School plays a central, strategic part to the development and functioning of today’s societies. More than ever before, school is responsible for preparing young people for active life, a complex world of work and the individual and collective needs for employment and social mobility, not to mention other social goals, such as personal development, a capacity for participation and the exercise of rights of citizenship. Formal education is therefore, central to the mediation, integration and anticipation of virtual futures and the construction of identities and individual life pathways. This paper looks at immigrants’ children, their educational orientations, aspirations and expectations when completing compulsory schooling (9th grade). How do they converge with or diverge from the wider universe of young students? What virtual future pathways can we see and what do they tell us about the integration of this segment into Portuguese society? The discussion is based on data from mixed-method research, carried out in 2007 - ITEOP (Survey of Educational Pathways and Vocational Orientations), involving 1,194 9th-grade Portuguese and immigrant students (aged 14-19), surveyed at 13 schools, all of which had a highly diverse student body, in the Lisbon, Setubal and Faro regions. The analytical exercise culminates with in the construction of a typology of projects of future. The typological examination enabled the understanding of the diversity of modes of projection in the future, as well as the identification of the specific associated clusters of social, educational, migratory, and subjective conditions.

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Desigualdades,orientações de futuro,descendentes de imigrantes,transição,ensino secundário