Mette Pless

Stories from the margins of the educational system

The primary educational objective in Denmark is to ensure ‘education for all’, and one decisive logic within educational policy is that young peoples transitions through the educational system and into the labour market should be accelerated and streamlined. This logic presupposes a normal transition with regard to young peoples educational choices and a view of educational choice as ‘rational’ and individual. Drawing on an understanding of educational choice as socially embedded, this article focuses on ‘youth at risk’ in education, post-15 educational choices and educational transitions. The main focus of this article will be the relationship between the subjective narratives of young people and dominant political storylines on education. I shall ask how political storylines on education can be traced in young peoples narratives, and if and how they affect the narratives and transitional processes of the young people in question. I shall argue that the normal transition, which is currently held up as the political ideal, risks further marginalising young people who are already on the periphery of the educational system.

Living on the Periphery of Youth: Young People’s Narratives of Youth Life in Rural Areas

Drawing on theoretical perspectives regarding the importance of place and belonging to a place in understanding young people’s lives as well as broader processes of social change and continuity, this article explores conceptions of youth as experienced—and narrated—by young people living in rural areas. The article analyzes how discourses on urbanism and youth can be traced in young people’s narratives about their communities and their own lives as young people; how these discourses seem to frame the young people’s narratives and how they rearticulate these discourses through their accounts (Davies, 2000). In the article, we thus also focus attention on the cracks and opposing discourses that can be identified in the young people’s narratives, and how they influence their relationship with their local area.