本文一方面指出學校教育如何藉由「中輟生」的定義與相關論述，來維護教育專業地位的差異政治，另一方面以一個進入社會福利機構就讀的國中中輟生為例，分析被歸入「有問題」、「邊緣性」或「適應不良」的中輟生，如何在加入幫派的生活中建構自身的認同。作者挪用「差異政治」這個概念來描述教育專業的自我保護與個體認同的建立，一方面是想指出我們社會製造邊緣性空間的事實，而且這種中心-邊緣的區分也是專業化得以成立的基礎；另一方面，位於邊緣空間的人物也有其認同建構的需要與策略，另外在社會的邊緣環境中尋找自我的位置，使自己與一般社會主流有別。作者嘗試透過這樣的分析，以對於教育、社工等專業分工的現象，進行反省與批判。

This article tries to analyze and reflect on the educational and social situations of those so-called 'problematic', 'marginal' or 'maladjusted' high school drop-outs. It unfolds its analysis in two folds: it points out the 'politics of difference' within the education profession through its discourses about and ways of defining drop-outs on the one hand, while it shows the life of a junior high-school student who ran away from school and studied in a social welfare institute on the other. The author appropriates the concept of 'politics of difference' for his analysis of both the self-construction of the education profession and the individual, so as to explicate two facts: first, our society produces marginal social spaces, and this center-margin distinction forms the basis of the profession. Second, in order to survive persons in marginal situations have needs and strategies of self-identity formation which are different from persons in the main-stream, and the principle of politics of difference is also functional on this level. Through this two-fold analysis, the author tries to reflect on and critique the 'politics of difference' phenomenon of education in constructing and maintaining professional status.