Conference Agenda

Across Europe, the transition from school to work remains a critical stage for young people with disabilities, even as countries invest in inclusive education and promote equal access to employment. Persistent inequalities arise from educational practices, employer decision-making, intersecting social identities, and broader institutional structures. This symposium brings together four complementary papers that examine these dynamics through a multi level perspective with different theoretical and methological approaches. Together, the four contributions ask how curriculum modifications, accommodations, social categorisations, and institutional and labour market contexts shape the transition from education into employment for young people with disabilities in Switzerland, Luxembourg and across Europe.
The first paper draws on longitudinal data from the Canton of Bern to analyse how curriculum modifications and academic accomodations in compulsory schooling influence transitions into upper secondary programmes. Using labeling (Goffman, 2009) and signaling theories (Spence, 1973), the study shows that modifications tend to channel students toward programmes with lower academic demands, particularly two-year apprenticeships, while accommodations do not negatively affect access to further pathways or the continuity of educational trajectories. These findings illustrate how support measures designed to promote inclusion can unintentionally act as labels that upper secondary institutions interpret as indicators of academic potential.
The second paper turns to employers as gatekeepers in the early stages of employment (Nagtegaal et al., 2023). Drawing on a factorial survey experiment with employers and recruiters in Switzerland the study explores whether support for workplace and job accommodations reduces hiring disadvantages experienced by young people with disabilities. While candidates with disabilities are generally evaluated less favourably than candidates without disabilities, the hiring penalty becomes substantially smaller among employers who express strong support for workplace and job accommodations. This effect is particularly pronounced for candidates with physical disabilities, highlighting the key role of organisational attitudes and accommodation readiness in shaping access to employment.
The third paper introduces an intersectional perspective, analysing the combined effects of disability status, migration background, and gender on hiring intentionsin Switzerland and Luxembourg. Drawing on intersectionality theory (Collins, 2019), disability critical race theory (Annamma et al., 2013), and theories of stigma and perceived productivity, the study applies a multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy (MAIHDA) to distinguish additive from genuinely intersectional effects (Van Dusen et al., 2024). The results suggest that most disadvantages can be attributed to disability and migration background in an additive manner, with gender playing a smaller role. Although evidence of intersectional deviation is limited, the findings indicate that stigma and productivity-related (mis-)conceptions continue to affect hiring decisions across different national contexts.
The fourth paper expands the multi-level perspective by examining institutional influences on the risk and duration of being “not in education, employment, or training” (NEET) among young people with and without disabilities. Using data from thirty-one European countries and employing multilevel random slope regression models, the study investigates how features of national skill formation systems and disability policy frameworks affect transition outcomes. The findings show that higher vocational enrolment rates, certain forms of special school tracking, and higher levels of incapacity related public spending are associated with shorter periods spent outside education and employment for young people with disabilities.
Taken together, the four papers provide a multi level perspective on the transition from school to work for young people with disabilities, showing how individual experiences, organisational practices, and national institutional arrangements shape these pathways. The symposium discussion will synthesise mechanisms across levels and countries and examine how they cumulate and reinforce one another in the production of unequal trajectories. It will identify areas for further research and draw out implications for policy and practice that could contribute to more inclusive school-to-work transitions across Europe.

Background: Inclusive education reforms have expanded the use of integrative measures in Swiss mainstream classrooms, yet their long-term implications remain insufficiently understood. Two measures are central: reduced individual learning objectives (RILOs) and accommodations. RILOs lower subject specific expectations for students with low cognitive ability and are formally documented in school reports without requiring diagnosis. Accommodations support students with average or above average ability and specific disabilities in meeting standard objectives; they typically require diagnosis and are not recorded in school reports. Findings from the Bernese Longitudinal Study on Integrative School Measures (BELIMA) show that these measures are socially selective and differ in their short-term academic effects (Sahli Lozano et al., 2023). Research Question: This study investigates how RILOs and accommodations influence students’ transitions into upper secondary education. Drawing on labeling theory (Fox & Stinnett, 1996; Goffman, 2009) and signaling theory (Spence, 1973), it examines whether these measures convey information about students’ academic potential that affects access to programs with varying academic demands and contributes to discontinuities in educational trajectories. Methods: The study uses BELIMA data from 2,297 students in Canton Bern, including 85 students with RILOs and 77 with accommodations. Propensity score matching was applied to address selection bias, controlling for school type, academic performance, intelligence, and social background. Outcomes include entry into upper secondary programs with differing academic requirements and the continuity of educational trajectories. Results: Students with RILOs were significantly more likely than matched controls to enter programs with lower academic demands, particularly two-year apprenticeships. However, RILOs were not associated with a higher likelihood of discontinuous educational trajectories. Students receiving accommodations did not differ significantly from matched controls in either the academic level of upper secondary placement or pathway continuity. Conclusion: The findings indicate that RILOs, although intended to support students with learning difficulties, may inadvertently channel them into less academically demanding pathways. Accommodations, in contrast, do not appear to restrict educational opportunities. These results demonstrate that integrative measures differ substantially in their long-term effects and that they function as institutional signals within educational decision-making processes. The study underscores the need to critically examine implementation practices to ensure that support measures enhance rather than constrain students’ prospects. Despite limitations such as small subgroup sizes, the findings contribute important evidence to an understudied area and highlight the necessity of further research on the long-term consequences of inclusive education policies.

