Precarious Pro-school Positions: Boys and Schooling in a Stigmatized Urban Area

Abstract

In recent decades, differences in school performance have increased considerably in Sweden, creating a growing number of students, especially boys in disadvantaged urban areas, who are ineligible for upper secondary school. A recurring explanation for boys’ poor school performance is an anti-school culture and boys’ lack of interest in school and learning. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, this study aims to scrutinize how boys attending a compulsory school, in which many of the students lack eligibility for upper secondary school, comprehend and relate to their schooling. The results show that the boys’ backgrounds and experiences, their parents’ precarious work situations, and the violence in their neighbourhood do not necessarily contribute to an anti-school culture. On the contrary, the structural difficulties that surround the boys appear in their narratives as conditions contributing to a positive attitude towards schooling.

Introduction

Differences in school performance have increased considerably in Sweden, creating a growing number of students who fail to meet the eligibility requirements for upper secondary school (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2012, 2018). ¹ In the last two decades, the number of ninth-grade students who are ineligible, which means that they lack sufficient qualifications to continue at upper secondary school, has doubled from 8% to 16%, and there is a clear structural pattern contributing to school failures. In some schools in disadvantaged areas, 60%–70% of students lack eligibility (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2019). Socio-economically, students with a migrant background and parents with a low level of education are the ones primarily affected. Boys are somewhat more likely to be ineligible than girls (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2019). These differences between schools are related to housing segregation and growing school segregation in that students are increasingly separated according to their background (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2012, 2020). Surveys by the international PISA and Swedish National Agency for Education repeatedly also show that schools fail to compensate for growing socio-economic gaps and that the importance of students’ family background tends to increase (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2013, 2018; Gustafsson & Yang Hansen, 2018).

Youth, especially boys, from stigmatized urban schools in large cities have become the presumed ‘failures’ in the current Swedish school system. Schools and students in disadvantaged areas are often stigmatized and demonized in public discourse as problematic and disorderly (Gustafsson, 2006; Lucey & Reay, 2002; Reay, 2007; Sernhede, 2011). Young boys from these areas are often characterized as violent, an ethnic ‘other’ and low-performing (Jonsson, 2007; Lucey and Reay, 2002). As Jonsson (2014) notes, the ‘rowdy boy’ category is often taken for granted regarding boys’ underachievement. Furthermore, the ‘rowdy boy’ category often refers to ‘immigrant’ boys from poor areas (Jonsson, 2015). A parallel discussion in the debate on Swedish public school performance about these boys focuses on order and discipline. A recurring justification by the poor schools is that these boys lack codes and control (Hammarén et al., 2015).

In the search for explanations on why many students at schools in disadvantaged areas lack eligibility for upper secondary school, housing and school segregation, students’ social background, and parents’ educational level are of central importance (Lundqvist, 2010; Lundahl et al., 2017). A Swedish study has also noted that the self-degradation that results from segregation and poverty influences school grades (Runfors, 2003). Furthermore, research has highlighted the so-called neighbourhood effect—how factors in the local setting outside of school affect students’ and teachers’ pedagogical relationship alongside students’ relation to schooling (Gustafsson et al., 2017; Kearns & Parkinson, 2001). Apart from social factors, systemic factors such as ‘free school choice’ have also increased school segregation (Ambrose, 2016; Trumberg, 2011).

For several decades, there have been discussions about boys’ underachievement (Kimmel, 2010; SOU, 2009). The debate about boys has been intense in the UK, among other places, including Sweden, for a long time (Francis, 1999; Öhrn, 2014). In research and public debate, the question has been described as the ‘boys’ crisis’ and how they become the losers of the educational system (Arnesen et al., 2008; Griffin, 2000; Kimmel, 2010). An additional focus has been on gender construction, including gender differences in school performance and notions of ‘laddish behaviour’ (Francis, 1999). In some contexts, it has been presented as if girls’ success has occurred at the expense of boys who have suffered from the alleged feminization of education and the lack of male teachers and role models (Francis, 1999; Jonsson, 2014). Boys and girls are thus presented as two clearly defined and homogeneous groups with their different needs and approaches to learning. A recurring explanation for boys’ poor school performances is an anti-school culture among boys and their lack of interest in school and learning.

