INTRODUCTION

This book is about young black people’s educational experience and how they work to transform school ‘failure’. It is set in the United Kingdom (UK) and is concerned with how young people manage, survive and recovered from this earlier school ‘failure’ after monumental personal effort. We describe and examine the resourcefulness of young black people in forging their futures and how the notion of ‘aspirational capital’ (Yosso, 2005) promotes resilience and a ‘culture of possibility’. The role of community organisations, family, kinship and friends are explored in overcoming the process of ‘school failure’. The particular representation of black young people referred to throughout the book relates to young people of African descent throughout the diaspora. In the UK African-Caribbean people, that is people of African-Caribbean origin or descent and family heritage, are the third largest and most instantly recognisable migrant community in the UK (Owen, 1977; Goulbourne, 2002). Similarly, within the US the term is usually taken to denote people of African-American ethnic heritage.