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This article analyses patterns of persistence in both vertical and horizontal educational mismatch in the early career of university graduates in Spain, with particular emphasis on the mediating role of job mobility. We explore whether educational mismatch is a stepping stone towards better-matched positions or whether graduates get trapped in mismatched jobs. Our results show that job mobility partially corrects educational mismatch (supporting the stepping stone hypothesis), but there is still a strong persistence in educational mismatches four years after graduation (the trap hypothesis). Vertical mismatch is, overall, less persistent than horizontal mismatch, in part because some horizontally mismatched graduates lack incentives to make corrective movements across employers because of compensating job features that keep them in their first jobs. Job rotation and poor accumulation of employment experience challenge the correcting role of job mobility in educational mismatch risk. These results reflect relevant features of the Spanish labour market: segmentation, intensive job turnover and high youth unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth in Catalonia are caught in the middle of a hotly contested political conflict over the region's possible independence from Spain. Focusing on a large sample of secondary school students (n = 1550; 24.6% immigrants) from 30 schools, we use multilevel modelling to investigate identification with competing national identities and their implications for xenophobia. The larger social context is reflected in native students viewing Catalan and Spanish identifications as incompatible with one another, whereas this is not the case for immigrant students, who are much more likely to identify as both Catalan and Spanish, albeit at a lower level. Investigating the perceived basis of what makes someone Catalan, native students viewed their national identity to be a matter of both ascription (e.g. birth, legal status) and practice (e.g. embracing traditions, personal feelings), whereas the identifications of both Muslim and non-Muslim immigrants were exclusively based on viewing Catalan identity as a matter of practice. Conceiving of Catalan identity as a matter of practice was also linked to lower levels of xenophobia. Our findings are consistent with the conception of Catalan national identity as cosmopolitan and welcoming to immigrants, in line with outreach of the Catalan independence movement seeking to attract support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]