In recent decades, differences in school performance have increased considerably in Sweden, creating a growing number of students, especially boys in disadvantaged urban areas, who are ineligible for upper secondary school. A recurring explanation for boys’ poor school performance is an anti-school culture and boys’ lack of interest in school and learning. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, this study aims to scrutinize how boys attending a compulsory school, in which many of the students lack eligibility for upper secondary school, comprehend and relate to their schooling. The results show that the boys’ backgrounds and experiences, their parents’ precarious work situations, and the violence in their neighbourhood do not necessarily contribute to an anti-school culture. On the contrary, the structural difficulties that surround the boys appear in their narratives as conditions contributing to a positive attitude towards schooling.

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Tule School and Birch School are two schools that at first glance seem to have much in common. They are both schools situated in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Both schools have predominantly students of different ethnic background and the educational level of the parents is low. The two schools ought reasonably to be exposed to the consequences of territorial stigmatization and the neighbourhood effect in the same way. The article discuss a number of factors that explain why this assumption can not be made.