Fox, J. D., & Stinnett, T. A. (1996). The effects of labeling bias on prognostic outlook for children as a function of diagnostic label and profession. Psychology in the Schools, 33(2), 143–152. Goffman, E. (2009). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Touchstone. Sahli Lozano, C., Wüthrich, S., Wicki, M., & Brandenberg, K. (2023). Soziale Selektivität bei der Vergabe der integrativen schulischen Maßnahmen reduzierte individuelle Lernziele, Nachteilsausgleich und integrative Förderung. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 26, 997–1027. Spence, M. (1973). Job market signaling. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87(3), 355–374.

Leaving school and entering the labour market is an important but often challenging step for young people with disabilities. While many societies commit to education for all and invest in all students’ learning potential, access to the labour market is not guaranteed (Pérez, 2018; Tschanz & Powell, 2020). Employers play a crucial role in enabling the transition into employment, as they act as gatekeepers who decide who is hired and who is not. However, many are reluctant to hire people with disabilities, anticipating reduced work performance and the burden of providing workplace or job accommodations (Bonaccio et al., 2020; Nagtegaal et al., 2023). Meanwhile, positive views on implementation of workplace and job accommodations, such as flexible work arrangements, the provision of extra support or rearranging duties, have been shown to be positively associated with attitudes towards hiring people with disabilities (D’Souza & Kuntz, 2023). Building on this literature, the present study investigates whether employer support for workplace and job accommodations increases the chances that young people with disabilities are considered for a job. The study draws on data from a factorial survey experiment embedded in a broader employer survey conducted in Switzerland. Employers and human resources personnel from different occupational sectors were sampled from real job vacancies and company registries and presented five short vignettes describing young job candidates. The vignettes were experimentally varied across several characteristics, including gender, migration background, and type of disability. Employers rated each candidate’s chances of being considered for a job on an 11-point scale. The survey also included an adapted version of the Job Accommodation Scale (JAS; Shaw et al., 2014) measuring support for workplace and job accommodations. The analytic sample of 304 recruiters and 1520 vignette evaluations was analysed using multilevel random-intercept models with the lme4 package in R, accounting for the nested structure of the data. Overall, employers and human resources personnel rated candidates with disabilities lower than candidates without disabilities. However, the disability penalty decreased as employer support for workplace and job accommodations increased, particularly for young people with a physical disability. These findings suggest that fostering supportive employer attitudes towards workplace and job accommodations may improve the employment prospects of young people with disabilities.

Bonaccio, S., Connelly, C. E., Gellatly, I. R., Jetha, A., & Martin Ginis, K. A. (2020). The Participation of People with Disabilities in the Workplace Across the Employment Cycle: Employer Concerns and Research Evidence. Journal of Business and Psychology, 35(2), 135–158. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-018-9602-5 Nagtegaal, R., De Boer, N., Van Berkel, R., Derks, B., & Tummers, L. (2023). Why Do Employers (Fail to) Hire People with Disabilities? A Systematic Review of Capabilities, Opportunities and Motivations. Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, 33(2), 329–340. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10926-022-10076-1 Pérez, J. L. R. (2018). Una revisión de los conceptos de accesibilidad, apoyos y ajustes razonables para su aplicación en el ámbito laboral. Derechos y Libertades, 39(2), 259–284. https://doi.org/10.14679/1089 Shaw, W. S., Kristman, V. L., Williams-Whitt, K., Soklaridis, S., Huang, Y.-H., Côté, P., & Loisel, P. (2014). The Job Accommodation Scale (JAS): Psychometric Evaluation of a New Measure of Employer Support for Temporary Job Modifications. Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, 24(4), 755–765. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10926-014-9508-7 Tschanz, C., & Powell, J. J. W. (2020). Competing Institutional Logics and Paradoxical Universalism: School-to-Work Transitions of Disabled Youth in Switzerland and the United States. Social Inclusion, 8(1), 155–167. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v8i1.2373

