Conference Agenda

Research on intergenerational educational mobility draws on a longstanding sociological tradition that examines how social origins shape cultural orientations. Blau and Duncan’s (1967) status attainment model conceptualised mobility as a cumulative process shaped by parental education, occupation, and socioeconomic position. Boudon (1974) introduced the distinction between primary and secondary effects of social origin. While primary effects arise from early performance differences, secondary effects relate to class-specific educational decision‑making, reflecting perceived costs, risks, and expected returns. Drawing on Weber, Boudon argues that achieving higher educational attainment is often the result of explicitly value-rational decisions (Boudon 2003). Mare’s (1980) sequential transition model emphasised that inequality accumulates across successive educational thresholds, with students from lower-status backgrounds disproportionately filtered out at each stage, consequently, those first-generation graduates who successfully navigate these hurdles often undergo a profound shift in their worldview. Breen and Goldthorpe’s (1997) rational-action model added that families aim to avoid downward mobility, with higher status families better positioned to tolerate educational risks, while low-status families rely on more conservative strategies.

Studies on value orientations (Schwartz 1992, 2006; Inglehart and Welzel 2005) also seek to understand the distinct value-orientations of individuals who have achieved higher levels of education. Schwartz argues that higher education fosters openness to change and self-transcendence over conservation and self-enhancement, as it encourages intellectual autonomy. According to Inglehart, upward mobility is associated with a greater likelihood of self-expression-oriented values. Those who were raised in highly educated families exhibit the strongest and most stable post-materialist orientations, as they are socialised in environments where existential security and autonomy-supportive norms are taken for granted. Cross‑national research shows systematic regional variation: Northern and Western European societies prioritise autonomy and egalitarianism, while Southern Europe and post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe display stronger security-oriented and hierarchical value structures.

We were curious to see whether the relationship between intergenerational educational mobility and values shows a uniform pattern across different regions of Europe, or whether the cultural diversity emphasized in the examination of values is more strongly reflected. Based on these theories we formulate the following hypotheses: (1) In Central and Eastern European contexts where higher education became widely accessible only after the expansion of the 2000s, opportunities for upward mobility are more constrained, than in different regions. (2) At the individual level, first-generation graduates can be expected to show more post-materialist orientations than would be predicted by their parental background, yet their value profiles may remain less strongly post-materialist than those of multi-generation graduates who were socialised in autonomy-rich environments.(3) Finally, given the cross-national variation in value orientation identified by Schwartz and Inglehart, the share of post-materialist graduates should vary substantially across different regions.

In recent years, school absence among students has become an increasing political and scholarly concern (Dumstrei, 2023; EVA, 2022; Fleischer, 2018; Hedegaard-Sørensen, 2025; Kearney, 2007; Knudsen & Møller, 2017). Prolonged school non-attendance has often been framed through individual deficit models focusing on psychological difficulties or family dysfunction (Kearney, 2007; Knudsen & Møller, 2017). Such perspectives, which locate problems of attendance, behaviour, or learning within individual children, frequently lead to exclusionary and stigmatising responses (Lund, 2021; Nilsson, 2025b). Consequently, policy and intervention efforts have largely overlooked the structural, relational, and institutional dimensions of schooling. Recent research, however, highlights the need to reconceptualise school absence through attention to students’ lived experiences and agency (Corcoran & Kelly, 2023; Knage, 2023; Walther-Hansen, 2025).

Corcoran and Kelly (2023) show that students with prolonged non-attendance predominantly identify school-related factors—rather than individual or home-based causes—as the primary reasons for their absence. Many of these students have strong academic aspirations and a pronounced desire to return, yet experience school as inaccessible or unresponsive. Emotional well-being and mental health challenges are described not as causes, but as consequences of non-attendance. The authors therefore call for a shift in research and policy towards more meaningful engagement with students, centring their perspectives in supportive interventions.

The objective of this paper is to broaden discussions of school absence by foregrounding structural and relational conditions, while deepening the understanding of students’ well-being through a focus on belonging and agency. The paper also outlines a research design exploring how school absence may be prevented through the co-creation of interventions involving school professionals, parents, and students.

The study is situated in the Danish context, where most children attend public schools and where worrying levels of absenteeism are increasing. This development has prompted a political ambition to provide earlier and more preventive interventions (UVM, 2026). Although the content of these interventions remains undefined, this paper argues that school absence must be understood within a structural and relational framework. Particular attention is given to student agency as articulated in the OECD Learning Compass 2030, which emphasises students’ capacity to act, shape their conditions, and make responsible choices (OECD, 2019).

In line with this focus, the paper also draws on the concept of belonging, defined as “the extent to which [students] feel personally accepted, respected, and supported by others” (Goodenow & Grady, 1993, p. 60). Research has linked belonging to learning outcomes, well-being, and motivation for school attendance (Alink et al., 2023; Cuervo & Wyn, 2014; Fong Lam et al., 2015). Together, agency and belonging provide a framework for understanding school absence as shaped through interactions between students and school environments.

The project is grounded in practice theory (Schatzki, 2002; Kemmis et al., 2014) and critical disability studies (Goodley et al., 2021; Nilsson, 2025a). The paper addresses the following research question: What characterises school environments that are experienced as supportive of attendance, belonging, and agency, and how can key features of such environments be reimagined and developed for broader application in public schools to enhance students’ attendance, belonging, and agency?

In the marketised international higher education (IHE) sector, international student mobility (ISM) has seen substantial growth since 2010 (OECD, 2022). Recruiting international students has become a vital effort for host countries and universities (ICEF Monitor, 2025; BUILA & Universities UK International, 2021). Education agents are widely used by both international students and universities in English-speaking and non-English-speaking host countries (Nikula, Raimo, & West, 2023). They provide a set of services, including counselling prospective international students and preparing application documents, as well as supporting institutions with marketing (BUILA & Universities UK International, 2021). Moreover, education agents are business entities charging fees for the services they provide (Nikula, Raimo, & West, 2023). The competition for international recruitment and university applications is intense, with education agents playing a key role for both overseas universities and prospective students (Yang, 2025; Nikula, Raimo, & West, 2023). Therefore, understanding how international students, particularly those who use education agents, apply for overseas programmes has made access to IHE an important focus in ISM research (e.g. Yang & Lomer, 2025). Extensive studies have identified numerous factors influencing international student choice-making from various disciplinary perspectives (see e.g. Mok et al., 2021; Kim, Bankart et al., 2018). Many of these studies, however, downplay the interplay between personal and social contexts, specifically student agency and reflexivity, in access to international higher education. They also rarely consider how different factors can affect specific choices at a particular stage or time point of choice-making. Additionally, Nikula, Raimo & West (2023) highlight that the role of education agents has intertwined with international student recruitment and admission, which, however, has been largely overlooked in this research area. Therefore, we argue that our understanding of the complexity and dynamics in accessing international higher education remains limited.

This paper focuses on Chinese students who use an education agent to apply for master’s or postgraduate taught programmes overseas (Chinese agent-user students), which serves to illustrate a typical university application experience of international students. We draw on a longitudinal study exploring the role of education agents in Chinese students’ overseas university application experiences from the perspective of both education agents and students, and aim to investigate in particular what (un)certainties Chinese agent-user students encounter in their overseas university applications, and how they navigate them. This paper adopts Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) chordal triad of agency for data analysis and interpretation, which foregrounds the capture and interpretation of the agentic dimensions of social action within the flow of time and does justice to their intrinsically dynamic, temporal, and relational nature.