At the Margins of Education

Research indicate that in the Nordic welfare states we experience challenges with relatively high educational drop-out rates and young people at risk of not being neither in education nor job. This despite of generally increasing levels of education in society and a high level of formal equality in the educational system. This including generous governmental supported subsidies and possibilities for student counselling etc. Educational mobility is still relatively low and the dropout rate relatively high, especially for the socio-economically challenged pupils and students.
In this presentation, based on a PhD-project in its early stages, the focus will be on at-risk youth in education – or on the edges of education and at risk of dropping out of education.
The Ph.D.- project is based on qualitative research methods and is exploring the perspectives of young people at-risk and their tolded life stories focusing on their educational trajectories. The data is gathered as interviews inspired by ‘The indirect approach’ and field work notes along with conversational interviews using methods inspired by photo voice. The aim is to try to get closer at the young people’s own perceptions and interpretations of their situations and the experienced possibilities they encounter and the barriers they feel confronted with.
The young people’s stories obviously vary a lot, but at the same time there are similarities and corresponding experiences and insight to extract from their stories. Using the German sociologist Andreas Reckwitz the presentation will try to show that in a “Society of singularities” these young people might be both educationally, socially and economically precarious and at risk: Not being able to curate their lives adequately and not being able to meet the demands and norms of a modern accelerating globalised society.