ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of mainstream pupils as inclusion gatekeepers, using their accounts and those of the pupils with special needs. It is argued that the mainstream pupils’ accounts resist conventional binary divisions, for example, disabled/able-bodied; normal/deviant; or integrated/segregated, which fix the identity of pupils with special needs and place them either in or out of mainstream as a once-and-for-all event. Instead, identification and placement were continuous processes, liable to change at any moment within the ambivalences, contradictions and oscillations of the pupils’ discourses.
