European Education, 47: 77–92, 2015 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1056-4934 print/1944-7086 online DOI: 10.1080/10564934.2015.1001267 Access to Higher Education at the End of Lower Secondary for “Disadvantaged” Students: The Interplay of Structural, Institutional Frameworks and Student Agency Isabelle Danic The University Rennes 2 Drawing from quantitative and qualitative data collected by the European research project GOETE in eight European countries, the article focuses on the experiences of so-called “disadvantaged students” at the end of lower secondary and analyzes how access to higher education is negotiated in the interaction of structural/institutional frameworks and student agency. After elaborating an intersectional framework on disadvantage, the article showcases that access to higher education is defined by national schooling regulations, but also by educational professionals’ discourses and by students’ attitudes. Through professional discourses, representations, and normative expec- tations, students are differentiated and hierarchized according to class, ethnicity, and gender. In the schools investigated, located in deprived areas, students experience these differentiations through stigmatization or discrimination, and build different types of agency in their life contexts. INTRODUCTION Since the beginning of the new millennium, education has been one of the five headline targets of the Europe 2020 Agenda and has been considered as a crucial element in increasing employ- ment rates and reducing risks of social exclusion. At the European level, educational policy and governance have been oriented by the will to create a European space of education that is based on common objectives (Hingel, 2001) and which will inform national and sub-national education policy and reform. In the ideal model of lifelong learning in European knowledge societies, access to education has not only been related to securing and improving competitive- ness, but it is to a greater degree an issue of social inclusion, participation and justice. Whereas “around 50% (of all pupils in Europe) reach medium qualifications level, (but) this often fails to match labor market needs. Less than one person in three aged 25–34 (in Europe) has a univer- sity degree compared to 40% in the United States and over 50% in Japan,” the “EU’s growth strategy” defines as its main goals to reduce school dropout rates to below 10% (from the cur- rent 15%) and to attain at least 40% of 30–34–year-olds completing third-level education (from the current 31%)(European Commission, 2010). Thus, public and policy discourses often stress the need to increase access to education, and the discursive primacy given to education Address correspondence to Isabelle Danic, Département de Sociologie, The University Rennes 2, CS 24307, 35043 Rennes Cedex, France. E-mail: isabelle.danic@univ-rennes2.fr