Disengaged and disaffected young people: surviving the system

There are counter narratives of youth as at risk and as buoyant and agentive. The article maps the conceptual terrain concerning resilience, wellbeing, buoyancy, enjoyment and happiness and selects two factors related to the successful navigation of schooling, a self-sense of competence and relatedness to others. It analyses data from a subset of a national dataset, from sixty five young people considered to be disaffected or disengaged by their school or college. It explores the perceptions of young people that the difficulties they encounter are in part a result of their own behaviour and in part a product of the system. Hirschman’s theory of exit voice, loyalty is used to explore their choices. The articles concludes that schools act to maintain homeostasis and that a subset of young people are at long term risk due to organisational and national unwillingness to decouple economic benefit from maintenance of the existing system