Conference Program

This study examines the reflections of rural-origin university students in Arica, Chile's northernmost city, regarding their educational trajectories. Trajectories are understood as the fabric that connects structural, institutional, and individual dimensions (Briscioli, 2016) and as a theoretical–methodological construct that seeks to overcome the sociological dichotomy between social determinism and voluntarism by linking the subjective and objective conditions under which life unfolds (Terigi & Briscioli, 2020). The distinction between theoretical trajectories—linear itineraries prescribed by the school system—and real trajectories—the specific paths followed by each student, which may diverge from the theoretical sequence (Terigi, 2007)—enables analysis of complex processes in educational contexts shaped by forces beyond the school.

This qualitative study follows a biographical-narrative approach and is based on life-story interviews with 10 university students (Cornejo et al., 2008). Each participant was interviewed twice, for a total of 20 interviews. The study examines the relationship between the rural–urban school transition and the educational trajectories and self-perceptions of rural-origin university students, foregrounding their own perspectives. Its significance lies in the fact that, in a border region characterized by nationalism as much as by multiculturality, cultural, ethnic, and national identities play a key role in the interplay among territory, institutional contexts, and individual trajectories.

Findings show that the rural-urban transition significantly shapes students' educational trajectories, combining academic challenges, logistical burdens, and personal growth opportunities. Since most rural high schools are vocational, rural students feel disadvantaged when enrolling in university, and perceive their urban peers as more familiar with university culture and the professional aspects of their careers. Students also experience a stark contrast between the “homey” environment of rural schools—where teachers know every student and their family—and the more anonymous urban university setting. Many describe moving from being top students in their rural schools to receiving their first failing grades in higher education as a significant emotional shock, yet they value this learning opportunity. From a socioemotional perspective, students often enter urban institutions with fear of being “different” because of their rural background or migrant status. Many describe themselves as initially “reserved” or “closed off” due to their life experiences and the burden of commuting and participating in agricultural labor. Professors and peers may be unaware of these conditions and inflexible regarding schedules and deadlines.

Overall, interviewees understand their rural lives as producing histories and identities distinct from those of urban peers; they see themselves as valuing family effort more highly and as having become more independent and mature through the rural–urban transition, often forming ties with other hardworking, dedicated students. This study thus contributes to the panel by showing how rural-origin university students’ educational trajectories intersect with territorial inequalities, institutional expectations, and family work obligations, producing both constraints and resources in their everyday navigation of higher education. By foregrounding their narratives of effort and discipline, the study illuminates how identities and aspirations are co-constituted within unequal socio-material conditions, while also evidencing subtle forms of resistance to dominant, urban-centric models of educational success.

Over recent decades, higher education has expanded significantly; however, profound inequalities persist for students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds (McCowan, 2016). In this context, university admissions policies have become central to regulating access. Often grounded in principles of merit, competition, and selectivity, admission systems tend to individualise access as a matter of choice and classification (Mijs, 2016; Reay, 2020), thereby obscuring the structural inequalities shaping unequal trajectories and experiences across the field. Within this landscape, transitions to higher education, understood as socially mediated processes, become critical moments in the configuration and reproduction of inequality within stratified systems (Reay, 2018; Tarabini & Ingram, 2018).

This article presents a comparative analysis of working-class first-generation students’ transitions to higher education in Chile and Ecuador; two countries with massified yet highly stratified higher education systems, but differing in the organisation of admissions mechanisms and institutional provision. In Chile, the admissions system is highly institutionalised and articulated to a mixed provision model, characterised by a strong presence of private institutions and pronounced vertical differentiation. In Ecuador, by contrast, higher education provision is predominantly public, and the admissions system has undergone recent transformations, shifting from a centralised state-led allocation model toward more decentralised schemes regulated by individual universities

Drawing on a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with 45 working-class first-generation students (20 in Ecuador and 25 in Chile), including women and indigenous students, the article examines how national configurations of admissions, institutional hierarchies and support structures interact with students’ social positions to shape their educational choices and early university trajectories.

The findings identify shared patterns in students’ transition experiences. Across both contexts, working-class first-generation students encounter a misalignment between university expectations and their material, symbolic, and relational resources, generating experiences of uncertainty, disorientation, and partial understanding of the ‘rules of the game’. In response, students develop pragmatic and often constrained strategies of choice, adaptation and early integration, which tend to reproduce rather than overcome institutional hierarchies. At the same time, the analysis reveals important internal differentiations, showing how classed transition experiences are reworked through intersections with gender and ethnicity, particularly for indigenous and working-class women students.

By foregrounding the transition to higher education as a socially and institutionally mediated process, this contributes to debates on widening participation by showing how admissions regimes and system stratification shape not only access but also students’ positioning and sense of belonging.

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.

