Abstract :
Within the project "Melntegra - Markets and Insertion Strategies of Young Graduates" we intend to present the State of the Art on the subject of young graduatesʹ professional insertion, in order to identify the main social, training, economic and political trends Higher Education institutions and the labour market face. Encompassing the Northern region of Portugal, this research aims to know, on one side, the employability of young graduates from diverse and contrasting scientific fields, as well as the modalities of insertion in companies, particularly regarding practices of recruitment and selection. We will also to centre, over all, on the social constraints - the logics of social reproduction, structure and functioning in the system of high education and work market - and in the continued strategies of professional insertion, distinguishing the co-clarifying factors of the work market segmentation. The conditions and the processes of insertion of these young graduates are extremely heterogeneous and depend on factors that escape the exclusive logic of the employability value of the diploma. In this sense, and in the frame of a deregulation of the wage relation and consequent expansion of "a-typical" kinds of job, we can also notice increasing rates of sub-employment and unemployment, which warn us about a growing vulnerability and precariousness of employment relationships.
