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Education is increasingly seen as a substitute for social policy, but opportunities for skill development vary by social background and educational institutions are not neutral in this respect. While previous research has extensively examined how schooling affects skills distribution, the role of post-compulsory education has been long overlooked. Using data from the 2011/2012 Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competences, this article investigates how selected features of upper secondary and tertiary education are connected to the social stratification of young adults' literacy skills in 18 OECD countries. First, I use individual-level regressions to assess the extent to which disparities in the skills of 24- to 29-year-old individuals are explained by parental education in each country. Second, I apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis across countries to investigate under which institutional conditions the social stratification of young adults' literacy skills is most severe. The findings point to the existence of functionally equivalent education regimes: young adults face severe disparities not only in socially selective higher education systems but also in relatively open systems characterized by institutional differentiation; moreover, disparities arising during compulsory schooling are consequential for the skill distribution of young adults, underscoring the importance of a life-course approach to education policies.

The Italian immigrants' inclusion model has been described as a "low unemployment, bad jobs" equilibrium: immigrants have relatively high employment rates but tend to be segregated in low-quality jobs. However, as these jobs are also unstable, so is the equilibrium: during periods of recession, immigrants may face higher risks of labor-market exclusion. This paper investigates immigrant penalties in terms of employment probabilities, job loss, labor-market (re)entry, and job quality throughout the first year of COVID-19 crisis, by analyzing data from the 2019 and 2020 ISTAT Labor Force Survey. We find that the pandemic crisis accelerated an already ongoing erosion of immigrants' relative employment advantage, while at the same time increasing their segregation in low-quality jobs. The deterioration of immigrants' employment chances is chiefly driven by increased barriers in (re)entering the labor market which, especially for women, might be due to self-selection into inactivity. These findings suggest that the structural factors that have historically facilitated the activation of immigrant workers might have become factors of instability.

At a time of growing expectations about educational attainment, young people who did not complete upper-secondary schooling can easily be 'left behind' to face risks of social exclusion. Being able to make a rapid and successful transition into a first significant job is crucial for long-term labor-market attachment. We approach the question of continuity or change in school-to-work transitions by comparing the experiences of four birth cohorts of early school leavers in Italy, where they still constitute a sizeable group as of today. Italy makes for an interesting case study due to the length of school-to-work transitions and the extent of gender differences in this phase. In an era of educational expansion and increased female activation, studying changes in low-educated women's labor-market access brings into focus the question of who is really left behind. Using data from the 2009 'Multi-purpose Survey on Household and Social Subjects,' we use discrete time logistic regression models to estimate the probability of transitioning to the first significant job for early school leavers born between 1954 and 1993. We find that gender differences are strikingly persistent across birth cohorts, even after controlling for sociodemographic variables as well as for time-varying fertility and partnership histories.

The article investigates the employment conditions of young early school leavers in Italy in the aftermath of the economic crisis, a period which was marked by a process of occupational downgrading. The empirical analyses rely on the 2005 and 2014 waves of the ISFOL-PLUS survey and show that the employment opportunities of youth who dropped out of school have substantially deteriorated over time, both in absolute terms and compared to those who attained an upper-secondary level certificate. The article discusses possible determinants of this negative trend: on the one hand, the increased negative selection of the group of early school leavers; on the other hand, the process of "crowding out" of workers with intermediate qualification levels from well-matching jobs. The results also show considerable gender differences and in particular the existence of a multiplicative disadvantage for female early school leavers, especially in Southern Italy.

This chapter proposes a novel sequential mixed-method design that brings together the strengths of sequence analysis (SA) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). Both methods rely on an epistemological framework that combines analytical and holistic elements: they share the notion of analytically approaching social phenomena without disregarding their complexity. We apply SA as a first step to analyze the unfolding of phenomena over time. Specifically, through discrepancy analysis of state sequences, one can identify the time points when trajectories (start to) diverge from each other. In a second, explanatory step, QCA is applied to investigate whether, at such crucial time points, some particular configurations of factors are logically sufficient for the occurrence of a given state (or outcome). We provide an illustrative application to women's employment trajectories in divided Germany by using data from the Adults Cohort of the German National Educational Panel (NEPS). By preserving the analytical and holistic perspective on trajectories, our proposed design highlights the dynamic of socio-demographic factors sufficient for women to be in employment or education at critical turning points over the life course. This design takes on the challenge, summarized in Abbott's call for a 'processual sociology', to investigate both the dynamics of social phenomena as lineages of successive events and the complexity of contextual characteristics of 'present' moments. We conclude with an overview of research fields where our framework holds the promise of being applied fruitfully, namely life-course research, social stratification studies, policy evaluation, and comparative politics.

Compared to girls, boys are more at risk of early school leaving. However, it is unclear whether gender differences are driven by push factors, which alienate students from the school system, or pull factors, which attract them out of it. This paper examines gender differences in early school leaving, assessing the role of previous scholastic performance, parental education, and differential employment opportunities. By analyzing two nationally representative datasets, we focus on Italy, a country with high rates of early school leaving and pronounced gender inequalities in the labor market. Our results show that gender effects are partially mediated by scholastic performance, a crucial push factor, and are stronger among low-achieving students, pointing to a higher resilience of girls to academic failure; parental education is highly protective, especially for boys. Yet, boys' higher propensity to drop out is also, at least partly, explained by better employment opportunities in the formal and informal labor market.

This chapter proposes a novel sequential mixed-method design that brings together the strengths of sequence analysis (SA) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). Both methods rely on an epistemological framework that combines analytical and holistic elements: they share the notion of analytically approaching social phenomena without disregarding their complexity. We apply SA as a first step to analyze the unfolding of phenomena over time. Specifically, through discrepancy analysis of state sequences, one can identify the time points when trajectories (start to) diverge from each other. In a second, explanatory step, QCA is applied to investigate whether, at such crucial time points, some particular configurations of factors are logically sufficient for the occurrence of a given state (or outcome). We provide an illustrative application to women's employment trajectories in divided Germany by using data from the Adults Cohort of the German National Educational Panel (NEPS). By preserving the analytical and holistic perspective on trajectories, our proposed design highlights the dynamic of socio-demographic factors sufficient for women to be in employment or education at critical turning points over the life course. This design takes on the challenge, summarized in Abbott's call for a 'processual sociology', to investigate both the dynamics of social phenomena as lineages of successive events and the complexity of contextual characteristics of 'present' moments. We conclude with an overview of research fields where our framework holds the promise of being applied fruitfully, namely life-course research, social stratification studies, policy evaluation, and comparative politics.