The need for a methodological approach to grasp the experiences put forth by marginalised young people is crucial. The Indirect Approach (Moshuus & Eide, 2016) draws on an ethnographic biographical framework that evoke notions of methodological approaches like the unstructured interview (Tanggaard & Brinkman, 2015). The Indirect Approach reflects that all social phenomena take place within contextual frames produced within a contested ground shaping both the lives of our participants and our inquiries. A key element in the approach is the researcher’s indirect way of approaching the life world of the participant, making sure not to introduce ideas, concepts or notions into the conversation that was not first presented by the participant. Reading something into the conservation or introducing the researchers own concepts would be polluting the conversation, making it too direct. This places the method within the qualitative approaches in the social sciences that are thought of as explorative; discovering something that we did not already know (Moshuus, 2018). The research situation should make the participant a storyteller, making whatever he/she emphasise guide the conversation. This opens the research to a wide variation of interpretative efforts. Often the ESL/NEET experience is set within a limited normative framework dictated and predefined by our understanding of the importance of education. With the Indirect Approach the spontaneous ideas of the participant opens research up to a rich explorative field and true dialogue where ESL/NEET reality may be discovered – not being defined by normative views. A key element is the introduction of the happenstance. Any research will include accidents or awkward moments that stop us momentarily from pursuing what we are doing. It is our claim that the indirect approach allows for and embraces the occurrence of unforeseen events. Happenstances distinguish themselves from these by revealing something we otherwise would not have discovered. The happenstance allows us to reposition from our initial open and often probing queries to a position of becoming an audience to a story unfolding in our presence. The storytelling is a rich interpretative ground for our explorative efforts into the ESL/NEET experience – far from our preconceived ideas of the importance of education. We will develop a thorough theoretical and methodological framework along the research undertaken in MaCE, as we seek the students’ own experience in education – without exactly asking for it, for use in co-research and working with marginalised youths.

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