This paper aims to demonstrate the analytical potential of initial vocational education and training (iVET) in the debate on the costs of social mobility. It is based on extensive qualitative fieldwork with over 250 young people in Romania's iVET (around 20% of whom were Roma). Central to the discourses of young Roma are the experiences of discrimination, the absence of a "vocational habitus" and an awareness of credential inflation, despite the social and economic costs of attending iVET. The research calls for a recalibration of the narrative on social mobility, in an economic context where work is becoming increasingly precarious.