“What We Might Become”

This article draws on three in-depth interviews with teenage migrants, two asylum seekers and one from Portugal. The interviews reveal experiences particular to young new arrivals attempting to find ways of being in a global city where they find themselves living in multicultural localities that are occasionally the sites of conflict as well as “togetherness in difference” ( Ang, 2002 , p. 162). The lived experiences of the informants are contrasted with their positioning by their educational programmes and ESOL teachers. I question whether the education they are receiving and the kind of classrooms they are placed in best serve young refugees and other migrants as they attempt to finish their interrupted schooling and become members of local communities and the workforce.