Speaking from the Margins—Implications for Education and Practice of Young Women's Experiences of Marginalisation

Abstract

This paper explores the implications for social and community work training and education of the findings from a study that considered the experiences of young women in relation to social exclusion. In particular, it draws attention to the ways in which young women enacted their marginality and their particular experiential pathways as they progressively removed themselves from mainstream institutions and processes. It is derived from a qualitative study of young women aged between 13 and 15 years that explored the meaning of wellbeing and its relationship with different sorts of social, emotional and material conditions. Discussion draws out the implications of the research findings for social and community work education paying particular attention to the need to work with students to enable them to understand the meanings of marginalisation and to understand how they might be effective as social and community work practitioners with those groups who experience exclusion and marginalisation.