In this article, we focus on the students’ narratives and perspectives with boys attending a school [the Birch School ² ] in a disadvantaged and stigmatized urban area [Sea Valley ³ ] of Gothenburg. Given the above presentation as a backdrop, our study aims to scrutinize how boys attending a compulsory school, in which many of the students lack eligibility for upper secondary school, comprehend and relate to their schooling. How do male students describe their relationship to education and future prospects? What subject positions about schooling are constructed in their narratives? There is an urgent need to scrutinize and reconceptualize anti-school culture in disadvantaged neighbourhood schools; it is a topic surrounded by moralistic assumptions and normative explanations. In relation to the structural patterns in the educational system and the symbolic demonization of specific (male) students, this study will address how we may understand what role schools in disadvantaged urban areas play and the challenges attributed to it. Further, we shed light on how boys in these schools position themselves in relation to schooling.

Research on Boys and Schooling

The issue of boys and schooling has a long history in academic research and brings us back to the seminal work of Paul Willis’ Learning to Labour (1977) and the concept of anti-school culture he developed. Willis analysed education as part of the process through which the social reproduction of inequalities evolves by following a group of boys from a lower working-class area in the UK and their everyday life at school. Willis described how the boys (‘the lads’) challenged the teachers and the school order and developed a nonconformist anti-school culture. Instead of gaining merits, they valued and identified themselves with manual labour and their parents’ working-class backgrounds. With relatively secure futures—which characterized industrial England during the 1970s—awaiting them and with a strong union and working-class solidarity, the lads in Willis’s study never thought it important to engage with the school. Willis (2004) addressed his work 25 years later. He concluded that the anti-school culture he described previously could not explain the role of education in the post-industrial society, where manual labour was declining. School and education have become more important and attained a more prominent position in the so-called knowledge society compared to previous decades. Research also shows that education has become an increasingly crucial factor for young people’s life chances and opportunities for work (SOU, 2017, p. 35).

Since Willis’ study, the theory of a class-based male anti-school culture has somewhat detached itself from his work and spread as a more general and occasionally intersectional understanding of a gendered anti-school culture in boys’ schooling and learning. It has done so without sharing his class analysis, collective resistance, and cultural production practices.

Today, a general understanding of anti-school culture among boys, or not being as successful as girls in school, relates to the notion that engagement in school is not equivalent to the performance of normative masculinity (Swain, 2005; Jonsson, 2014). Being a popular boy within the peer group is more important than schoolwork it is argued, and engagement in school risks undermining this social status. However, current studies on boys and schooling have nuanced the picture somewhat. Asplund and Pérez Prieto (2018) showed that working-class young men engage differently in reading. For example, through the use of multimodal texts, not at least outside school, the boys constructed alternative and softer masculinities, thus challenging the dominant narrative of working-class masculinity.

Other studies observed a middle ground for boys to combine their studies with their position as boys with a committed but relaxed relationship to learning. These studies show that boys are keen to get good grades and perform in school, but only if it appears they do so without much effort (Frosh et al., 2002; Nyström, 2012). Instead, it should appear as if their grades reflect their inherent ability and talent. In contrast, performing well as a girl, and making an effort to do so, appears to be accepted and appreciated, even expected, and more in line with notions of femininity and their position as a girl in school (Holm & Öhrn, 2014).

The findings of effortless achievements by male students have contributed to a broader understanding of boys’ performance in school. Yet, as Jonsson (2014) and Rosales (2010) have highlighted, the very existence of an anti-school culture is rarely questioned but often taken as an explanation for boys’ underachievement in school. By not challenging this normative point of departure, we risk maintaining stereotypical gender roles (Nyström, 2012). For example, girls have tended to be blamed for boys’ poorer results; some have argued that school is not appealing enough for boys (Francis, 1999).

It is important to note that a focus solely on gender, school results and attitudes about studies risks other vital aspects being overshadowed. Those include class, ethnicity/race and social background (Gustafsson & Yang Hansen, 2017). Moreover, explaining boys’ underachievement due to ‘laddishness’ or ‘problematic students’ contributes to the individualization of a structural phenomenon (Francis, 1999; Nyström, 2012). To move beyond the risk of an individual methodology and social reduction, an intersectional understanding of how class, gender and place interact is thus essential (see Jonsson, 2014, 2015).

