Despite an expansion of educational opportunities throughout the EU, access to university is still distributed based on social inequality. This tendency can be observed in all EU countries, with Germany, Austria and Slovakia showing particularly low levels of upward mobility. Many working-class students or other non-traditional students never even contemplate entering the field of higher education; others achieve university entry, but fail to overcome the obstacles faced in this field. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theoretical-methodological approach and based on 12 narrative, problem-centred interviews, this study presents a general habitus-oriented analysis of non-traditional university drop outs. We then focus on one case study to describe how the habitus of a non-traditional student is preformed through his family and school background and conflicts with the university field and its institutional habitus requirements. We show that students with a strong sense of their social position and ‘place’ (Bourdieu, 1990; Goffman, 1951) are particularly at risk of feeling like ‘cultural outsiders’ in the higher education field, a situation that leads to increased fears of failure. We conclude with a reflection on the relevance of Bourdieu’s relational thinking for understanding and addressing the underlying mechanisms of social inequality and a discussion of measures necessary to improve graduation rates for non-traditional students in Europe.

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While various forms of teachers' habitus have been described in education studies, little consideration has so far been given to their interaction with fields in schools. This article draws on Bourdieu's theory and related concepts of field, habitus, capital and doxa to explore types of teacher professionalism, especially in Austrian secondary schools where innovative measures and reforms have been introduced. By combining a model of teaching profession with a Bourdieu-based analysis in the interpretation of 70 interviews with secondary school teachers, we show that a double field structure has emerged in some schools, where a field of traditional teaching competes with one of new professional field teaching. We argue that further initiatives will be needed from the field of education policy and other forces in society to stabilise the field of new professional teaching. This article illustrates the dynamic interrelationship between professional habitus and conflicting fields in one particular school.

This special issue focuses on the trajectories of early school leavers and includes corresponding papers from six countries in Europe. It presents a cross-national view on interrelated issues that facilitate understanding of the lessons that can be learned from these trajectories to promote a more socially just approach to education. In this introductory article, the authors present early school leaving (ESL) as a key issue in Europe, discuss relevant good practices and set the scene for an analysis of education as a matter of social justice and human rights – one which requires, above all, the prevention of educational poverty.

The agenda for widening participation in higher education has led to increasing numbers of students with a broader range of education and family backgrounds. However, transitioning to the university landscape remains a highly complex negotiation process, especially for first‐in‐family students, who cannot draw on previous experience from higher education in their families. Gaining access to informational capital—a combination of cultural and social capital—plays a crucial role in managing education transitions. We draw on rich empirical data obtained from 26 autobiographical narrative interviews with first‐in‐family university students in Austria to investigate how transitions to university are affected by informational capital. We also explore how access to informational capital was influenced by (1) institutional practices, such as initiatives to support students, especially first‐year students; and (2) cultural fit—the extent to which a student's cultural capital corresponded with the dominant cultural capital in the field of their chosen discipline or higher education establishment. Our findings show that gaining access to informational capital was strongly affected by the institutional practices at universities within the different disciplines, thus highlighting the importance of higher education institutions in supporting their students during transition processes. We conclude with policy implications for how higher education institutions can assist first‐in‐family students to succeed at university.