Long story … Beyond ‘technologies’ of knowing in case study work with permanently excluded young people

This paper draws on case study research with Lee who had been permanently excluded from an urban secondary school in England. It begins with two extended extracts from the case study in order to illustrate the challenges the principal researcher, Deon, faced in the day‐to‐day conduct of the work. The section that follows engages in a reflexive consideration of these ‘discomforts’ in research. The discussion interlaces post‐structural analysis of identities, and how these relate to being excluded from school, with indications about methodology. The paper ends with a call for ethnographic study in educational/social research and in the study of exclusion.