"Turning Points and Action Strategies of Young Adults with Migration Backgrounds in Germany and France"
Open Lectures Spring 2016
- Date: Apr 28, 2016
- Time: 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Carsten Keller (Universität Kassel)
- Carsten Keller is Professor of Urban and Regional Sociology at the University of Kassel in the Department of Architecture, Urban Planning and Landscape Planning.
- Location: MPI-MMG, Hermann-Föge-Weg 11, Göttingen
- Room: Library Hall
For more details please contact buethe(at)mmg.mpg.de.
In this talk Professor Keller will present outcomes of a research project on the passages of youth with a migration background to adulthood in Germany and France. The project has been a research collaboration between members of the Centre Marc Bloch and the Socio-Economic Panel at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), using a mixed method approach with both qualitative and quantitative data. Apart from differences between the educational trajectories and pathways to the labour market within both countries, the biographies of young adults were found to often be marked by turning points. Typically, after the passage to secondary school, some of the qualitatively interviewed youth radically change their action strategies. They start a period where they employ, as they call it, informal strategies, which are oriented towards peers and their own reputations and freedom, and away from formal institutions like school. All of the youth who employ such informal strategies try to reinvest in long-term and formal strategies after a period of time, and the research detected institutional factors in France and Germany that promote or hinder them in the performance of their second turning point.