CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. (2011). Breaking away to find a way: poverty and school failure in a Spanish adolescent life-history. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 32:5, 745-762.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2011.596372

Abstract
This article is part of a biographical research study, and explores the social path that an adolescent from a marginal background in Malaga (Spain) has travelled throughout his life. The research shows a class differentiation that divides society in two: you, who control the means of production, impose your culture, and define the policy and the school; and we, who live in poor houses and districts, learn in the street and do things that are worthy of punishment – the bad ones. School failure, the result and cause of this division, leads to social failure, provoking ‘guerrillas against the good ones’ (teachers, peers, guards, police, judges, etc.) of youngsters who have learned to devalue themselves as people and as a group: youngsters who have to break away to find a way.