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Here we present an analysis of young people's orientations to the future in the context of intergenerational relations. We draw on qualitative interviews to examine how young people from less privileged backgrounds use their family as an anchor when mapping the landscape of possible futures. Further, we use extensive quantitative material from structured surveys to provide contextual information on how young people's imagined futures are shaped by the earlier generation. The study shows that the ingredients with which young people concoct their futures are in many ways grounded in their families' attempts to provide the most favourable support they can manage within the structural constraints and on the basis of the affordances that are available to them, but largely regardless of their class background. Our analysis also emphasises that there is a wide range of trajectories between academic careers conventionally understood as 'successful' and the careers resulting in 'social exclusion'.

The strong emphasis placed on educational achievements as a precondition for successful adult life in Western societies attests to the fact that school plays a significant role in setting the standards for normality and conformity among young people today. The focus of this article is on the subjective orientations to schools and schooling expressed by young people on the margins of school. By adopting a biographical approach to young people's lives, this study examines how ninth graders make sense of their educational career from a particular transitional vantage point between compulsory and post-compulsory education, and from a marginal position in the current educational context. The article draws on research that focused on the biographies and future hopes of 15-to 17-year-old ninth graders attending either programmes for young people in need of support ('Pilot', part of targeted youth work) or an alternative school ('My Own Career' classes, part of flexible basic education). The article suggests that for young people on the margins of school, the contribution of compulsory education to the conceptualization of educational pathways in the future is ambivalent, sometimes even disempowering, and the weight of past conflicts with school forces young people to find ways to renegotiate their relationship with education.

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