Karin is a white Catholic young woman from a working-class background, living in a city in Northern Ireland. This chapter draws on data generated by a series of four interviews with her between the ages of 16 and 19 as well as a memory book. The interviews were conducted by Sheena McGrellis, and initially took place at school and subsequently at the university. Karin had also been involved in a focus group and pair interview when she was 14, as part of the earlier Youth Values study.

Through Karin's successive narratives it is possible to gain a sense of gendered self-in-the-making, yet one that is situated in a particular historical context and underwritten both by a cast of intimates and by a wider backdrop of social and cultural possibilities. Questions of resistance and innovation are central motifs, as are struggles to secure recognition from others. The case history is structured by an exploration of change and continuity within the different fields of existence that structure Karin's biography: education, play and family life. Over this period Karin moved from school to college. Shortly after her third interview she participated in an Operation Raleigh initiative in India, which effectively meant taking a year out of college, which she made up on her return. By the time of her fourth interview she was making applications for university. Over the whole research period she was living at home with her parents, her siblings having left for university and, subsequently, jobs elsewhere.

Education: hanging in and hanging out

We first met Karin at school, an integrated comprehensive that sought to transcend the sectarian divides of a large Northern Irish city. As an integrated school it also transcended the demarcation between grammar and secondary modern schooling, holding an ambiguous place within the wider educational landscape. Karin explained that the school was seen as ‘snobby’ by many and she took delight in disrupting its liberal ethic of integration. At 14 she described herself as a ‘wee Fenian’, yet also insisted on being interviewed as a pair with her best friend Gina, a working-class Protestant girl. By the following year Karin had developed a searing critique of the techniques employed by the school to promote integration, in particular resisting their censorship of visual expressions of working-class religious difference, such as the Celtic and Ranger football club insignia.