University education can play a significant role in fostering the transition of those from disadvantaged backgrounds to superordinate social positions, even in countries like Italy where social origin appears directly correlated with the chance of finding a job regardless of the level of studies attained (Ballarino and Bernardi, 2016; 2020). The benefits associated with university studies consist not only in the acquisition of institutionalized cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1979) useful for finding employment but also in the acquisition of internalized dispositions that modify original categories, values, interests, and behavioral patterns with positive consequences on lifestyle, active citizenship, and the quality of cultural consumption (Stefanini, Albonico and Maciocco, 2007; Oreopoulos and Salvanes, 2011; Assirelli, 2014; Ma, Pender and Welch, 2016; Parziale, 2019). As part of qualitative research on first-generation students at the University of Pisa, this paper seeks to show how students from families with low educational credentials, who manage to gain access to university pathways by overcoming obstacles related to their social origin, can acquire a new habitus that, in some cases, contrasts with the internalized dispositions assimilated within the family, social class, or class fraction to which they belong (Ingram, 2009; Lee and Kramer, 2013; Lehmann, 2014; Friedman, 2016). This circumstance can generate a condition of habitus clivé (Bourdieu and Sayad, 1964; Bourdieu, 2004), that is, a split habitus that risks undermining the very identity of the social agent but that can also foster forms of reflexivity that are difficult to acquire for those who do not experience this form of habitus.

In South Africa, children of single-headed households (70% of whom are Black) have significantly worse educational outcomes than any other demographic. Whilst the impact of family structures has been scrutinised in the context of early years, primary and secondary education, it remains understudied in relation to access and success in Higher Education. Based on semi-structured interviews with students and alumni from two different South African Universities, brought up in single-headed households, this article focuses on the interplay of family milieu and Higher Education. Using a Bourdieusian framework, authors identify three key configurations between family and Higher Education fields (aligned, misaligned and parallel fields) which have a long-lasting impact on individual educational trajectories and the fabric of South African society. Showing that Black women remain disproportionately disadvantaged in the post-apartheid neoliberal university, authors argue that widening participation initiatives (which have so far produced mixed results) ought to consider both access and success beyond the individual and in light of learners’ family milieu for it remains a key site of intersectional inequalities and social reproduction. Deconstructing the neoliberal discourse of individual resilience to reveal the structural impact of transgenerational social reproduction in post-colonial societies is a necessary step to design policies able to advance social justice.

Attention to class defectors (« transfuge de classe ») has already fueled a number of studies of the effects of the dissonant socializations produced by passage through different social worlds (Hoggart, 1991, Bourdieu, 1989; Lahire, 2006, Strauss, 2006, Pasquali, 2014). Based on an investigation devoted to the longitudinal study of some thirty working-class students in the priority districts of a large conurbation in the south of France, who are Channeled to an Elite Institution, our proposal is in line with this research. However, it proposes to study these young people as recipients and targets of public policy. This analytical shift reveals the existence of a whole series of sociability spaces specific to affirmativ action in educational policy, the socializing effects of which cannot be underestimated: trips, theater workshops, teacher tutorials, student tutorials, participation in associations promoting equal opportunity, and so on. Public educational action in the field of « widening participation » (Allouch, 2017 ; Van Zanten, 2010) thus ends up mapping out pathways to be taken.

Several dimensions will be addressed in this paper.

First, we'll show how the specific program shapes socializing experiences in tension between "pedagogy of uprooting" (Pasquali, 2014) and maintaining filiation with the working-class milieu of origin (Nonjon, 2023). Secondly, to understand the effects of the passage through these spaces dédicated to equal opportunity policy on the political socialization of these young people and the way in which these spaces articulate and clash with other spaces of socialization (family, neighborhood, original and host schools, militant spaces and political parties), we propose to reconstruct two trajectories among the thirty or so young people followed.

Originally from the same high-profile priority neighborhood, from working-class families and of immigrant descent, Ayoub and Imran both benefited from a "social opening" program during their high school years. They were among the first cohorts to enter the selective establishment in 2018 without passing the competitive entrance exam. How have Imran and Ayoub appropriated the institutionalized spaces of equal opprtunity policy? What types of sociability have they developed with the group of people in the social opening? At what particular moments in their educational and now professional trajectories was their frequentation of these spaces used as a convertible resource in other social spaces, particularly political ones, or experienced as a stigmatizing institutional assignment ? In what way does the passage through this program - and the spaces for reflexivity it offers - make the intersectional nature of these mobilities visible for these young people? Given that these social mobilities are not just class mobilities. They are also mobilities of gender and race, in the sense that they require the incorporation of gender and race norms specific to the class of adoption. What are the feedback effects of this awareness? These are the questions we wish to explore in order to better understand the politicizing effects of these socializations in tension, and thus discuss the strength and limits of an approach in terms of cleaved habitus (Bourdieu, 2013).

Digital citizenship refers to the right and responsibility of a person to participate in the online society, while digital citizenship education (DCE) prioritizes the strategies of responsible and conscious use of digital technologies for individual, social and political benefits. A higher level of DCE aims at how a person is oriented towards respecting social justice in the digital environment, advocating for equity and showing responsiveness and critical attitude towards practices that lead to digital injustice. The present study comparatively analyzes how European universities promote the integration of digital citizenship competences in formal and non-formal settings, involve diverse stakeholders in promoting DCE and facilitate exchange and collaboration from the perspective of valorizing good practices in the institutional context. According to the Council of Europe (2024), digital citizenship competences related to social justice comprise different domains of activity under three umbrellas: being online, well-being online and rights online. These indicators underlie the comparative analysis carried out in the present study, which details their representativeness and frequency into the curricula of European universities.

This paper examines the experiences of university dropouts in Croatia, with a focus on individual habitus and its interaction with institutional habitus. Theoretical background of the research and analyses was based on Bourdieu’s (1977, 1986), Reay, David & Ball’s (2001) and Tinto’s (1975, 1987) work on inequalities, habitus, institutional habitus and academic and social integration of students. Qualitative research methodology was used and 24 semi-structured interviews were conducted in year 2022. with persons who dropped out of studies at different higher education institutions in Croatia in the period between 2015. and 2022. The main research topics included the study experiences, linked with personal biographies of dropout students, the reasons of dropping out of studies and the role of higher education institutions in that process. Three main reasons for dropping out of studies were identified - motivational reasons, health reasons and finding of employment. In addition, lack of discipline, financial reasons, social relations and organizational challenges also stand out as the reasons for dropping out of studies. Furthermore, we analysed the presence and correspondence between students’ family habitus the new habitus, or the lack of thereof. The findings show that the students who developed a new habitus and felt the connection and integration with the new educational field were more inclined to return to higher education at some point in life and obtain a higher education degree. For others, the habitus clivé, or even the contrast between students’ original dispositions and interests and university field values and norms, resulted in giving up higher education altogether. The findings also indicate weak institutional support related to the process of dropping out of studies. This lack of support can be perceived in the weak, or non-existing, monitoring of student progress or retention, and the absence of any institutional attempts to prevent the students from dropping out, all of which especially affects vulnerable groups of students. These findings support Bourdieu’s stance on false meritocracy of the educational system, as students from unprivileged backgrounds are mainly overlooked, which enables the maintenance of social inequality through the educational system. Policy recommendations for preventing dropout from higher education are also discussed in the light of the study findings.