the Australian Government that I was undertaking an independent program evaluation. White (2009) emphasises the ‘inherently political’ nature of evaluative research. It was envisaged that data collection would be conducted with organisational consent under a Memorandum of Understanding to soothe these concerns. While the original research proposal was under development, the Green Army program was terminated, and program participants and service providers (me included) were reminded of our precarious status. Subsequently, the research methodology was adjusted to recruit anyone who had participated in the Green Army or in previous versions of programs. Collection of data for this project concluded as the final Green Army projects were being implemented. Although the termination of the Green Army limited recruitment, I was no longer employed by one of its major service providers, meaning that some potential censorship was avoided.

Recruitment for focus groups and interviews was conducted via key contacts and social media with word of mouth ‘snowballing’ (O'Leary 2010, p. 170) to garner further participation. In total, 19 former team members and 14 team supervisors responded. One respondent had initially been a team member and later became a supervisor. Five of the 14 supervisors also had experience in managerial roles with service providers. The background of respondents spanned across the three decades of history of these programs. While the gender representation of team members reflected program participation (generally 70% male), the representation of supervisors and program managers was mostly female in contrast to program participation rates (similarly male majority). Accessing a fully representative sample of both team members and supervisors was not within the resources of this project. It is likely that those who participated in this research project were likely to have been the more enthusiastic participants willing to share their experiences in the wake of the program.

Focus groups were run first (usually at a venue with food) followed by a selection of individual interviews, thus creating a two-phased study. Individual interviews followed on from the focus groups providing an opportunity to explore issues that may have otherwise been passed over quickly. One female-only focus group was held. Semi-structured interviewing (Bryman 2012) was used throughout, and given the high degree of familiarity between participants and myself with them personally or with their work, initial questions such as ‘tell me about your project’ would expand quickly. Focus groups and interviews were themed to ask participants about their most memorable experiences, whether they had experienced setbacks or resistance, what they saw as their achievements, and their expectations for the personal future and for the future of the world. One question posed the devil’s advocate position of whether we should have conscription for environmental action. This produced polarised responses but no specific result either way. Many respondents assumed that refining future program design was a key aim of the research. It was apparent that, for all interviewees, this was a social occasion, a chance to share some food and to reminisce. Many of the research respondents commented that being involved in this research had been cathartic because of the opportunity to share their experiences openly.

From the analysis of early focus group and interview data, initial themes emerged including human relations to other species and relationships of the team members to each other and to others with which they engaged, such as professional land managers, community groups, and project neighbours. When an iterative process (Gabriel 2006) was applied to subsequent focus groups and interviews and all data was revisited, further, Bourdieu’s concepts emerged. The doxa of specific fields, such as science, economics, and education, were apparent. While many produced what Carfagna et al. (2014) have described as an ‘eco-habitus’, supervisors often provided reflections of a mismatch between habitus and field, aligning with the concept of hysteresis. Participants experienced symbolic violence, such as from their peers towards their employment. They felt the pull of social gravity to return to established trajectories. Most interviewees questioned the illusio of different fields, especially the fields of conservation, science, work, economics, and power, and contributed some sense of disillusion about aspects of their labour. The complexity of Bourdieu’s social physics was illuminated by the accounts of interviewees as focus groups and interviews progressed to the point of data saturation (Singh 2007), and subsequently, this theoretical framework formed the basis for analysis.

By exploring the experiences of young people undertaking environmental work, this project aimed to support them in the struggles that are of interest to them and, thus, aimed to be a form of emancipatory research (O'Leary 2010) in which they were assisted to document and legitimate their experiences. I agree with Weinberg (2006) that such a ‘view from nowhere’ (p.8) is not possible. I am an ‘insider–outsider’ researcher (Kurylo 2016) bringing with it a suite of benefits and complications. I do not make a claim to researcher objectivity. Significantly, this research project was developed to counter the somewhat confected government reporting on programs. For example, when reporting on the Green Army, the Australian Government (2017, p. 21) claimed that 92% of participants reported that their expectations of the program were met. However, this was based on exit surveys with less than a 15% response rate. This research project has provided a genuine opportunity for participants to share their experiences openly. It is worth noting that quotes selected for this paper are generally critical accounts, thus demonstrating key concepts. There were also many positive recollections.

Interviewees’ responses were valuable in addressing the research questions. Firstly, they presented a wider range of experiences than those found in government reporting and media releases. Their comments also demonstrated a nuanced awareness of the relationship (or lack) of their work to climate action and critical insights into climate and youth policy. Their expectations for the future were reflected in tensions between themselves, other participants, and the wider community. The following sections will share how program participants, both supervisors and team members, experienced hysteresis, Bourdieu’s ‘Don Quixote Effect’, in different ways.

