This paper analyses the implementation of policies concerning early school leaving (ESL) in Portugal, one of 9 partner countries of the project “Reducing Early School Leaving in Europe”. In line with the ongoing “fabrication of the European space” of education led by a set of discourses, technologies and education policies (Dale, 2009; Delanty, 2014; Landri & Neumann, 2014; Lawn & Grek, 2012) and policy technologies (Magalhães et al, 2013), the paper addresses the questions:  ‘What can the sociologies of education learn about the construction of ESL as a political concept and the policies to confront it?’. The work stems from the analysis of European and national key documents, from partner countries that occupy different power positions within the EU (Belgium, England, Sweden, Portugal, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Hungary and Austria), where “complex dispositifs and collective experimentations of ‘life together’” concerning ESL have been discussed in the aftermath of the Lisbon Strategy (2000) and to Europe 2020 Strategy. The Portuguese case is analysed at this light, reflecting as well on other countries complex ‘dispositifs’ when convenient (see Araújo, Magalhães, Rocha & Macedo 2014).

European institutions have sought to recreate a new Europe. They anticipate a common mission and incorporate in the European structure old national artefacts and symbols in a new form, in order to create a new European project and place for the emergence of citizens of transnational governance. However, these discourses can become instrumental to Europe, going round rather than confronting any processes of cultural reconfiguration (Alexiadou, 2005; Nóvoa, 2002; Featherstone and Radaelli, 2003). The introduction of new forms of governance/regulation in education is organised through the interactions between supranational, national and local institutions. The production by international organisations of guidelines and programs, reflecting public engagement on education and driving a “globally structured agenda for education” (Dale 2007, 2009) is articulated through a discursive production often assuming the form of recommendations and guidelines requesting the compliance of national agents. Within the framework of programs of cooperation, support, research and development, international organisations – EU, World Bank, OECD, UNESCO, Council of Europe - bring together technical experts and officials of different countries to influence national policy-making (Barroso 2006). By standardising values and norms and arranging funding and evaluation systems, this form of ‘soft’ regulation can be found in EU efforts to coordinate education policies, including those involving ESL, as a social and individual problem identified by the EU.

Europeanisation takes place on the basis of countries’ diverse interpretation and implementation of a common grammar (Magalhães et al, 2013), by means of the national policy and under the framework of programs by different international organisations as already underlined. The role of the state in the definition, steering and implementation of policies and public action comes hand in hand with the intervention of these and other entities, (Barroso, 2006; Hooghe & Marks 2001). National governments have used the opportunities and constraints arising from the multi-level and multi-layered processes to carry out policies aimed at European integration and at pursuing national goals, the “re-nationalisation policies” (Musselin & Paradise, 2009).

The paper addresses the discourses and technologies in the changing landscape of education to interrogate what are the effects of the envisaged changes in terms of equity and the pedagogical rights envisaged by Basil Bernstein (1996).

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