Accepted or Rejected in School

Abstract

In the classroom, young people in their role of pupils are supposed to focus on and respond to the teaching plan. At breaks, the norms and rules may differ and are more similar to life outside the school. Peer rejection is part of this life. According to Swedish school legislation, schools shall counteract all forms of insulting treatment. Still, recently a young woman appealed her case to the Supreme Court. She sued the authorities for not preventing bullying. The aim of this article is to analyse and discuss victimization and bullying as a part of school life, from the perspective of young people. Data from a longitudinal comparative ethnographic case study of two school classes, carried out with an interpretive approach and a relational interpretation perspective, are scrutinized. The results are mainly from qualitative interviews with 62 young people on three occasions (age 12–21). Both individual and collective victimization occur frequently in the social world of the school, mostly within their own school classes and often even in their own peer group, victimization without their teachers' knowledge. For those suffering, the question of being accepted or rejected might be of crucial importance for their career as pupils as well as from a more general life perspective.