The Tale of the Supervisors: From Scientists to Social Workers

A unique perspective was offered through the reflections of team supervisors. Positioned between the team members, project and program management, and the wider community, team supervisors played a pivotal role in the delivery of the programs. Their understanding of competing fields was exaggerated by this mediating role. They demonstrated a strong understanding of many of the dynamics. For example, some had paid specific attention to the political machinations about ‘Direct Action’ and the Liberal Party Policy for a Green Army. Lyn, a supervisor who progressed into a managerial role, explained her interpretation of the government’s intentions:

Lyn (Green Army supervisor / manager): … at the time, it was linked to climate change. Right at the beginning when it started, they linked it to climate change … which fell away very quickly! (laughs)

Supervisors understood that their work was not climate change mitigation. Responses regularly recognised that their work was primarily for biodiversity restoration. Lyn also recognised that the Coalition had attempted to somewhat associate Green Army with climate action. Interviewees in this research project, including both team members and supervisors, were often critical of the motivations of the Coalition government. However, it wasn’t just the lack of climate action that produced dissonance. Supervisors experienced a mismatch as they found themselves without the skills to meet the needs of their young team members. They commonly reported feeling comfortable and well prepared for ecological work such as vegetation management or weed control. However, they were often challenged by the need to undertake social work. Christine explains this challenge:

Christine (Green Army supervisor): … for me the challenge as a conservationist was becoming a social worker and that was, at the start difficult, I didn’t expect the extent of it being so much on the social worker side. … Be on time, be polite, respect each other…. like things that we … sort of you expect them to know … it was really, personally, a jump into cold water for me, like, not fully equipped because as an ecologist I spend lots of time in science and I’ve done community work as well, but not to the extent where you’re really more a social worker, like there were also young people with mental health issues and, yeah, backgrounds, they maybe were beaten by the parents or other things that are quite confronting which you didn’t expect to start… that they open up to you also and tell you things like that…

Christine identified herself as a ‘conservationist’ rather than as a youth or social worker. Supervisors were recruited primarily based on their environmental science qualifications. Yet, they were presented in various forums as experts in both science and social work. During recruitment, there was a stronger focus on recruiting supervisors with ecological experience. Experience in youth work was not considered essential. One service provider’s job description for supervisors highlights this focus:

We are seeking experienced supervisors responsible for supervision, safety, welfare and training of Green Army participants. A minimum of two years experience in bush regeneration and or horticulture is required. Previous experience working with young people and delivering training is preferred but not essential. (Envite 2015)

Team supervisors found themselves as fish out of water: as environmental scientists attempting to be social workers. Yet, while employers were not recruiting supervisors with social work experience, the supervisors were touted as experts in both fields. An example is provided in the Green Army’s final report from the Australian Government (2017):

The role of a team supervisor requires demonstrated skills in youth development, delivering and contributing to training, knowledge in work health and safety policies and excellent people management skills. (p.94)

The Australian Government portrayed supervisors as heroic role models to which team members could aspire:

Contributing to the overall positive experience reported by the participants was the support and enthusiasm of the Green Army team supervisors. Many of the team supervisors were experts in the industry and were able to provide in-depth knowledge on the activities, as well as being role models for the participants. (p.99)

By presenting the supervisors as capable, self-less, and hard-working, the Australian Government deliberately cultivated an archetype of a heroic supervisor. Yet, interview responses from supervisors presented a disparate group of natural scientists struggling to adjust to the social work aspect of their role. Supervisors generally approached their roles expecting to engage in the practicalities of ecological restoration work and came with both institutionalised and embodied capitals in that field. However, few were specifically trained or prepared for delivering human services, as Natasha describes:

Natasha (LEAP supervisor): I think I had a nervous breakdown! … I wasn’t really prepared for that job and probably not properly qualified. I had all the environmental qualifications but not the social side of things … people management … I guess I was attracted more to the working outdoors, doing the weed control and restoring the rainforest rather than the sort of social side of supervising kids and, yeah, I guess that I might’ve expected that the people in the program would be a little more passionate and interested but that wasn’t the case.

The reactions of supervisors to their encounter with their team members’ needs ranged from shock and frustration to compassion and embrace of the challenge.

