The young people are aged between 15 and 25. They are all unemployed, and are of mixed ethnicity. Most are Anglo-Australians, Mandy is Koori, Elsa is Egyptian, and Rima's family is from Lebanon. Almost all left school early, a number before the minimum age of 16, with Beccy (the youngest) leaving school at 14. Stereotypes suggest that these young people would not have much to say. But once they realise that we are there to listen to them, and that they can use the research process to get others to listen to them as well, they have a great deal to say. In all 19 research sessions take place, making up some 30 hours of discussion, debate, confrontation and at times crisis, in an attempt to name and explore a social experience. This chapter recounts the first research sessions, where the groups attempt to construct a first account of themselves and their social world.

From the beginning the picture is one of tensions, rather than coherence, between opposing dimensions of their reality. The first is a constant tension between affirming community and experiences of community disintegration. The second is between the possibilities of social participation and the realities of exclusion. In these first sessions we see only glimpses of what Dubet and Touraine argue represents a third terrain of action, social creativity. This emerges more clearly, albeit in fractured forms, in the second stage of the research when the groups encounter other social actors.