Conference Program

Inequalities in educational and professional paths are a central theme in sociological analysis, as they reflect the interaction between social structure, institutional processes, and individual agency. Educational and professional aspirations are not simply the expression of personal preferences, but are situated social products, influenced by cultural capital, available resources, and perceived opportunities (Bourdieu, 1986; Appadurai, 2004). Empirical studies highlight that social origin contributes to differentiating individual expectations, guiding educational and professional paths and influencing occupational trajectories (Schoon & Parsons, 2002; Carlana, La Ferrara, & Pinotti, 2022). From this perspective, career guidance can be interpreted as a social device that operates at the intersection of three main domains: the education system, the transition between school and work, and the employment context. In the school context, guidance supports the construction of identity and representations of the future, contributing to the formation of aspirations and the perception of available opportunities (Sen, 1999). During the school-to-work transition, guidance acts as a mediator between the individual and the social structure, facilitating the understanding of opportunities, the definition of career paths, and the negotiation of expectations in a context influenced by social norms, prestige, and remuneration criteria (La Ferrara, 2019). In the employment context, guidance supports the adaptation and development of career paths, accompanying individuals' ability to navigate changes and transitions throughout the working life cycle (OECD, 2021). Common elements emerge in all three contexts: guidance fosters reflexivity, the elaboration of aspirations, and the construction of individual trajectories consistent with available opportunities (Hooley, Sultana, & Thomsen, 2018; Musset & Kurekova, 2018). Differences between contexts primarily concern the purposes, tools, and timing of intervention, which vary according to the individual's stage of development and structural conditions. From a sociological perspective, guidance is a strategic social practice that contributes to the construction of opportunities and the definition of individual trajectories, intervening in the processes through which inequalities are reproduced or mitigated (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998; Thomsen, 2017). Analyzing the interaction between school, school-to-work transition, and work allows us to understand the role of guidance in supporting social mobility, promoting informed choices, and building integrated lifelong learning policies. In conclusion, strengthening lifelong guidance is a key tool for reducing educational and occupational inequalities, ensuring that future aspirations are supported by real opportunities and long-term strategies. An integrated perspective across these three domains allows for the design of more effective interventions, capable of supporting individuals throughout their educational and working lives, fostering inclusion, equity, and personal development.

The growing complexity of production systems—driven by digitalisation, automation, and the green transition—requires vocational education and training (VET) systems to strengthen both their responsiveness to emerging skill demands and their mechanisms for quality assurance. In this context, Higher Technical Education and Training (IFTS) provides a particularly valuable lens through which to examine the relationship between programme design, competence assessment, and school-to-work transitions.

IFTS programmes are post-secondary pathways aimed at developing advanced technical and vocational competences. Their primary objective is to facilitate young people’s entry into the labour market and to reduce mismatches between the supply of and demand for skilled labour. This contribution explores the broader technical and vocational education pathway and analyses quantitative evidence drawn from annual monitoring[1] activities and recurring surveys[2] on graduate employment outcomes conducted by the Institute. This combined qualitative and quantitative framework makes it possible to identify key factors influencing overall system quality.

A first dimension concerns multi-level governance, involving Regions, training providers, schools, universities, and enterprises. Collaboration among these stakeholders supports the design of programmes that are better aligned with local labour market needs. A second key factor is the competence-based design of curricula in response to evolving industrial sectors and value chains. Programmes are structured around occupational profiles and expected learning outcomes, with particular attention to both technical and transversal competences.

A central feature of IFTS is the integration of classroom-based instruction with structured work-based learning experiences, such as internships or traineeships. Workplace learning enables students to apply acquired knowledge in real-world settings and often represents a gateway to employment. Evidence indicates positive employment outcomes two years after programme completion, including a substantial share of open-ended contracts. High completion rates are also observed, attributable both to careful initial selection procedures and to the strong motivation of participating students.

System quality is further reinforced by the adoption of competence certification models aligned with national and European qualifications frameworks, ensuring transparency and the recognition of credentials. Additional strengths include stable and targeted public investment, as well as the use of innovative pedagogical approaches, particularly laboratory-based activities and problem-based learning methodologies.

Nevertheless, several challenges persist. Chief among these is the regional fragmentation of provision, as decentralised planning may generate disparities in access and quality across different areas of the country. Moreover, the IFTS pathway remains relatively under-recognised among students and families, limiting its attractiveness. In some contexts, it continues to be perceived as secondary to university education. Career guidance services do not always adequately promote technical and vocational opportunities, and coordination with ITS Academy, IeFP pathways, and universities is not consistently structured. Finally, the updating of occupational profiles does not always occur on a regular basis.

Overall, professionally oriented pathways represent a flexible and effective instrument for addressing ongoing economic and technological transformations. Strengthening their role entails investing in training quality, youth employability, and the competitive development of local economies.

