Using an inclusion-to-empowerment conversion framework (access, participation, success through empowerment), this study aims to examine where agripreneurship education in Europe fails to convert access and participation into empowerment for young migrant-background women and those who are Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET). Drawing on higher education (HE) professors and vocational education and training (VET) trainers, it identifies a “conversion gap” and explores whether feminist pedagogy – recognition, redistribution and relationality – could help close it under specified boundary conditions.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted in English with 90 HE professors and VET trainers across 11 European countries (25–60 min; online or face-to-face) using a common guide. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and de-identified. A desk mapping of 210 programmes contextualised provision. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Provision was unevenly embedded across contexts, and pedagogy was modernising but rarely gender-responsive. Constraints were framed primarily as skills deficits; participation supports (e.g. language mediation, device access) were discretionary, and care-related scaffolds were rarely mentioned. Reported effects clustered in individual and relational empowerment (confidence, peer ties), while structural empowerment mechanisms (finance, assets, buyer linkages) were seldom described.
The study specifies an inclusion-to-empowerment conversion gap and actionable levers – educator development, embedded participation supports, structured links to inclusive finance and markets, and empowerment-sensitive metrics beyond skills acquisition – grounded in recognition–redistribution–relationality feminist pedagogy.
