Research within the field ‘geography of education’ points to the importance of studying the relationship between social and spatial variations in educational provision and attainment. This research has mainly focused on the spatial segregation of different social groups in urban settings. There has been limited research on how geography influences youth and education in rural settings. Youth research in general is criticised for an unacknowledged ‘metrocentricity’, referring to the invisibility of how place and geography represent changeable and contingent conditions in young people's lives. This paper is based on interviews with young, unemployed men living in small places that can be termed the marginal edge of the northern periphery, in the northern part of Norway. By combining a geographical approach with theories on social learning, the paper discusses how changes in the local world of education and work are experienced by a group of young men, and how the changes influence their choices, and lack thereof, in specific rural communities. The overall aim of this paper is to demonstrate how place and geography matter, and how gender and place intersect, when it comes to young people's experiences of opportunities and options.