Conference Program

Research on educational inequalities has extensively documented the persistent association between social origin and educational outcomes, highlighting reproductive mechanisms that shape opportunities across generations (Giancola & Salmieri, 2023). Recent contributions in the Italian context have shown that these processes are traversed by tensions and possibilities for deviation. In particular, the work of Romito (2021) and Cangiano (2023) has brought attention to unexpected trajectories, unanticipated mobility, and processes of subjectivation that break statistical expectations, offering tools to conceptualize discontinuity as constitutive rather than residual. At the same time, the notion of "multiple contingencies" (Giancola, 2009) highlights how educational trajectories emerge at the intersection of events, encounters, and relational configurations that exceed linear reproductive logic.

This contribution focuses on educational discontinuity: significant deviations from trajectories expected on the basis of family capita and incorporated expectations. The theoretical framework integrates structural approaches emphasizing continuity between background and outcomes (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970) theories of rational (Boudon, 1974; Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997) and the sociology of experience, which analyses trajectories as processes of subjectivation (Dubet, 1994; Martuccelli, 2017). The continuum between continuity and discontinuity provides an analytical lens for situating empirical cases.

The research is guided by two questions: How do actors interpret their deviation from incorporated expectations? What forms of subjective work sustain the construction of pathways? The hypothesis is that discontinuity stems not from an isolated voluntaristic act, but from a contingent combination of factors: micro recognition, tensions within the habitus and the capacity to aspire (Appadurai, 2004). These cases become revealing indicators of the margins of agency present even within highly reproductive contexts and illuminate the subtle mechanisms through which individuals negotiate constraints and possibilities.

The contribution draws on 30 semi-structured interviews with young people in Rome displaying forms of educational discontinuity: students from low socio-economic and cultural backgrounds who pursue selective educational pathways (Benadusi & Giancola, 2014); individuals from highly educated families who opt for non-university routes; and trajectories marked by interruptions, reversals, or unexpected reorientations. The analysis follows a processual coding strategy, with attention to processes of symbolic conversion, forms of illusio acquired or destabilized, and recompositions of the habitus.

The construction of the qualitative sample is based on a typological procedure derived from the analysis of OECD PIAAC 2022 data. Using variables on parental education and school track, an index was developed combining paternal and maternal educational levels with students' educational choices. This procedure made it possible to identify family configurations, as well as to distinguish expected positions from deviations relative to family background. The typology was then used to select the cells characterized by upward or downward discontinuity, which guided the sampling of interviewees and anchored the qualitative investigation to a preliminary mapping of possible trajectories.

The expected results concern the reconstruction of the processes of subjectivation that sustain such deviations and the development of an interpretive model capable of integrating structure and agency, thereby contributing to the ongoing debate on the need to conceptualize discontinuities as an integral component of contemporary educational processes.