ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters have foregrounded young people’s powers. In this chapter, I more fully trace the contexts of the emergence of these powers and the limits and constraints on young people’s horizons. Although this is not reductive, in this chapter I want to explore some examples of how the young people in the schools are positioned in ways that constrain and enable their social relationships, and consider how they, and the schools in which they were being taught, were positioned in wider socio-economic contexts. The lively ethnographies of the previous chapters, the wonderful and enchanting and sometimes troubling and difficult, troubled and traumatised, personalities and subjectivities of the last few chapters are not equally positioned in relation to their access to capitals (economic, social and cultural) and potential future horizons; from the aspirations for their education and future lives to the actual economic and educational opportunities in their area, these can be vastly different even at very small scales. This chapter puts the capital back in social and emotional capital to reflect upon the socio-spatial contexts of young people’s emergence and how these can constrain and enable their horizons. How young people’s sociality is facilitated or constrained by the material and socio-spatialities of schools is analysed. By focusing on two schools in depth, some reflections on the ways that schools and the children within them are positioned in relation to broader institutional, political, social, cultural powers and resources are analysed.
