This papers deals in a polemical fashion with what is arguably one of the most contentious issues in education--the disengagement of increasing numbers of young people from schooling. It makes the argument that what is occurring is that global forces are conspiring to position young people as a form of "social waste" and that allowing them to be unproblematically portrayed as constituting a precariat is an over-simplification if not a misrepresentation. In making the case for a different approach, conceived in terms of a "critical ethnography of student disengagement," the paper invokes a political economy approach in which learning is seen as a political act engaged in by young people. The paper concludes with a series of propositions intended to provide a different and more critically ethnographic inflection on what is occurring. [Paper presented to a symposium entitled "Living learning on the edge: constructions and contestations of precarity," European Educational Research Association conference, Porto, Portugal, 2 September 2014.]