The thematic network 'Misleading Trajectories' has been concerned with the traps of social exclusion within policies addressing young people's transitions to work (school, vocational training, careers advice, social security, labour market programmes). The network (involving Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain) began from the observation that many policies that are intended to 'lead' towards gainful employment, adult status and social integration, are in fact 'misleading' in terms of: <br> <br> <br>reducing social integration to labour market integration, thus neglecting young adults' subjective perspectives and leading to a "waste" of motivation; <br> <br>not considering the change of labour societies and reducing the "mismatch" between supply and demand to an individualised "pedagogisation" of labour market problems. <br> <br>Theoretically misleading trajectories stand for the increasing discrepancy between social integration and systems' integration. Institutions increasingly fail in understanding, addressing and solving the complexities and contradictions of social integration in general and individual life course transitions in particular. <br>