This paper aims to be an interpretative and somewhat critical review after 3 years of two linked research projects around school drop–out and youth biographies. In fact the perspective has been on gaining access and listening to the voices of young people, both girls and boys, who have dropped-out from schools. They would probably have specific perspectives on their pathways confronting schooling, families and communities after leaving uncompleted their studies. The context in which the research has been developed was one of social diversity reflecting not only cultural and social differences but also penetrated by inequalities of access and experiences of rights. For the research group, there was a shared assumption on the expansion of education as the expansion of social rights. We were also committed equally to adopting Bernstein’s view on pedagogical rights (1996) as ‘enhancement’, ‘inclusion’ and ‘participation’ as necessary rights in the educational world for an effective development of democracy with a “crucial role”, as he has stressed, “in creating tomorrow’s optimism in the context of today’s pessimism” (ibid). In fact, when focusing on young people educational biographies (and not only school biographies), we asked ourselves about the contributions they would bring to knowledge on these issues as well as on young people views on education and their lives. First of all, we expect to listen to them on the social processes they have crossed, contributing to configure their pathways, experiences and positions, making sense of their lives. The experiences of school drop-out certainly affect their lives, motivations and creativity. Second, in the framework of concerns for enlarged equality of opportunities and social justice, these biographical narratives bring young people views of lived processes which may contribute to our reflection on social justice, as Paul Willis stresses: “understanding what practices ‘say’ in situ on social justice” (Willis 2000:120). Moreover, we count on biographies in the line of the contributions of Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination, from which he aimed to pursue a notion of “sociology being employed to allow ordinary people some sense of control over events by showing how public issues are interconnected with people’s ordinary lives, their history, biographical experiences and social structural milieux” (Brewer 2004:320). At the same time, an expectation that the private issues, problems, the singularity of lives are important for sociological and educational agendas: they can contribute to confront them in terms of social justice concerns: “to make public issues out of private troubles of people determining the sociological agenda so that these issues can be better understood, if not solved” (ibid).

The paper is based on the building of 25 young people biographical narratives (life histories) living in Portuguese towns located not in the more privileged zones and their interpretation, as a way of listening to young people words in their own terms. It intends to make visible the singularities of their pathways, In fact, these are narrated realities that need to be based on a process of verstehen, on sharing meanings and attempting to grasp their subjectivities.

These young people biographies appear to have a strong potential to examine social inequalities, derived from social structures, and communities as well as from families, sexualities and the school. They lead us to think about Paul Willis work when he addresses the power of work in school, in shaping lives and live cultures of working class boys. Nowadays, in times of deep changes and uncertainty, where old and new areas of possibility and social relevance appear to be at disposal for self-identity construction, how can we think about the social realities of young people: are they being educated only framed by the power of labour, as in Willis’ Learning to Labour? The young people voices through these biographies still reveal a strong proximity to work, both of young men and young women. However, in their pathways, there are several intermittences between school and work, as some who leave school go to work at early ages, and sometimes return to school, mainly to vocational schools. Or at other moments are receiving a state social provision, and at other moments get a job, or again go to vocational schools.In these different processes, the school emerges with a special role and prominence: in a context where labour appears with less value, it is the school that gains the centrality in these young men and women pathways.