While some groups of young people may negotiate successful transitions to work, others are unable or unlikely to do so. The concept of "fair exchange" is pertinent to understanding youth transitions in their formative stages through educational experiences. Patterns of disrupted education challenge the education-work nexus not only because failure in education may limit labour market competitiveness but because the perceived false promises of educational exchange, together with the immediate and available rewards of local cultural options, may, from young people's perspectives, necessitate alternative transitions. The ascendancies of risk management constitute the emergence of binary systems of youth governance in which youth are dichotomised as potential citizen-workers or people in need of control and discipline. The hardening of youth justice and the contraction of welfare constrict the legitimate places of youth participation. Yet marginalised youth do not necessarily give up the ideal of a fair exchange, as their continued efforts in school and orientations towards work show. However, the "fair exchange" within the youth justice system is fundamentally different from exchanges within other systems, warranting consideration of how failure in education together with forms of youth governance are implicated in the questionable, on social justice grounds, alternative transitions through youth justice.