This paper aims to analyse singular trajectories of women’s social and work inclusion, valuing the study of singularities in Sociology of Education.

The research of disadvantaged social group’s school practices has been pinned by the reference to processes of underachievement and reproduction of exclusion mechanisms. However, considering Bourdieu (1997), Lahire (2002; 2005; 2006), Kellerhals & Montandon (1991) and Laurens (1992), one seeks to ponder upon contemporary different socialization contexts that allow the incorporation of dissonant dispositional systems, which sociologically explain the existence of academic success cases in underprivileged social groups.
Lahire is a critic of Bourdieu’s work and proposes sociological perspectives that report to an individual level (2005), studying the intra-individual variation of behaviours and attitudes, according to social contexts, considering their plurality and incorporated dispositions, depending on the exposure to different socializing frames, diachronic and synchronic variation of the biographical path and of crisis/tensions.

The beginning of the crisis in the salary society, characterized by the precariousness of work, unemployment and social assistance mechanisms opened a debate about the protection of the new poor. In the 90s, the social issue (Castel, 1999; Rosanvallon 1995) materialized in the social vulnerability of social groups that until then were not in need of assistance mechanisms.

 However, from the 2000s, the consensus about the new poverty is broken and reforms of the contribution system were carried out: social representations changed on these social groups seen more as people of privilege rather than victims (Duvoux, 2009: 9). The insertion contract meets theses anxieties establishing a subtle way of workfare, which is in the basis of activation policies.

In this context, the Portuguese welfare system launched a policy named Social Insertion Income (SII) in 2003, which universally grants the right to a minimum level of subsistence in exchange of its beneficiaries’ insertion in several areas (namely employment, training and education).

Following the tendencies in the social field, adult education also faces social challenges. Learning has become merchandise, instrumentalized by the market, with a profitability objective and the increase of the entrepreneurial competitiveness: “People are responsible for their learning, if they do not invest in their ongoing training and find themselves unemployed, then it’s their problem, their own responsibility.” (Finger, 2005: 26)

Correia (2005) states that in the actual context, training has become a duty, namely to those who are targeted by social activation policies: “training has to live with and learn to articulate with a training ethic built upon a exulting vision, which considers it the “magic” solution in order to solve all social problems, and nowadays a strong tendency in which the training field is established as a symbolical disqualification space for those who are in social exclusion risk, rather than a space of individual qualification, a space of duty or experiencing an ordeal rather than a place for exercising a right and for the construction of citizenship.” (Correia, 2005: 71)

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