Youth have been going through a confidence crisis towards what it used to be structural security systems (Leccardi, 2005; Silva, 2011). Unemployment, poor jobs and precariousness associated to non-linear transitions (Walther, 2006), increased that sense of insecurity. Young people vulnerable situation was strengthen by the recent economic crisis (Serracant, 2015), that affected most of the western societies, increasing the sense of distrust towards the future and the institutions, like school.

Nevertheless, in the European southern context young people still rely on their families and stay at their parents’ home up to very late in their lives (Ayllón, 2015; Walther, 2006). Focusing specifically in young people during socio-economic crisis, an article about Spanish youth (Jover, Belando-Montoro, & Guío, 2014, p. 5) suggests that, “this situation [crisis] affects the younger population segment (16 to 19 yrs old) particularly dramatically”.

Many young people from the more affected countries saw their opportunities diminished. Some of them interrupted their educational pathways and others migrated after graduation in order to find better opportunities.

Traditionally, school was seen by families and young people as trustworthy in what concerns promoting opportunities, namely of social mobility, through a socially recognised diplomas. In the past decade, media discourses gave voice to a lost of confidence in the diploma and in school. However, was less voiced the idea that future is always harder for young people without the diploma (Galland, 2000; Jover, Belando-Montoro & Guío, 2014). Nevertheless, the school value was questioned as educational investment was lo longer a guaranty of better life chances.

The proposal will explore the effects that the period of economic crisis might have had in young people’s perspectives about the investment in school, also by discussing their thoughts on what they consider to be the school value. This exercise will be done through the analysis of their sense of belonging to school and from the analysis of the role that school still represents in young people’s lives. We aim to understand if there are relevant differences between 2011 and 2015 on the perceptions of young people about these topics and to identify which subjects have more relationships/links between each other. It is relevant to clarify that between 2011 and 2015 Portugal was under a profound economic crisis and under a rescue programme.

This discussion will be framed by challenges coming from the economic crisis that affected, among others, young people expectations and trust towards school. To study of sense of belonging to school is important in this socio-economic context due to the fact that school belonging can influence students’ behaviours and be a mediator towards academic achievement and engagement (Delgado, Ettekal, Simpkins, & Schaefer, 2015; Lam, Chen, Zhang & Lian, 2015; Osterman, 2000). By analysing the sense of belonging, we are trying to study students’ standpoints about their involvement and experiences at individual and collective levels (Osterman, 2000) towards school.

Furthermore, the discussion is also framed by the geographic context where the study took place: a small city in the Northeast of Portugal, close to the Spanish border. Schools, in this region, are characterized by high levels of school underachievement (Justino et al., 2014) and high illiteracy rates (PORDATA, 2011) and a positive sense of belonging to school can also be understood as a resilience behaviour that promotes  educational engagement and needs to be fostered.

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