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[2]

School guidance represents a fundamental component of lifelong guidance. It is crucial not only because it shapes decisions that significantly affect individuals’ educational and professional trajectories, but also because it contributes to the development of career management skills that accompany individuals throughout their lives.

From a capability approach perspective, guidance should not be understood merely as the provision of information or as support for matching individuals to existing educational and labour market opportunities. Rather, it plays a key role in expanding young people’s real freedoms—their capabilities—to aspire, to choose among meaningful alternatives, and to pursue lives they have reason to value. In this sense, guidance is deeply intertwined with issues of social justice: unequal access to quality guidance may translate into unequal capabilities, thereby reproducing or amplifying existing social inequalities.

Both informal guidance—occurring within families and everyday social environments—and formal guidance—primarily delivered by schools and other institutional actors—play a decisive role in shaping young people’s choices. However, school-based guidance is the domain most directly influenced by public policy. As such, it constitutes a key lever for either mitigating or, conversely, reproducing social inequalities.

In recent years, school guidance has regained prominence in Italian public policy. Notable examples include the 2022 National Guidelines on Guidance, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) Investment 1.4 on educational inequalities (“PNRR/divari”), and the introduction and subsequent regulatory revisions of school-to-work pathways. Despite this renewed policy attention, school guidance remains insufficiently monitored. There is a lack of systematic evaluation frameworks based on clearly defined process and outcome indicators capable of assessing both the implementation of guidance practices and their effects.

This contribution seeks to address this gap by providing an overview of guidance activities in Italian schools and the processes underpinning them. The analysis draws on two complementary sources: (1) administrative data from schools’ Self-Evaluation Reports (Rapporto di Auto Valutazione), and (2) survey data from a sample of over 1,500 teachers who responded to a questionnaire specifically focused on guidance practices. The survey data also offer valuable insights into teachers’ perceptions of guidance, which are crucial for understanding how guidance is implemented in practice—sometimes implicitly or unintentionally.

The findings highlight areas where knowledge remains limited and where further research is particularly needed. They also provide a basis for proposing policy directions aimed at strengthening school guidance and fostering greater integration between school guidance, school-to-work transition measures, and guidance in later stages of life. In doing so, the paper contributes to the broader debate on how to design integrated lifelong guidance policies capable of reducing social inequalities.

The research project examines the transformative potential of art-based social work by exploring how artistic practices can be integrated into social work services. It is based on an ethnographic study conducted at the Centro de Referência das Juventudes Novo Horizonte, an experimental state-run service in Espírito Santo, Brazil. The Centre promotes the rights, autonomy, and inclusion of young people aged 15 to 29 living in vulnerable contexts through artistic and cultural workshops, sport, training, and psychosocial support.
The project aims to contribute to the scholarly literature on the effectiveness of art-based social work by providing new empirical evidence. This evidence is intended to foster professional reflexivity and to inform the development of practical tools and operational guidelines that can legitimise and consolidate the use of art as an epistemic and relational resource within social services. The study is situated within the international debate on the use of art in social contexts, highlighting its expressive, participatory, and political dimensions, with particular attention to Brazil, where social work is grounded in an ethical-political project with Marxist and anti-capitalist roots.
The research adopts an anti-oppressive approach, which enables artistic practices to be understood as tools for listening, emancipation, and social transformation. This approach is embedded within a multidisciplinary and multicultural analytical framework drawing on art-based social work, the sociology of art, cultural welfare, and critical social work, including Brazilian ethical-political and critical traditions. The study is paired with a qualitative methodology based on immersive ethnography conducted in collaboration with the Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo.
Methods include participant observation focused on care professionals, practitioners, artists, and young people engaged in the Centre’s activities; semi-structured interviews with young participants, professionals, and university faculty; and documentary analysis. The findings show that art-based practices are not marginal interventions, but an integral part of the service’s organisational culture. They intersect with youth languages such as hip-hop and with participatory governance models that value professional, educational, and artistic competencies.
Overall, the study offers an original contribution to critical and anti-oppressive social work debates by proposing situated, participatory, and transformative perspectives for the implementation of art-based practices.

This contribution presents the first results from the analysis of data collected within an ongoing ethnographic and biographical study on the school experiences of young adults of Chinese origin who experienced a transnational childhood (Baldassar et al., 2007; Bohr & Tse, 2009; Fresnoza-Flot & Nagasaka, 2015) between China (Gao & Sacchetto, 2024; Lamas-Abraira, 2019, 2023; Liu et al., 2017) and Italy (Ardizzoni & Omodeo, 2022; Costantini, 2023; Paciocco & Baldassar, 2017). The research is situated within educational studies and engages with debates on complex biographies (Ball et al., 2013), mobile childhoods (Fresnoza-Flot & Nagasaka, 2015), the school experiences of Chinese students with migrant backgrounds (Costantini, 2023; Scolaro, 2025; Paciocco, 2018), and youth agency in contexts shaped by transnational mobility (Baldassar et al., 2014; Dreby, 2007; White et al., 2011).