Theoretical and Methodological Considerations

In analysing the students’ positions and relation to school and education, concepts such as precariousness, subject positions, and resistance regarding both discursive and material conditions are relevant in understanding how students value schooling (Ahmed, 2007; Foucault, 1976/2002). The student’s ‘subject positions’, ‘future prospects’ or ‘schooling’, for example, refer to discursive conditions, such as designations and categorization processes linked to othering and territorial stigmatization (Spivak, 1985; Wacquant, 2008a) alongside student’s material conditions, school and neighbourhood (Ahmed, 2007). Power structures such as gender, class, ethnicity/race and place are pivotal for subject positions, experiences, strategies, social stratification, precariousness and resistance.

The territorial stigmatization that affects specific disadvantaged neighbourhoods, such as Sea Valley, where Birch School is located, is primarily driven by negative stereotypical representations of these areas as dangerous and characterized by criminality and social problems (Wacquant, 2008a, 2008b: p. 115). This has resulted in a ‘symbolic demonization’ of the neighbourhoods, for instance, by socio-geographically targeting them as ‘vulnerable areas’. Therefore, the stigmatization affects the place, but it also affects the everyday life of people in these areas and their relationship to others in and outside of their neighbourhoods. The stigmatization is also related to the process of othering driven by notions of class, gender and ethnicity. People from these areas are often viewed as essentially different from the rest of society (Spivak, 1985; Jensen, 2011). This concept can explain how the other is identified through stereotypical representations and the distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

The processes of stigmatization and othering—and their relation to place, class and ethnicity/race—affect the schools and the students in Sea Valley and other neighbourhoods alike. Previous research has, for instance, shown how schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods can contribute to a feeling of being a second-class citizen and that young people do not necessarily view education as an obvious first step in a future educational trajectory (Sernhede, 2011). Yet, others have shown how schooling, despite alienation in relation to the rest of society and not necessarily seeing education as a future path, can create a sense of belonging and being part of a community (Beach & Sernhede, 2011; Stattin et al., 2019).

This article is based on an ethnographic study (Emerson et al., 2011). Ethnography is a way of understanding how and why people create order and meaning in their everyday lives. It is combined with an interest in showing patterns, structural conditions and symbolic dimensions in daily routines and practices that are often not subjected to analysis by the actors themselves (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995/2007; Jeffrey & Troman, 2004). The fieldwork was conducted over one school year by the first author, who spent approximately one to two days a week with students in the eighth and ninth grades at the Birch School, Gothenburg. In each grade, there were two classes, with about 20 students in each class, resulting in a total of about 80 students. Out of these, 21 participated in the interviews, 12 boys and 9 girls. The students were between 14 and 16 years of age, and those who were interviewed were 15 or older. Some students, around 20 in total, played a more prominent role in the observations due to the relationships that developed during the fieldwork. Among these, there were slightly more male than female students, and this group included both those who performed well in school as well as those students who struggled with their schoolwork. The fieldwork did not deliberately focus on a specific group of students (e.g., those that adopted a positive attitude towards schooling). Over the course of a year, it was possible to develop rather close relationships with key informants and a sense of the students’ perceptions about school and education. Most of the students were enthusiastic about participating in the study. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that boys who resist school or find it irrelevant are more reluctant to participate in research about schooling, hence influencing the results of the study (cf. Bengry-Howell & Griffin, 2012). Participatory observations took place in classrooms, during the lunch hour and in the schoolyard after school. During the observations, informal conversations became part of the fieldwork, these emphasized the students’ interactions; informal discussions took place during and outside of lesson hours.

Observations were recorded in the form of field notes, including personal reflections, and later transcribed in a process that included personal reflections and ideas. In addition to field notes, interviews with students were an essential part of the data. Most interviews were conducted individually, but some took the form of group interviews with two or three students. Each interview lasted between 45 and 90 minutes, and all interviews were transcribed verbatim. The choice of school was based on current statistics regarding grades and eligibility for upper secondary school. At the time of the ethnographic observations, which were conducted over the 2013–2014 school year, Birch School was one of the lowest-performing schools in Gothenburg. Since then, the schools’ results have shown some variation over the years, but it is still counted among the same group of schools, all in disadvantaged areas, that assume the lowest positions in the rankings. The findings from this study are also confirmed by an ongoing study ⁴ with ninth-grade students in similarly low-performing schools. This study is based on the Swedish Research Council’s ethical guidelines (Swedish Research Council, 2017). All participants have been informed of the aim of the research and their choice to participate through continuous dialogue and discussion with both students and teachers during the fieldwork. All names and information that could in any way be identified have been anonymized.

