We argue that suffering provides a key focus for understanding the dynamics between the social/political and the experiential and argue that a critical psychoanatlytic, social and political analysis of the conditions producing suffering opens a space for thinking about and creating the necessary practices for democratic forms of social and educational organisation. We draw upon ethnographic and clinical research in the UK, France and Brazil involving schools, communities and professionals in health contexts. As Dejours (2009) argues, the new managerialist demands of efficiency through measurement, targets and standards setting in the context of job insecurity, attacks on the public sector creates the conditions for mass suffering. Our research illustrates both the particular conditions producing suffering and also openings for an emancipatory education. This research has three interrelated foci: a) the body as a conflicted site of suffering, b) the organisational structures of work and learning, and c) the plurality of cultural communities and allegiances. Through an analysis of the discourses employed in school, health and community contexts the implications for an emancipatory education are discussed. Dejours, C. (1998, 2009) Souffrance en France. La banalisation de l’injustice sociale, Èdition augmentée d’une preface et d’une postface, Paris: Éditions du Seuil