The study focuses on the stories of so-called left-behind children, satellite babies (Wang, 2018), and sent-back children (Bohr & Tse, 2009), young adults who spent part of their childhood in China with grandparents or extended family members before reuniting with their parents in Italy. Its aim is to examine how their educational trajectories intertwine with their experiences within the Italian school system.

Through semi-structured biographical interviews (Bertaux, 2003; Bichi, 2022; Merrill & West, 2009) with young adults aged 18–31, the study explores how linguistic transitions, school integration processes, peer relationships, and family expectations are experienced and narrated. Particular attention is devoted to identity negotiation processes, dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, and the redefinition of aspirations over time – yesterday, today, and tomorrow – across transnational spaces.

Methodologically, the study adopts a student voice perspective that recognises youth agency and their active role in knowledge production (Lundy, 2007). This approach is strengthened through participant-generated visual methods, such as the Self-Portrait (Bagnoli, 2009) and the Language Portrait (Busch, 2018).

Interview analysis combines a thematic approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006) with a biographical reading inspired by Bertaux (2003) and an analysis of identity dynamics within narratives following Demazière and Dubar (2000). Preliminary findings are interpreted through the concept of assemblage (Youdell & Armstrong, 2011), in dialogue with the ecological perspective on human development (Bronfenbrenner, 1986) and the life-course approach (Elder, 1977). From this perspective, educational trajectories are not understood as the linear outcome of structural determinants nor as the simple result of individual choices. Rather, they can be interpreted as ecological assemblages in which family dimensions (linked lives), temporal dimensions (the timing of migration), local contexts (schools, peer groups, relationships with teachers), national frameworks (educational policies), and transnational connections (family, friendship and media networks) coexist and co-constitute one another (Ball et al., 2013; Elder, 1977; Fresnoza-Flot & Nagasaka, 2015).

Preliminary findings suggest that agency, identity, and aspirations cannot be treated as decontextualised categories detached from the transnational experiences of “here” and “there”. These ecological assemblages acquire educational value when they become explicit and open to dialogue within a pedagogical perspective. The situated complexity of these life stories calls for further reflection on transnational care and education as a key issue in addressing educational inequalities.

Over the past fifteen years, social media platforms have become key environments for processes of socialization, identity construction, and the production of social relationships. Digital platforms now represent central spaces of interaction and self-representation in which individuals construct and negotiate their public identities within environments characterized by constant social visibility (boyd, 2014; Papacharissi, 2011). However, social media practices are not homogeneous across generations, but reflect different ways of engaging with public visibility, self-presentation, and the management of others’ gaze. This paper proposes an exploratory reflection on generational transformations in social media practices, focusing in particular on the differences between Generation X, Millennials, Generation Z, and Generation Alpha.

Generations who encountered social media in adulthood or late adolescence - particularly Gen X and Millennials - tend to use these platforms as an extension of their offline lives. Shared content often serves a narrative and documentary function through which users recount and archive moments of everyday experience, reflecting dynamics of self-presentation similar to those described in classical sociological analyses of social interaction (Goffman, 1959). With Generation Z, a significant shift emerges in the relationship with content publication. In a context characterized by heightened awareness of public scrutiny and platform-based mechanisms of social evaluation, content production appears more carefully curated and aesthetically oriented. Profiles become identity showcases through which users construct selective and stylized representations of themselves, participating in what has been described as an economy of visibility and online reputation (Marwick, 2013; Papacharissi, 2010). With the emergence of Generation Alpha, a further transformation in communication practices can be observed. In this case, the permanence of content gradually loses centrality in favor of more ephemeral communication formats such as stories or other time-limited media. At the same time, a growing tendency toward identity splitting emerges through the management of multiple profiles: on the one hand, a highly controlled public profile often characterized by minimal visible content; on the other, a private account - commonly referred to as a “spam account”- accessible only to a restricted circle of contacts and used for more informal and spontaneous communication. These practices reflect an increasing strategic management of visibility and a renegotiation of the boundaries between private and public spheres in digital environments (boyd, 2014; Turkle, 2011). Through this comparative perspective, the paper suggests that the evolution of social media practices across generations reflects a broader transformation in the relationships between identity, visibility, and digital memory. From the autobiographical dimension typical of early digital users, practices progressively shift toward strategic image management and, more recently, toward communication models based on ephemeral media and segmented online identities. Examining these generational dynamics allows us to better understand how digital platforms are reshaping the ways individuals construct their public selves, negotiate visibility, and manage the boundaries between private and public spheres in contemporary social and educational contexts.