Conference Program

This paper explores young people’s post-secondary intentions in Lombardy (Italy) as relationally and socio-materially assembled trajectories rather than as isolated individual choices. Drawing on data from the MAYBE – Moving into Adulthood project, the analysis examines how upper secondary students’ aspirations, indecision, and orientations towards further education, work, or the combination of both are produced within networks of institutional, familial, and territorial relations that shape their everyday lives and future imaginaries.

Moving beyond individualistic accounts of choice, the paper conceptualises post-secondary transitions as processes of subjectivation embedded in unequal socio-material conditions. School tracking, family expectations, economic constraints, and territorial opportunity structures interact to configure differentiated spaces of possibility. Within these spaces, young people negotiate uncertainty, risk, and autonomy, articulating aspirations that are simultaneously shaped by structural inequalities and active forms of agency.

The analysis distinguishes three main orientations: continuation into tertiary education, direct entry into the labour market, and indecision. Quantitative evidence shows that these orientations are strongly stratified by school track, family cultural capital, and territorial context. Academic-track students overwhelmingly anticipate university continuation, whereas technical and vocational students display higher levels of indecision and a stronger orientation towards immediate labour market participation. However, rather than interpreting these differences as the outcome of divergent preferences or meritocratic sorting, the paper reads them as the effect of institutionalised inequalities embedded in the Italian education system and in territorially uneven labour markets.

Parental expectations emerge as a key relational mechanism within these assemblages. The absence of a clear parental orientation—or the presence of conflicting expectations—significantly increases the likelihood of indecision, suggesting that uncertainty is socially produced rather than individually deficient. Similarly, the intention to combine study and work is not merely a pragmatic choice, but reflects differentiated socio-material positioning. It is more prevalent among students from technical and vocational tracks, among those facing economic constraints, and among those already engaged in regular employment. In this sense, combining study and work can be understood as an adaptive strategy within contexts of precarious futures and limited institutional security.

By foregrounding the relational production of aspirations, the paper contributes to debates on youth biographies and socioeducational injustices. Young people’s imagined futures are shown to be rooted in institutional pathways, territorial inequalities, and intergenerational transmissions of value and expectation. Yet, these trajectories are not passively reproduced: students actively interpret, negotiate, and sometimes reconfigure the constraints they encounter, co-constituting their educational transitions within unequal socio-material assemblages.

Overall, the paper argues that post-secondary intentions should be understood as early crystallisations of broader life-course inequalities, where agency and structure are inseparably intertwined. In doing so, it illuminates how uncertain futures are assembled at the intersection of school systems, family dynamics, territorial conditions, and young people’s situated aspirations.