The transition from school to work is a crucial turning point in young people’s lives. While employment is central to social inclusion and economic independence, access to the labor market is unequally distributed. Research documents hiring disadvantages based on disability and migration background, and context-dependent disadvantages based on gender (e.g. Berthoud, 2008; Birkelund et al., 2022; Heath et al., 2008). A growing body of work further highlights that such disadvantages may intersect, leading to particularly adverse outcomes for individuals who combine multiple marginalized identities. However, it remains unclear whether these inequalities reflect additive effects of single attributes or intersectional effects that go beyond additivity. This study examines how recruiters’ evaluations of young candidates’ chances of being hired vary across intersectional strata defined by disability status, migration background and gender. Drawing on intersectionality theory (Collins, 2019), disability critical race theory (Annamma et al., 2013), theories of social distance and stigma (Goffman, 2018), we expect systematic differences in hiring evaluations across these strata. These expectations are further reinforced by an economic rational perspective, which assumes recruiters rely on perceived productivity signals (Esser, 1999). Such perceptions may be shaped by stereotypes and stigma. Taken together, these theoretical perspectives lead us to hypothesize that hiring evaluations vary across intersectional strata, with some strata deviating from expectations based on additive main effects. Empirically we draw on a factorial survey experiment administered to recruiters in Switzerland and Luxembourg. Recruiters from five occupational sectors evaluated the hiring chances of fictive young applicants described in short vignettes. The vignettes were experimentally varied along the dimensions disability, nation of origin, and gender. Age, education, language proficiency, work experience and work permit status were held constant. In total, 464 employers evaluated multiple vignettes, resulting in 2.784 vignette ratings on an 11-point scale. To analyze intersectional inequalities, we employ multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy (MAIHDA), using a cross-classified specification to account for vignette clustering within recruiters (Evans et al., 2019; Van Dusen et al., 2024). Preliminary results indicate that most between-stratum variation is explained by additive effects of disability status and migration background, with gender playing a comparatively smaller role. Residual variance between intersectional strata is minimal once these main effects are accounted for, suggesting limited evidence of intersectional deviation beyond additivity. Nevertheless, consistent with theories of stigma, recruiters’ assessments remain strongly structured by additive disadvantages related to disability and migration background.

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Institutional arrangements significantly influence school-to-work transitions (STWT). Theoretical explanations for how institutions influence STWT are based strongly on the ideal-typical distinction of internal labour markets (ILM), focusing on internal career progression within a single organization, or occupational labour markets (OLM), that emphasize external mobility across employers within OLM (Marczuk, 2024; Marsden, 1990; Maurice et al., 1986). However, how institutions influence STWT also depends on individual-level characteristics and the influence of institutional characteristics on STWT differs considerably between socio-demographic groups as depicted by the varying importance of formal education across institutional settings (Gangl, 2003). Also, case studies of Germany – considered an OLM with a strong vocational training system and highly stratified pathways between general and vocational education that provides smooth STWT – show that low-attainers face increased risks of long-lasting labour market exclusion (Brzinksy-Fay and Solga, 2016). This raises the question to what extent established institutional explanations and related indicators are suitable to explain cross-country variance in STWT of disadvantaged groups. This paper focusses a particularly disadvantaged group and examines cross-national differences in the risk of being „not in education, employment, or training” (NEET) among young people with and without disabilities and investigates how institutional contexts influence the duration of NEET-status among individuals with disabilities across 31 European countries. Several institutional indicators related to ILMs and OLMs are included as ‘classical’ explanations. These indicators are complemented with those relevant to explain challenging STWT of youth with disabilities. Using longitudinal data from the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), multilevel random slope regressions were employed with interactions between self-assessed ‘limitations in activities because of health problems’ – based on a social model of disabilities – and institutional indicators. The findings reveal that higher rates of vocational enrolment, tracking in special schools and increased incapacity spending effectively reduce NEET-length among individuals with disabilities. These results underscore the importance of institutional contexts in shaping STWT and highlight the need for more in-depth comparative research on the transitions of young people with disabilities.

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