Hermeneutical injustice in upper secondary educational transitions

Abstract

This chapter analyses the ways in which young people’s discourses about their upper secondary educational transitions are representative of the hermeneutical injustice, understood as young people’s misunderstanding of their own social experiences. Based on rich qualitative narratives of students in Madrid, the chapter identifies the weight they attribute to structural factors and to their own agency in explaining their upper secondary choices. Results of the analysis demonstrate that, overall, young people’s discourses reflect the denial of any habitus and the understanding of their own choices and transitions as the result of their will and/or individual capability. The chapter contributes to the understanding of educational transitions showing the lack of young people’s awareness of the structural and institutional factors that condition their choices and trajectories. That denial condemns them to a disadvantageous position owing to their inability to deal with constraints that they don’t even identify.