In a social world that no longer remains stable even within the lifespan of a single individual (Rosa 2015), constructing one’s identity has become an existential “challenge-trial” (épreuve) (Martuccelli 2017). Individuals – during the conclusion of formal socialization – enter in “adult” life burdened by heavy biographical expectations. The mandate to be authentic, singular, and unique (Reckwitz 2025) has become a norm operating along a contradictory track: the valorization of what is durable versus the inevitable condition of flexibility (Boltanski & Chiapello 2014). In a context where the risk of “not being seen” is constant, recognition is granted only if one’s authenticity becomes performative. In this manner, the biographical project – modulating flexibility and durability – becomes the primary empirical referent of a successful individual.

This performative competition (Rosa 2017) has been embraced by the Italian school system, which integrates the value of the “particular” into a system traditionally rooted in the “general”. Consequently, bureaucracy itself becomes singularized, altering the mandate of public schooling. This opening manifests in new initiatives of compulsion toward identity and biographical performance, most notably “Il Mio Capolavoro” (My Masterpiece) – a space where students are expected to testify to the “state of the art” of their own singularization. Within a shift from rational-task-based-evaluation to affective-person-based-validation, the student exists only if they are capable of performing a solid identity and projecting themselves into a future. The “tyranny of flexibility” is thus reframed as an occasion for individuation, a challenge that must be successfully overcome.

Biographical compulsion initiatives act as existential trials-challenges that mark new forms of inequality. Through a new register of validation, the “capacity to aspire” (Appadurai 2007) is structured around recognizing the self’s performativity. As a result, those “poor in singularization” – subjects eclipsed by competition – see their biographical opportunities diminish. While the Schumpeterian entrepreneur emerges as the new model of subjectivation (Sennett 2007), vital forms of equality are being restructured and tolerable inequalities redefined (Rosanvallon 2013).

Adopting an approach rooted in analytical dualism, this study drew on the subjective accounts of 140 students from various educational tracks, collected via surveys and semi-structured interviews. By questioning structures through the lens of experience (Martuccelli 2017), a profound contradiction emerges. This tension pits a socialization inspired by modern durability against the imperative to remain flexible in the face of precarity.

In this framework, the expectation of the singularized subject is presented as an opportunity, yet it functions as a new form of biographical compulsion. This contribution explores how “singularized privilege” is constructed through an accumulation of experiences that validates the individual as an authentic and unique subject. By reproducing and legitimizing late-modern inequality patterns, this privilege profoundly reshapes the capacity to aspire. Consequently, the future becomes a competitive asset, accessible only through the continuous performance of one’s own singularity.

This paper examines how multiple dimensions of young people’s social lives shape their post‑16 transitions in two contrasting English settings. It considers the influence of contemporary policies and practices within and beyond schools and colleges, and the material and structural conditions of place, related to recent shifts in labour market policy - factors that interact differently across localities. As Brown and Donnelly (2023:1) argue, advancing a social justice agenda in education requires close attention to the spatial dynamics that produce and reproduce educational inequalities.

The paper draws on findings from Young Lives, Young Futures, a mixed‑methods longitudinal ESRC-funded study examining how England’s vocational, education and training (VET) system can more effectively support the post‑16 transitions of young people who do not enter university at 18. The study includes a three‑wave nationally representative survey of over 10,000 young people, alongside qualitative interviews with 123 young people (many interviewed three times) and 75 policymakers and practitioners across four local authorities with contrasting labour markets and education and training provision.

This paper follows up on three concerns emerging from our wider project. First, we examine the evolving policy landscape that is reshaping young people’s transitions into, through, and between work, education and training (Wyn, et al. 2019). A proliferation of new directives and initiatives—such as the Youth Guarantee and the Jobs Guarantee—is reconfiguring provision and reframing expectations of young people’s participation. Second, we explore and contrast the experiences and perceptions of young people in two of our four study regions: Bellden, located in the deindustrialised north of England, and Tapley, a super‑diverse, cosmopolitan locale in the south. We analyse how space and place shape these transitions differently across contrasting labour markets, educational opportunities and local policy enactments—the geography of youth transition policy in practice. Finally, we bring these strands together to reflect critically on the limits and challenges of achieving more socially just outcomes for young people navigating post‑16 pathways in these uncertain times

This abstract is being developed at a time of heightened concern about young people’s declining participation in education, training and employment and their uncertain transitions (Berrington, et al. 2017; Diniz and Murphy, 2025). The 2025 White Paper highlights that nearly one million 16‑ to 24‑year‑olds are currently not in education, employment or training (NEET), a situation with serious implications for their future life chances, wellbeing and economic prospects. It recognises this as “a national challenge that demands urgent care and coordinated action” (2025: 7). Against this backdrop, our paper interrogates how the emerging policy landscape is attending—or failing to attend—to regional differences that powerfully shape young people’s access to opportunities, highlighting the persistent spatial inequalities and uneven geographies of youth opportunity that policy often overlooks.