The analysis is based on a narrative approach that comprises the participants’ speech and actions, as all actions relate to a discursive dimension. The narrative analysis focuses on how people use culturally connected narratives in their communication and construction of reality (Daiute & Lightfoot, 2004). Our attention is directed towards the relationship between young people’s stories and a societal, cultural and spatial context. What people do and say cannot be understood beyond the narratives surrounding them. The narrative analysis also aims to disclose how these linguistic repertoires contribute to understanding the world, social stratification and the (re)production of structural conditions. As narrative is considered the analytical foundation, that is, the path to how the world is perceived and understood, the material/physical dimension is also scrutinized through narratives about these material things. Narratives are studied as examples of more general interpretive repertoires. Furthermore, this approach helps bridge the micro–macro dichotomy, as language refers simultaneously to the structural and personal levels.

Positioning Oneself as a Committed Student

The popular discourse about male students in disadvantaged urban areas has become synonymous with the ‘worst in class’ (Jonsson, 2014). He is described as a carrier of chaos, troublemaker and failure. Due to this discourse and against the background that about half of the students at the Birch School (and similar schools in disadvantaged urban areas in Sweden) do not become eligible for upper secondary school, one could imagine that the boys were not interested in or engaged with their studies and that they practised resistance towards their teachers or the school. Admittedly, the boys at the Birch School seemed to be somewhat more expressive and verbally outspoken than the girls and often received more reprimands from teachers. However, the girls occasionally acted oppositional (cf. Jackson, 2006). What emerged, above all, among the boys was their involvement in school and studies. This can be illustrated by how the boys talked about tests and studying:

One afternoon, when the school day is over for most students and it echoes empty in the corridors, Ali, Mirac and Faysal stand by their lockers in the corridor. They have just had a test in mathematics and are now talking about grades and how many mistakes they think they’ve made. They continue to talk more generally about what grades they have in different subjects and start to compare with each other. Ali picks up his phone and enters the internet-based platform that the school uses for communicating tasks and results with the students and finds his assessments. Proudly, he shows one from civics and says that he likes the civics teacher Eva and that he has good grades in her classes. ‘Are you coming to practice tonight?’ Ali asks Mirac, as they both play in the local football club. ‘We’ll see. I’m going home to study now,’ he answers. ‘Are you going to study now?!’ Ali asks, with what can be perceived as a slightly teasing tone and a smile. ‘I always study.’ Mirac replies with a light-hearted laughter. ‘He has no life,’ Faysal adds with a smile.

For Ali, Mirac and Faysal, test results and grades are expressed as important in everyday life at school. Conversely, it appears that what they perform on tests and what they get for grades in different subjects is a source of comparisons, discussions, pride and status—yet with a tender awareness that it might not be expected of them, hence the joking. These narratives problematize the idea that boys’ projection of masculinity in school is not compatible with academic success (Francis, 1999). Ali’s way of proudly displaying his assessments and declaring that he likes one of the teachers does not seem to jeopardize his position or status in the school; on the contrary, he presents it as a source of admiration.

Mirac also seems to prioritize schoolwork over the possible investment in normative masculinity that football training might represent, indicating that being a boy and studying are not mutually exclusive positions. Not doing what is typically expected of a guy his age could weaken Mirac’s position as a boy in school and his peer group (Holm & Öhrn, 2014). However, when Ali questions why Mirac should study instead of joining the afternoon football training, it is done with a certain teasing playfulness. Although they joke about it, there is nothing in the conversations between Mirac, Ali and Faysal indicating that Mirac is losing status. When Mirac talks about himself in a self-reflexive way, as someone who ‘always studies’, and Faysal describes Mirac’s lack of life, it occurs in a playful, not mean, way. The three express a commitment to their studies, which they commit to before the exams to pass the tests.

The students’ involvement in school was also evident in the classroom. A lack of calm characterizes some classes. At times, teachers had to spend a reasonable amount of time creating a learning environment, but many of the students were involved and seemed happy to participate in the discussions. The example below is from the students’ last social studies class for the autumn semester.

