In a globalized world, education has been at the center of tensions that seek to articulate the discourse conveyed by guidelines, recommendations and other types of influences and pressures from supranational organizations (not only European), such as the OECD, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, and national educational policies. One important topic in several of these documents is the broadening of higher education to other publics (disadvantage groups), namely graduates of vocational education and training that are mostly of a working-class background. These young people still face educational and social inequalities that compromises their right to education.  Nevertheless, some of them manage to overcome barriers and succeed in school.  Our main research question has to do precisely with that: which dimensions, processes, and factors contribute to school success pathways of young people from a working-class background, specifically, graduates from vocational courses (VC) and apprenticeship courses (AC). We intend to privilege the young people´s perspectives by analysing their biographical pathways and building “sociological portraits” (Lahire, 2004). For this, we will carry out biographical interviews with VC and AC graduates attending, or that have attended, higher school. As in Portugal, the number of graduates from VC going to higher school is only around 20% and the number of graduates from AC is even more reduced, we call them “unlikely school pathways”. There are several national and international studies on this topic that provide an understanding of the processes and factors that contribute to “unlikely school pathways” or “counter-tendency pathways” (Laurens, 1992; Viana, 2005; Zago, 2006; Costa & Lopes, 2008; Teixeira, 2009; Santos, 2012; Bergier, 2013; Roldão, 2015; Seabra (coord), 2016; Vieira, 2019). Although these studies have different subjects and approaches, some dimensions and factors are transversal, and emerge with particular emphasis in all the studies: family, school, non-formal education, sociabilities, and an individual dimension (actor/actor´s agency). We are exploring them in our research crossing national studies and outcomes with international research on the topic.

The contribution of the Theories of Reproduction to the understanding of school inequalities is unavoidable, and it is equally important to understand the school pathways of young people from the working-classes, the "excluded from inside" (Bourdieu, 2003/1993). In the 1960s, Bourdieu and Passeron (2009/1964; s.d./1970) uncovered the role of the educational system in the reproduction of social inequalities. The differences in cultural capital in relation to school are responsible for the underachievement of the disadvantaged classes (2009/1964).

One of Lahire's contributions is to highlight "the conditions for the sociological study of the most singular hidden corners of the social” (2003). In a research with children from the working classes in primary school, he concludes that they also experience success in school. Family configurations and modes of socialization are involved, but do not fully explain this success (1997). He criticizes Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and cultural transmission. The first for its emphasis on the uniqueness and homogeneity of the subject (2005; 2003; 1997) to which it contrasts the heterogeneity built in multiple contexts of socialization that generate the "individual heritage of dispositions". He contests cultural transmission, as understood by Bourdieu, and describes it as "dispositions under condition" (1997) activated or deactivated by a “plural actor” (2003).

Dubet's concept of "social experience" (1996) as the actor's activity that moves in different systems according to different logics of action and, in particular, the logic of "subjectivity", in which the actor builds himself as "the author of his own life” (1996) may contribute to understand the 'school experience' (and atypical success) of the graduates from PC and AC participating in the study.

We chose a fundamentally qualitative approach since we intend to understand the meanings that the subjects assign to their discourses and practices. In addition, the study also has a participatory research logic (Gaventa & Cornwall, 2001) to promote the development of the participants' reflection about the object of study. The chosen method is multiple case study (Amado, 2014) since we will study young people from professional courses and apprenticeship courses who are currently in higher education and present unlikely school pathways. Since the data regarding students of the apprenticeship courses is scarce, we consider relevant to do a characterization of these young people, in the district of Braga, through the administration of a questionnaire. This survey will cover several dimensions of analysis, in a model close to the survey of "Students at the end of secondary school" of the Observatory of Secondary School Student Trajectories (https://www.dgeec.mec.pt/np4/47/). We also intend to carry out 20 semi-structured biographical interviews with vocational and apprenticeship courses graduates attending (or having attended) higher school and, subsequently, to draw 14 “sociological portraits” (7 graduates from professional courses and 7 graduates from apprenticeship courses). “Sociological portraits” are the one that best responds to the object of study since they: allows us to capture the complexity of individual singularity, based on heterogeneity and dispositional and contextual plurality; the heuristic value of the concept of plural actor; for the role assigned to the interconnection between structure and agency in the interpretation of the social. To build the portraits, we will conduct two interview sessions with each participant, if possible, spaced little apart in time. The content analysis of the biographical interviews and field notes will be based on authors such as Bardin (1995) and Vala (2005). The analysis should be organized around the simultaneous consideration of theoretical issues and the empirical data. In a first analysis, it is important to perform successive readings of the interviews transcription, which will be later analysed using a priori categories to streamline the analysis process, as well as emerging categories. Finally, it is important to re-analyse the data as a whole. We believe that these instruments of data collection and analysis (documental analysis, questionnaire, biographical semi-structured interviews, and content analysis) will allow us to build sociological portraits of these young people and profiles that characterize these unlikely school pathways.

The educational system still has difficulty in providing an adequate response to all students and, in particular, to students from the working-classes, who continue to experience inequalities in their educational pathway and in their access to higher education. Bourdieu makes an essential contribution in the macrosociological analysis of social structures and power relations, in particular of the educational system as an instrument of social reproduction through the educational inequalities it produces. Nevertheless, some of these young people manage to overcome barriers and inequalities (educational, socioeconomic, cultural, individual) and secure their right to education. How did they understand and act (or not) in concrete situations facing and overcoming barriers? We expect to understand further what, how and why these young people perspective, behave and move through in their own words. The "individual heritage of dispositions" built in different contexts of as well as young people's agency socialisation (Lahire, 2003, 2005) and their “school experience” (Dubet, 1998) allows to explain their school success pathways, but not entirely. Factors associated with family, school, non-formal education, and sociability also play a key. National and international studies on unlikely school pathways of students from the working classes affirm its multidimensionality. How can it be apprehended through the narratives of those youngsters? The academic pathways that they followed bring any specificity to this multidimensionality (for instance related to the vocational relationship with work or the meanings assumed by the last one)? This is a topic that we’ll explore during the interviews and when building the ‘portraits’.

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