Massification of Higher Education and Challenges In Graduates' Transitions to the Labor Market

In recent decades, higher education has undergone an unprecedented quantitative expansion globally. This process of massification, which initially consolidated in core countries, has spread widely, transforming access dynamics and the expectations associated with university degrees. However, this expansion coincides with a complex macroeconomic and employment landscape, characterized by accelerated technological change, marked labor market segmentation, and a limited absorption capacity of local economies. Consequently, the linear relationship between university education and employment has blurred, raising fundamental sociological questions regarding graduates' capacity to secure quality jobs and the correspondence between acquired skills and workplace demands.

This session aims to provide a space for critical debate to analyze university graduates' transition processes within contexts of massification, drawing from quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methodologies.

We invite paper proposals addressing, among others, the following core themes:

• Structural Mismatch and Labor Market Dynamics: Analysis of alignment between graduate supply and labor demand, including unemployment, underemployment, job precariousness, overqualification, and gaps between credentials and socioeconomic status.
• Massification, Diversity, and Stratification: Research on institutional and programmatic differentiation, exploring how prestige circuits and hierarchies reproduce or mitigate social inequalities of origin in employment access.
• Intermittent Trajectories and Combining Work and Study: Studies on the impact of employment during university studies on subsequent professional career development.
• Institutional Transition Mechanisms: Critical analysis of the role of internships, professional placements, career services, and institutional policies designed to facilitate graduates' transition into the world of work.