The lesson is about to end when the teacher, Eva, lets Aftonbladet’s [Swedish tabloid] website light up the board at the front of the classroom. ‘Yesterday, there were two big things. What then?’ she asks, addressing the class. ‘Mandela’s funeral,’ Rasheed replies quickly. It is obviously a topic that interests the students, and many of them are now engaged and raising their hands or answering straight out. ‘What country did he come from?’ Eva continues. ‘South Africa,’ Elias, Rasheed and Ali answer simultaneously. They are so quick that Eva asks them to wait a bit so that the others have time to answer as well. However, the conversation in the classroom continues at the same pace. ‘He fought without violence,’ says Nasir. ‘Wrong,’ Rasheed interrupts, ‘by force, too.’ ‘He wanted blacks to have the same rights,’ Salam explains when Eva gives her the floor. ‘All power to the people!’ Yahye exclaims, smiling and looking back at Rasheed’s place, who meets his gaze with a faint but affirmative nod. ‘Who had Mandela as a role model?’ Eva asks, ‘Zlatan’ [famous Swedish football player], it comes quickly from Ali, and his smile underlines the playfulness in the answer. ‘Mahatma Gandhi,’ Yahye says right after. The commitment and the quick remarks continue.

Before the lesson ends, they also have time to talk about the Nobel Party, the second news, but without it creating the same discussion. The themes around Mandela are met with commitment from the students, and it appears to be a topic to which they can relate.

Raising a hand and participating in classroom discussions are signs of students’ commitment and study motivation. The students, not least of all the boys’ participation during the lesson are apparent. A study by Nyström (2012) found that it was important for high-performing male students to achieve good grades, but this would occur without them appearing to be too involved in their schoolwork. At the Birch School, however, the students are engaged, and the conversational climate in the lesson seems open as they dare to expose themselves as engaged. The somewhat playful tone should not be understood as an expression of resistance, like Willis (1977), when he describes how the joke enables the boys in his study to distance themselves from the school and the teachers collectively, but instead, as a way of communicating that promotes relationships in the classroom both between students and between students and teachers (cf. Lund, 2015).

The Pizza Baker as Symbolic Dystopia

During the fieldwork, we found no expressed contradictions when discussing the relationship between being a boy and engaging oneself in studies. Instead, the school is described as a possible investment in one’s future. In an interview, Rasheed was asked if it was silly to study, to which he replied: ‘No, no, that is not the case. It’s the key to your future’. At the end of the final semester of elementary school, Rasheed described how he faltered between despair and hopefulness before the final grades, as he risked not being eligible for upper secondary school. He clearly stressed the importance of education. At the same time, Rasheed could also be positioned as a slightly ‘laddish’ student, as he skipped classes sometimes, did not agree with all teachers and opposed some of them. He described how some teachers favour other students and think little of him, which contributed to him losing motivation. ‘It feels like they do not want me to succeed’, he explained. However, his role as the oppositional or, perhaps, an unsuccessful student is not something Rasheed wants to be associated with, nor does the position make any sense about a common culture of resistance among the students we have met.

The notion that education and one’s personal merits are essential components of one’s future predominates among the students we meet. None of the students explicitly express that they do not care about education or that they ignore school; on the contrary, they stress that school is an important social arena and educational institution. They also talk about education as a crucial factor for their future possibilities, and in that regard, they adapt to a public discourse emphasizing education as a crucial factor in young people’s life chances. However, this motivation does not always result in good grades. The structural obstacles that the school in Sea Valley faces, such as student composition, which concerns the educational level of parents and the share of newly arrived migrants; school segregation; and the lower level of qualified teachers, all affect student performance (Hansson & Gustafsson, 2016). Despite low grades, previous studies have shown that young people with migrant backgrounds in Sweden emphasize the importance of higher education to obtaining a job to a greater extent than young people without such backgrounds (Sternudd, 2003), as well as that their career ambitions are often related to the desire to achieve a better social position than their parents’ (Widigson, 2013). An awareness of the potential negative impact of being a ‘migrant’ emerges as a driving force, providing the determination needed to succeed (Sternudd, 2003). Studies have also shown that immigrant students in disadvantaged areas in Sweden perceive their schools as safer and more supportive as compared to students in other, more advantaged areas because schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods function as a positive contrast to negative out-of-school experiences (Stattin et al., 2019).

In the excerpt below, Memo highlights his future prospects in relation to his parents. He describes how his father works as a pizza baker and his mother as an assistant nurse, but neither he nor his parents want him to have unqualified or low-paid jobs:

They [the parents] want me to get a good job. They say, do not become a pizza baker or anything like that because it is not good. But before, there was a little lack of money and so [at home]. Before, before I was born. Then my dad, he could not go to school that long, that’s why. So, he says now you have to, we have money, now you have to go to school, you have to think about your future and stuff.

