The expansion of the neoliberal paradigm has brought with it the proliferation of individualistic and meritocratic discourses. In education, this has meant placing on students the full responsibility of their academic trajectories and results, which, in the long term, will explain their social locations (Vieira et al., 2013). As a consequence, the distribution of social positions appears as the natural distribution of abilities, skills, and talents (Furlong, 2009). In this context, educational choices and transitions play a key role in the distribution of social opportunities (Tarabini & Ingram, 2018; Tarabini, 2022). Students are supposed to make free and well-informed choices aligned with their tastes, abilities, and aspirations. Despite this rhetoric, sociological research has demonstrated how students’ choices are deeply embedded in social dynamics and particularly influenced by the structure of capitals and the working of the habitus (Ball et al., 2002). In Spain, transitions to upper secondary education are the first moment when students are separated into different tracks -academic and vocational-, with substantive differences in the supply, the curriculum, the pedagogy, and the future opportunities and prospects. Based on 68 in-depth interviews with first-year students in the academic and vocational upper secondary tracks we will explore their representation on the way tracking contributes to (re)reproduce social inequality. This will allow us to study the embeddedness of educational selectivity and inequality in individuals’ subjectivities (Nylund et al., 2017).

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