Abstract

A necessary element for constructing a political practice around early school-leaving is a grounding in the material terrain that early school-leavers occupy. This involves highlighting their struggle in terms of acknowledging the specificity of their demands, their concrete resistances, and their efforts towards a public sphere of influence. There are many practical ways of achieving this grounding, but the following is a reading of some conversations I held with a group of early school-leavers which I see as providing a text that would give some indication of the subjectivities, identities, struggles. and articulations of early schoolleavers.