Unpacking Hysteresis

Simplification of complex concepts into a black box outside of which habitus and field are either matched or mismatched, leading to hysteresis, does little to enlighten our understanding. Bourdieu’s heuristics are worthy of closer examination. The social physics described by Bourdieu are evident in social phenomena, and Bourdieu’s words were readily apparent in the experiences of supervisors. To understand this process, the following passage is provided to describe the physicality of social phenomena constituting hysteresis:

… Habitus is not necessarily adapted to its situation or necessarily coherent. It has degrees of integration – which correspond in particular to degrees of ‘crystallization’ of the status occupied. Thus it can be observed that to contradictory positions, which tend to exert structural ‘double binds’ on their occupants, there often correspond destabilized habitus, torn by contradiction and internal division, generating suffering. Moreover, even if dispositions may waste away or weaken through lack of use (linked, in particular to a change in social position or condition), or as a result of heightened consciousness associated with an effort of transformation (such as the correction of accents, manners, etc.), there is an inertia (or hysteresis) or habitus which have a spontaneous tendency (based in biology) to perpetuate structures corresponding to the conditions of production. (Bourdieu 2000, p.160)

Almost as if it were written for these situations, the phenomena identified by Bourdieu were apparent in the responses from supervisors. In the section following, key concepts from this passage describing social physics will be italicised to highlight their presence in the experiences of supervisors. Firstly, supervisors described a reflexive process in which their degrees of integration with the field of science were unwound as a new status was occupied. They often classified themselves as originally coming to the program with categories such as ‘conservationist’ or ‘environmental scientist’. Yet, attachment to these identities was challenged. With the assistance of an external eye, Jasmine comes to the realisation that her status had changed. Her degrees of integration into the field of social work were increased by an interaction with her Mum:

Jasmine (Green Army casual supervisor): … I remember talking to my Mum … I was just saying ‘these are the challenges this week with getting these young people onto a team’ and she turned and looked at me and she goes, ‘oh, my God, I raised a social worker!’ My mum’s in social work…. and she was like ‘oh, wow, I knew you’d become a social worker!’ ‘Oh, my God, that’s what I’m doing, I’m doing case management for these kids!’

In these programs, the fields of environmental work and social work can be in competition. Supervisors found themselves pulled in a structural double bind: a physical sense of being torn between the demands of different fields. Members of this group viewed the environmental crisis as real and embraced the opportunity to take practical action. However, they regularly claimed that this was not shared by all of those in their charge. Supervisors were challenged by the varying levels of enthusiasm for the work present in their teams and by the requirements just to get their members to be productive. The structural double bind between ecological work and social work surfaced:

Mandy (supervisor): … and you’re very sympathetic initially, you give them the benefit of the doubt but then it becomes, you know, a new … a new one every second day and it just gets very difficult to know how to handle them at times … because you don’t have all day there to be the psychologist and try to work out their lives, you’re trying to get some work done as well …

The programs also presented issues of demarcation within the conservation sector. The Green Army program and the ‘Landcare’ program were in direct competition for government funding (Lockie 2013). Lyn senses the ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ feeling of the structural double bind emanating from multiple sources:

Lyn (Green Army supervisor / manager): There was the funding being pulled from Landcare and the work being pulled… which didn’t actually happen … I mean some people claim that it impacted their business … there was a lot of scepticism from environmental groups, environmentalists, and from bush regeneration … a lot of bush regen companies were… still aren’t happy about Green Army “taking all the work” [Lyn makes the sign of inverted commas as if quoting] and green groups weren’t happy because you were essentially getting untrained people to do conservation work and social rights activists weren’t happy because you were getting untrained people and paying them less than minimum wage …

However, when it came to working with the teams, an effort of transformation could be applied. In Kayla’s case, a caring disposition and some existing embodied capitals such as literacy are deployed to assist team members. The caring disposition is common across both the field of environmental science and the field of social work:

Kayla (Green Corps supervisor): … I arrived there and I’m getting them to fill in the paperwork and I’m getting a lot of attitude and resistance … but what I didn’t realise is that the resistance is coming from people who didn’t know how to read or write … I’d never experienced a seventeen year old not being able to read or write … so it never occurred to me that they couldn’t do that and … so, once we realised that’s what it was, it was … ‘cool, that’s easy, that’s fine, I’ll read it to you, I can read it to you, that’s fine’ …

For most supervisors, a transformation was made in response to the conditions in which they found themselves. Managers accounted for how they assisted with the transformation of their supervisors so that they could move from environmental to social work. Yet, the tendency to return with inertia to previous conditions was evident for some as recounted by Simone:

Simone (Green Army & Green Corps supervisor): … I just love being outdoors, and I love all different age groups. I admit, at the moment, I’m probably a bit put off with that seventeen to twenty-four age group … being outdoors, propagating plants is my love…

For Simone, the gravity of her previous work in plant propagation beckoned. She remained attracted to nature, but her energy to continue working with youth had been depleted.

