The objective of the paper is to deal with the horizons of action (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997) featuring young people’s educational and social imaginaries at the end of compulsory secondary schooling. Specifically, the paper entails to analyse the impact of both the individual habitus (Bourdieu, 1993) and the institutional habitus (Reay, et al 2001) in defining these landscapes of choice (Ball, et al., 2002). The analysis is based on 55 in-depth interviews with 16 years old students, 43 of which where interviewed on a second round. The interviews have been developed within an ethnographic study in five secondary schools in Barcelona, including interviews with teachers, principals and academic coordinators, teachers’ focus groups, class observations and participation in teachers’ meetings. The results demonstrate, on the one hand, the class-related patterns explaining student’s imaginaries, expectations and intentions to continue studying in vocational or academic tracks, or even to drop out, once their compulsory secondary schooling is coming to the end. On the other hand, and consistent with previous research, the analysis proves the mediating role of schools in shaping these ‘expected transitions’, above all trough the teachers’ expectations and beliefs about their students (Van Houtte and Demanet, 2015) and trough the entire school culture regarding the emotional engagement of young people with their process schooling (Tarabini, et al, 2015).

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