In the European countries, upper secondary qualification is identified as critical for individuals’ career development as well as a key to the progress of communities and society at large. In an European perspective, Sweden today has relatively high proportion of young people without upper secondary status when leaving upper secondary school as well as high youth unemployment rates. The restructuring of the public sector, the reduction of the Swedish welfare system and the development of the school system towards increased deregulation, decentralization and market release seems to have had a particularly negative effect on young people at risk.  In this paper the intention is to give voice to young adults without upper secondary qualifications, some of them with different kinds of disabilities, some with non-Swedish background and most of them unemployed. How do they describe their pathways in school and school-to-work (STW)-transitions? How do they describe measures intended to promote completion of school and getting a foothold in the labour market? What characterizes their horizons of action? The aim of this study is to increase the knowledge about biographical experiences of STW- transitions among young adults in their twenties without upper secondary status, focusing on their understanding of institutional processes, their experiences and individual strategies. The study is part of the research project - Troublesome transitions: School-to-work transitions of young people at risk in a longitudinal perspective - funded by the Swedish Research Council.  To analyse the young adults’ narratives about their STW-transitions a careership theory is applied, outlined by Hodkinson and Sparkes.  The theory considers the agency-structure interrelationship, and is connected to Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field and capital. Key concepts are routines, turning-points, field and horizon of action.

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