The accounts of team supervisors revealed that their primary interest in supervising a project was to progress within the conservation industry. It was during the delivery of the projects that they became aware of the social needs of their team members. Subsequently, they attempted to adapt and apply new skills. Stimulated by the requirements of their role, supervisors often shifted their attention—not merely because they were being paid to do the job, but because they reported a genuine wish to alter the life courses of their team members.

In contrast, the team members interviewed did not express a similar sense of being a fish out of water. Team members recounted being generally comfortable outdoors and engaging with other species. This could be described as a form of eco-habitus (Carfagna et al. 2014; Haluza-DeLay 2008). However, in a similar way to Don Quixote’s eventual realisation that his quest was an illusion, team members, faced with a series of setbacks, also experienced anguish. In response, they abandoned idealistic notions and adopted a pragmatic perspective on their situation.

The Tale of the Team Members: A Double Language of Disinterest

Like their supervisors, team members also critiqued the association of the Green Army with climate policy. They may have been young (some were not even of voting age—18 in Australia), yet there was a ready scepticism about the government’s motivations to implement Green Army. An example was provided by Rodney:

Rodney (Green Army team member): [referring to Green Army] … it just seemed like ‘Direct Action’ putting in place of the carbon tax, I kinda saw it as more reducing the unemployment statistics.

Moving beyond a discussion of climate policy, Rodney cynically suggested that the primary point of the program was to reduce the unemployment rate. The accounts of team members presented a growing disillusionment that their work was not climate mitigation, not always appreciated, and that their enthusiasm for the work was not always matched by their teammates. Some described cautioning comments from worksite neighbours, ridicule from peers, or disparaging comments in the media:

Kerri (Green Army team member): I read an article about Green Army that it was saying how bad it was and we’re not educated … we’re just doing more harm than good … that we were just going out and you know stomping and making a mess and not really doing any good …

Several team members recounted a sense of stigma about being in the program because of its poor reputation and its similarity to mutual obligation programs for the unemployed. They recounted that, sometimes, the work was poorly planned or observed the remnants of failed previous projects. A series of barriers to their own work emerged:

Murray (Green Army team member): Our plants were vandalised plenty of times, mate. We had a lot of times … that the work that you did the day before was undone by kids, I’m guessing, and the odd Council fella would just run over the stakes and the bags and the plant because he couldn’t be bothered going around it.

Several comments even described suspected forms of sabotage coming from fellow teammates. Arlo and Steele provided an example:

Arlo (Green Army team member): They’d work really hard to purposely break the tools.

Steele (Green Army team member): … Bunnings (hardware store) would be at least half an hour…

Arlo: … the whole team would have to pack up, make sure the trailer’s locked and we would have to pile into the troopy … and you’d get to like ‘sweet, I get to sit down’

In the face of these setbacks, team members lost energy for their work. In Arlo’s account, he reconciles the problem by going along with the resistance and enjoying having a rest. In other examples, exasperation developed as questions over the merit of the work arose. Biodiversity restoration can require constant maintenance effort sometimes leading to a Sisyphean experience:

Felicity (Green Army team member): … it was like endless … but it was swampy, stinky, really, really hot and we had to go into our gumboots and go in deep and throw all the water hyacinth out … it felt pointless that one. That made me feel a bit ‘ugh, God, do we have to go do this?’

Interviewees often expressed frustration about the lack of activity by fellow team members, referring to them as lazy or malingering and claiming that their peers were only motivated by money. Yet, despite these difficulties, interviewees regularly expressed an appreciation of their project experience and a willingness to continue within the conservation sector. This may be understood through the quote, ‘without being rational, social agents are reasonable’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, p. 130). By completing a complex manoeuvre, they reconciled the anti-economy in which the field of cultural production is the economic world reversed (Bourdieu 1983). Subsequently, these young workers were able to value nature and conservation while earning money, thus producing a ‘double language of disinterest’ (Threadgold 2015, p. 158). In this way, they could criticise their peers for being motivated by money while simultaneously admitting to it themselves. A frank reflection was provided by three team members during a focus group:

Adam (Green Army team member): I hate myself for saying this. I kind of don’t want to be recorded for saying it, but it was for money.

Jai: For money?

