In this paper, we investigate the different ways in which young people with and without an immigrant background, who have in common that they aspire for a higher education, picture their nearest future. We distinguish between two major pathways to a university education: a traditional pathway (direct transition from upper secondary school to university) and an experimental pathway (where university plans are mixed with other plans, such as work and travel). Data come from a school survey of 685 final-year students in 10 upper secondary schools in Malmö, the third biggest metropolitan area in Sweden. We find that it is much more common among youth with an immigrant background to plan for a traditional pathway, compared to youth of Swedish background who instead are more inclined to plan for experimentation. This difference remains when controlling for factors related to school performance and parental socioeconomic background.

To promote human flourishing throughout society, opportunities for arts participation must encompass all citizens. A primary means to promote this is arts education and activities for schoolchildren. Equal opportunities for participation are currently not enjoyed by students with disabilities. In a population-based and cross-sectional study carried out on a 2016 public-health survey including 27,395 students with and without disabilities in the Swedish region of Skåne, it is found that all categories of students with disabilities experience some degree of diminished participation across six different arts activities. Students with ADHD/ADD and dyslexia suffer consistent diminished participation across all six activities, while students with other disabilities are ‘compensated’ for lesser participation in some activities by overrepresentation in other activities. This suggest that all students with disabilities are subject to external perspectives about what is appropriate for them, based on perceptions about their impairments and, possibly, combined with gender. Finally, it is argued that disability invites us to broaden our views of who can engage in various art forms, under which premises and how arts can be taught. This opens ‘opportunities for innovation’ in arts education drawing on the basic impulse of the arts: to continuously look beyond boundaries and facilitate emancipatory expression.