Researching educational sites serving 'disadvantaged' (sub)urban communities : reframing policy and practice

![CDATA[In the field of education, a focus on schools and other educational sites serving vulnerable communities is urgent in the present moment. This edited collection is about poverty, social exclusion and vulnerability in educational contexts, at a time of rising inequality when policy research suggests that such issues have been ignored or distorted within neoliberal logics. The relentless economisation of all spheres of social life that is associated with neoliberalism has coincided with the emergence of big data architectures that have reconfigured schooling everywhere. This has been a perfect storm for public schooling and the democratic impulses of education for social justice. Within neoliberalism, individuals are entirely responsible for the conditions of their lives, with poverty and exclusion often cast as poor decisions or bad behaviour – masking government lack of interest, punitive policy and ever-widening income gaps. Despite premature announcements of the end of neoliberalism (e.g. Peters, 2011), market rationalities now dominate all sectors of education and metrics rule for children, teachers, systems and policy makers. The waste products of capital are, as ever, the poor, their families and communities (Ashurst & Venn, 2014).]]