Christian Imdorf

Hiring discrimination has been extensively documented in numerous studies. It is not driven solely by individual actions but is context-dependent, shaped – among other factors – by organisational features that enable or constrain discriminatory behaviour. However, little is known about why some organisations, such as companies or public agencies, discriminate more than others. This data descriptor presents the dataset from a harmonised factorial survey experiment (FSE) on hiring discrimination, which enabled detailed analyses of discriminatory behaviour and the organisational contexts that shape it. The FSE measured discrimination based on nationality, gender and care obligations and was conducted between 2024 and 2025 in four European countries—Germany, Norway, Poland and Romania—among 2,506 recruiters. The dataset includes 15,036 evaluations of hypothetical job candidates for medium-skilled positions, complemented by extensive information on recruiters and the organisations they represent.

This thematic issue investigates vocational schools as pathways to higher education (HE) across several countries, analyzing their potential to enhance educational and social mobility. With rising global demand for HE, vocational education and training (VET) systems offer alternative routes to HE, with vocational schools playing a crucial role, providing opportunities for students from less privileged backgrounds. The issue examines how vocational schools in various countries affect the permeability between VET and HE, highlighting the diverse narratives across different educational settings, including the DACH countries, China, the Czech Republic, Japan, Norway, and the United Kingdom. Despite vocational schools’ potential to act as bridges to HE, findings remain mixed. Although vocational schools have expanded university access, they often reproduce social inequalities. Analyses suggest that these schools could improve their impact in more targeted ways through stronger teacher engagement, better preparation of students, and structured pathways that acknowledge and address students’ diverse needs. The necessity for clear, common terminology and concepts, as well as for appropriate survey data to understand vocational pathways to HE in vocational school research, is emphasized, acknowledging significant research gaps, particularly in Eastern Europe and the Global South. Overall, this thematic issue calls for a new research agenda that includes diverse international perspectives, advocating for the recognition and enhancement of vocational schools as vital components to feed the HE landscape.

The chapter outlines the contexts of youth transitions in Switzerland within the comparative analysis of this book and sheds light on young people’s school-to-work, housing (leaving home) and domestic transitions (marriage/cohabitation and parenthood). The first part presents the historical background and trends of youth transitions in Switzerland over the past decades, based on previous research. The contexts of youth transitions in Switzerland are then presented, followed by an overview of the social policies and norms that structure youth transitions. The second part presents empirical patterns of youth transitions based on data from the Swiss longitudinal survey Transitions from Education to Employment (TREE). School-to-work transitions, housing and domestic transitions and the respective life patterns of young people are examined and linked to young people’s life satisfaction. The results show that successful housing and domestic transitions by the age of thirty increase life satisfaction for both men and women. The perceived age norm for reaching adulthood is decoupled from the age of parenthood. Transition norms are intertwined with gendered career expectations and gendered patterns of life satisfaction, while inadequate family policies tend to encourage women to stop working when they have their first child.

Negative attitudes and prejudices against Roma job seekers in Bulgaria are widespread, limit their economic activity and reinforce social exclusion. Referring to organizational, statistical, and ‘taste’-based concepts of discrimination and based on qualitative survey data with 96 recruiters collected in 2016, this study asks how ethnicity matters for companies in Bulgaria. The findings show that ethnic discrimination in recruitment attempts to protect companies from the risk of anticipated difficulties with new employees. Ethnicity is used as symbolic and organizational resource for trouble avoidance, ensuring perceived service and product quality.

This study investigates the role of subnational educational opportunities for three typical transitions in young adulthood: 1) leaving the parental home, 2) starting to cohabit and 3) becoming a parent. Educational opportunities shape young adults’ life courses as they facilitate the accumulation of human capital, labour market entry and financial independence. Education systems and opportunities are part of transition regimes shaped by the specific cultural, economic and policy characteristics of a (subnational) context, and are thus likely to affect moving out and family formation. Drawing on the example of Switzerland with its large cantonal variation in educational opportunities, we use longitudinal data from the TREE panel study to follow a cohort of young adults born in the mid-1980s from ages 16 to 29. Event history models show that larger shares of young people in vocational education at a cantonal level are associated with earlier moving out and parenthood, but later partnership formation. The influence of vocational opportunities is moderated by the presence of a university in the canton.