In Memo’s home, education appears as a transcendental tool, an opportunity for a life beyond the parents’ social position. The parents become representatives of undesirable life conditions; the pizza baker becomes a racialized class marker and a symbol of an undesirable future. Thus, Memo fuels his pro-school position from dominant assumptions of what ‘low-achieving’ positions might result in. This attitude was also reinforced by his parents, who encouraged him to study. Regarding the parents’ harsh working conditions, the school is associated with possible promises of a different life, which becomes fuel for the motivation to learn. The experience of growing up in a disadvantaged urban setting as a young person, without useful social capital and networks that can help one get a job, dovetailed with the knowledge of how the labour market disfavours people from these areas, can thus create an attitude that education is essential (Lundqvist, 2010).

The pizza baker as a dystopic symbol reappears in an interview with Bilal. He describes how not caring about the school can have adverse outcomes in life, which is personalized by an older guy he knew. In contrast, the teacher Ahmed is described as an important guiding figure:

I think that guy had maybe 30 merit points when he finished ninth grade; 30 points is nothing. So, I thought I do not want to be a pizza baker, or I do not want to kind of walk around the streets. If you walk around the streets, you become a criminal too, if you do not have a job. Those we see outside do nothing with their lives, but those we do not see do something with their lives. So, I thought I could do it, I could get a good job. I wanted to be a dentist then, you know. Then I thought, of course I have to stop truancy, then slowly, slowly I stopped. Then I practised chemistry, got good, best in class, then Ahmed [the teacher], he (…) praised me very much, you know. (…) Because he knew, he liked me even though I skipped school, he always said to me ‘Why are you doing that?’ (…) And then I thought it was true, you know. I thought I had to invest in school now. After that I have never skipped school again. I have never skipped school I think, no, never. It’s just bad.

Bilal describes how teacher Ahmed’s encouragement contributed to his determination to invest in the school. This shows the importance of having trustable teacher–student relationships. Bilal’s positioning and strategy to adopt a pro-school attitude thus seem to be supported by the significance of teachers representing supportive attitudes. What is also expressed by Bilal is how truancy and the dismissive attitude towards school were not a source of status or self-respect. Conversely, Bilal presents school failure as the path to crime, unemployment or poorly paid jobs. A possible but unwanted life. The emphasis on school as part of future employment reappears in the students’ stories. If crime is a possible deterrent and becomes a driving force for prioritizing school, future prospects in the labour market also contribute to students’ attitude towards school and studies. Becoming a pizza baker, for example, is not something Bilal wants, but the fact that he mentions that a particular profession tells us something about his frame of reference and what jobs are possible to imagine. This reveals something about the socio-economic circumstances that the students at the Birch School must relate to and how class is raised regarding the marginalization and precarious working and life circumstances that characterize life for many in Sea Valley. The next and final part of this article illustrates how the student’s relationship to their neighbourhood is intertwined with narratives on their approach to school and studies.

To Disidentify with ‘The Streets’

The students’ descriptions of Sea Valley are twofold; they mention the community and its solidarity, the experiences of feeling at home and being themselves (cf. Stattin et al., 2019). Concurrently, they describe a place where segregation, territorial stigmatization and crime are present, alongside social stratification materialized in the tiring jobs of their parents (cf. Wacquant, 2008a). The fact that several shootings occurred in the neighbourhood during the fieldwork accentuated the social problems that exist in the area and the unequal living conditions that characterize the city. This has also implications for the school and the students there, something that Madar reflects on as follows:

Actually, if you look at the results, then the Birch School is in a bad position. But it’s not just, you cannot blame the school for its results, for the environment you live in.… So, in the evening, it is not easy to study when everyone else is out, or you hear shootings, such things, it is not easy in Sea Valley. Had you lived in the city centre or somewhere else (…) it would have been easier. (…) The surroundings are better there, and those you walk around with may not be criminals, and they think of school.

Madar’s narrative about his area and the differences he describes regarding other districts show how he and his classmates at Birch School have to tackle the challenges posed by housing segregation and social stratification in the city. He emphasizes the social conditions in Sea Valley and how they affect the school and differ from the living conditions of other young people in other parts of the city. Madar’s statement illustrates an awareness of the territorial stigmatization (Wacquant, 2008a) that characterizes the Sea Valley.

