Following the European strategic documents on gender and sexuality rights (European Commisson, 2023), Croatia has taken measures to improve the rights of LGBTQ+ persons, e.g. the right to a life partnership, adoption of children, etc. (NN 98/19). Despite progress at the legal level, Croatian society is still permeated with traditional and patriarchal values, especially when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community, who have been confronted with sterotypes, prejudices and various forms of discrimination (Pikić and Jugović, 2006; Puzić et al. 2020; Štambuk, 2022), even in the area of higher education, which is the subject of our research. The research was conducted in 2019 with 2 focus groups consisting of 11 LGBTQ+ students from two universities (the oldest and largest and the new and small) as part of a large project. In order to understand LGBTQ+ students as active human agents, whose properties and powers emerge from their relations and interactions with their environment, while also maintaining relative agential autonomy from their social context, we draw on Archer's social realist theory (1995, 2003) and its elaboration and application in educational research (Case, 2015; Clegg, 2016; Williams, 2012). The research is focused on the morphogenesis of students agency conditioned by the structural and cultural characteristics of students natal and university contexts. The aim of the research is to interrogate the ways in which universities offer enablements and constraints for the exercising students agency. Students internal conversation or deliberations on which university to enter and how to act within structural and cultural conditions of the university context show that LGBTQ+ students chose liberal and tolerant universities where they feel more accepted and free, with diverse contents and opportunities that allow them a more fulfilling and successful study experience and social life as LGBTQ+ persons, compared to their natal environment. Although the universities offer students more agential opportunities, the conditions for the morphogenesis of LGBTQ+ students' agency are still constrained. The universities need to enlarge their efforts to facilitate and support the development of full individual potential and free expression of gender and sexuality identities of LGBTQ+ students, if higher education is to be a place of equal opportunities for all individuals regardless of their gender and sexuality or any other characteristic that involves inequality.

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