Adam: Money, yeah, of course, it was a job.

Kerri (Green Army team member): Yeah, hell yeah.

Bruce: That’s what I said as well.

Adam: I was interested … after I found out what it was, but I didn’t find out what it was until I went to the interview. I did the interview without even knowing what the job is. It was like ‘oh, why are you interested in conservation?’ Oh, man, all those years for not studying for tests at high school really came into play there. ‘Conservation’s great, mate, it’s like preserving things for the next generation!’

In this example, the three team members all confessed to being motivated by money. Adam admitted to developing a belated interest in conservation after ensuring his financial needs. Regularly throughout their interviews, young team members shared a contradictory contempt for those who had been motivated by money to enrol in their position while accepting that it was one of their own motivations. Similarly, they sensed that they, too, were held in poor regard by others for doing low-paid and low-status work. This manoeuvre helped them to resist being double bound. It also offered a rational response to counter any internal quixotic ideation of their work as some form of heroics or valour. Consequently, team members presented a different form or phase of hysteresis to the team supervisors manifesting as pragmatism.

Overall, the combination of competing interests, criticism from the broader public, resistance within the teams, stigmatisation of the program, and overwhelming work led to a general lack of solidarity amongst teams. As teams dispersed, they lost contact with each other. For the most part, few of the participants in the program, even in small regional towns, knew of the whereabouts of their former workmates.

Discussion

Should the climate crisis continue and worsen, today’s young people will be increasingly faced with managing a series of dilemmas. Environmentalism is a moral discourse (Horton 2004) rendering it replete with contradictions and offering abundant opportunities for its adherents to become disillusioned. The ‘Don Quixote Effect’ is likely to emerge across various examples of environmental struggles as the challenges continue and intensify.

Embarking on the moral crusade to defend the environment is a struggle without end, and there are many points at which disillusionment can emerge. For example, when one considers a plant species to be a weed and thus ‘matter out of place’ (James in Douglas 2002, p. 165), it can be an enlightening addition of knowledge or a burdensome sense of foreboding of invasion by the profane. This paradox is known to ancient monks as ‘the gift of tears’ (Burton-Christie 2011, p. 29) implying that an appreciation of nature is accompanied by the grief experienced upon it being harmed. The pursuit of purifying nature from exotic species or litter is prone to grief. The ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ (Hardin 1968) is another dilemma typified by appreciation, commodification, and, eventually, the loving of natural values to death. In response, ecological restoration work can be a means to compensate for the damage done to biological systems occasioned by processes such as colonisation (Almassi 2017). However, many applications of conservation, such as the dedication of wilderness and exclusion of indigenous groups from established practices, can reproduce racism, classism, and colonialism (Cooper 2023; Langton 1996), clashing with the crusades of others. Another contradiction facing young workers is the jobs-environment dilemma (Hoffmann and Paulsen 2020) of seeking ethical employment commensurate with principles of sustainability. Potential employers, such as conservation groups, often enter Faustian bargains with extractive industries in pursuit of revenue (Adams 2017).

To these, many contradictions can now be added to the findings from this research: that the physical sciences may have a problem of dealing with humanity. The ways in which the Don Quixote Effect manifested, for both team members and for their supervisors, illuminate tensions between fields. While there is a political shift to prioritise ‘STEM’ (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education in Australia (Duffy 2020; Education Council 2015; Tehan and Andrews 2020), it has emerged in these environmental workfare settings that there is a challenge for professional scientists to have a better understanding of human needs. If Australian education systems are going to produce more scientists while neglecting their ability to support people, then this has significant consequences for implementing this ‘STEM’ agenda.

If Green Army had not ceased due to funding cuts, then risk management would most likely have suspended the program: cramming a team of ten young people into the back of a troop carrier in pursuit of biodiversity restoration during the COVID-19 pandemic would have been difficult to justify. We may be witnessing the end of over three decades of episodic national environmental youth workfare programs in Australia. However, should calls once again emerge for nation-state responses engaging young people in environmental work, perhaps an ‘Australia Corps’ or similar, or even a new incarnation emerging abroad, then lessons from Cervantes might help to inform their design, for example, how participants are recruited, trained, and rewarded. Similarly, for youth workers, there is a lesson to be gained that engaging in the noble struggles of youth work can also lead to disillusion whether by appropriation in the political field to pursue other agendas or by encountering less than enthusiastic responses to one’s zeal. For young people, remaining stoic in the face of adversity is one of Don Quixote’s talents to be embraced, something which may become increasingly necessary given what the future may hold.