Street life and criminality could undoubtedly be an attraction for the students, an alternative to school and the demands of education. Forkby and Liljeholm Hansson (2011) showed, for example, how criminal gangs can offer identification for students who struggle with school and grades and how quarrels and resistance against school and teachers can be considered a source of respect and status. However, this active distancing and opposition to what the school and the teachers represent are, as has been seen, not prominent among the boys at the Birch School, despite (or because of) the school being situated in an area with well-documented crime and several shootings. In conversations with the students, it also becomes clear that the gangs and crime symbolized in the talk about the ‘streets’ or the ‘square’ do not attract them. The symbolic and real presence of the ‘streets’ in their lives seems to become synonymous with a lost future but is, in fact, turned into an incentive to invest in education:

Yahye: In case things go wrong, you regret it.

Elias: They have fun now, but later, they will not have as much fun.

Yahye: Exactly.

Elias: It will be like that: hard work, no education at all, a little salary.

Mirac emphasizes the importance of education. For him, that is what it takes for you to:

… cope with life. Coming far. Many uneducated, I have seen many [uneducated] here on the streets, they say ‘invest a lot in school,’ ‘I feel remorse,’ and stuff. (…) That’s why it’s important, so that you become something later.

In another passage from the interview, Mirac describes what gives status in school:

So, the former students in the ninth grade, many of them were good at school. Then, after they quit school, people started giving them respect and stuff. Because they managed in school. They were nice and stuff. That’s why. If they had been criminals … many of them were also criminals, but they do not get as good respect, or as much. Because they hang out with them here at the square and stuff, that’s why.(…) People look at them suspiciously, people avoid them so. But in case I meet someone who has been good at school, you feel more like this, I don’t know, you feel much better.

Being associated with the streets or the status of a criminal does not provide any obvious benefits regarding status and recognition outside the criminal world. Mirac, instead, mentions uneducated persons regretting not investing in school and how the ‘failures’ of these individuals have motivated him to invest in school. He also comments on last year’s ninth-graders as role models and students who both passed in school and were considered nice people. In Mirac’s narrative, these are the students who earn respect and support his own pro-school position. Perhaps, it is the feeling that it is possible to succeed in school that makes encounters with these students encouraging for Mirac; they offer an ideal contrast to anti-school culture.

Furthermore, not caring about school now involves emotional and material costs later in life. Elias, Yahye and Mirac talk about school from a long-term perspective and how their present studies carry elements of a possible future (Bourdieu, 1984/1988). Investing in schoolwork and getting good grades means opportunities to get qualified for high school, and in the long run, also get a job that is meaningful and well paid. Many of the students at Birch School identify themselves as learning subjects and have internalized the premises of the so-called ‘knowledge society’. For Mirac, lacking education is synonymous with being ‘on the streets’ and being deprived of alternatives, while school and education expose opportunities for ‘becoming something’. As Mirac describes it, through school, one has the chance to acquire a social disposition beyond the symbolic chains of the stigmatized neighbourhood, pointing at the importance of place for its role in the shaping of young men’s practices, trajectories and aspirations (Ward et al., 2017).

According to Skeggs (1997), individuals who risk marginalization often dissociate themselves from a subordinated position and appropriate respectable attributes by cultivating practices and beliefs related to other groups or segments (e.g., classes or ethnicities/‘races’) to avoid the experience of othering. Similarly, we see social practices and articulations dissociating the boys from ‘the streets’, a material symbol of criminality, precarious working conditions (embodied in parents) and the ascribed stereotypical migrant boy in school. Skeggs (1997) showed how working-class women try to move beyond their social position by personal adjustments, such as acquiring what they interpret as middle-class symbols and resisting stereotypical working-class attributes that might limit their life chances. Like Willis (1977), Skeggs’ study was conducted in England, although during and after Thatcher’s neoliberal governing, which (besides the gender question) could also explain the women’s strategies. Likewise, the boys’ engagement in schooling can be understood as a form of ‘adaptive resistance’, meaning they adapt themselves to what is expected of them in a bourgeois norm, yet by resisting the social reproduction of their position. In contrast to the concept of anti-school culture, the boys did not resist the specific school or their teachers, but the structures that risk limiting the possibility of success in school, including the representations of the boy in disadvantaged urban areas as incompatible with school success.

Towards a Renewed Understanding of Boys and Schooling in Stigmatized Urban Settings

This study aimed to scrutinize how boys attending a compulsory school, in which a large proportion of the students lack eligibility for upper secondary school, comprehend and relate to their schooling. The research questions posed are as follows: how do male students describe their relationship to education and future prospects? What subject positions about schooling are constructed in their narratives?

For the boys at the Birch School, their class position and living in a disadvantaged urban area do not necessarily make them cultivate an anti-school position. On the contrary, they often express that they value school and education. They mention that they want to study and receive good grades to avoid being forced to take over the tiring and class-marked jobs that many of their parents have, as exemplified by the pizza baker. The boys’ backgrounds and the experiences they bring into the school are thus not turned towards school and education; however, according to the boys, their backgrounds tend to contribute to their positive attitudes towards school. They share a quite general perception of the importance of education and the idea that they are responsible for their studies and future conditions. Concurrently, they face structural difficulties that still induce comparably low grades.

As mentioned in the article, the boys’ pro-school positions and strategies to adapt to a dominant public discourse on school as important could be supported in different ways. The empirical data show how this position is fuelled through, for example, trustable and supportive teachers, successful students as role models, uneducated individuals regretting their life trajectories, deterrent criminality and assumptions about what low-achieving positions (as embodied by parents) might result in. Even though these boys represented pro-school positions, we are not suggesting that living in a stigmatized neighbourhood per se contributes to pro-school positions, nor do we claim the opposite. Furthermore, it is obviously not possible to draw general conclusions from the empirical material about all boys in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. However, even if some of the boys presented in this article could be characterized—or characterized themselves—as school ‘failures’ because they were ineligible for upper secondary school, were truant or late for lessons, or showed a somewhat oppositional attitude towards school, it is important to stress that on a discursive level, they described the school as important or as an investment for the future. To varying extents, they all stressed the significant role of education, despite sometimes having trouble conforming to schoolwork or achieving desirable qualifications and grades. Based on our findings, positioning oneself as pro-school is not necessarily associated with being successful in school or even enjoying schoolwork but rather with emphasizing the importance of school and education for one’s prospects. However, as mentioned in Methodological Considerations, boys who resist school or feel it is irrelevant or a waste of time might also resist academics conducting research in school. Therefore, we cannot rule out the possibility that we failed to gain access to some empirical data (i.e., anti-school positions and sentiments) that would confirm previous findings of a link between marginalized areas and anti-school identities. Accordingly, our findings do not exclude the possibility that marginalized environments, social influence and/or hegemonic constructions of masculinities negatively impact boys’ identities regarding education.

For the boys at the Birch School, living in a time and place in which success and failure have, to a higher degree, become individualized, both discursively and materially, they have nothing to fall back on. The somewhat polarized alternatives to school they described were living on the streets as a criminal, being unemployed, or tiring professions they disliked. This polarized narrative of either success or failure, all or nothing, may actually be interpreted as an implicit critique of a school system that does not allow any ‘middle ways’ and in which one’s future life is defined per- manently. The boys expressed disidentification with the alternatives to school and thus also disidentification with the problematized narratives regarding disadvantaged neighbourhoods, including the representation of the problematic student who fails in school. Thus, they also expressed ‘adaptive resistance’ by formulating counter-narratives to the stereotypes and categorizations that sort individuals into certain societal positions (Lundqvist, 2010).

Thus, the boys at the Birch School expressed no anti-school culture. Instead, they expressed and demonstrated commitment and a willingness to learn that contradicted the thesis of an anti-school culture as a general explanatory model for boys’ sometimes poor school results. Notably, the boys in this study did not describe the loss of status otherwise associated with boys’ ambitions and studies in school; rather, the opposite was true (cf. Nyström, 2012). The actual effort to achieve good results also appeared, among the boys, to be compatible with prevailing masculinity norms and high status. The boys adopted a position of being ‘pro-school’, despite certain obstacles.

At a discursive level, the boys discussed the importance of education and their desire to learn, but this approach did not always translate into action or good grades. Whether it was a question of the individual student’s conditions or feelings of being a failure, the school’s opportunities to meet students’ needs and conduct compensatory work, or stigmatization and overall structural conditions, such as parents’ educational levels and cramped housing accommodations, existing circumstances did not always allow students to become eligible for upper secondary school. This suggests that students’ deficient grades could not necessarily be mainly or solely explained via a lack of study motivation or low goals for the future, which are sometimes used as explanations (Archer et al., 2010). The boys’ descriptions and expressed attitudes showed that a large proportion of them wanted to learn and did have educational ambitions for the future, thereby sidestepping and problematizing limited and stereotypical narratives of boys from disadvantaged urban areas.