DFG Research Project: The effects of regional and neighbourhood contexts on young people’s aspirations and access to vocational education and training in Germany

Wolfgang Ludwig-Mayerhofer

Alexandra Wicht

Sebastian Taugerbeck

The research project aims at examining the effects of spatial contexts on the transition of young people from school into the vocational education and training system in Germany. Problems in the transition process, which can have serious consequences on a person’s entire occupa­tional career, have been on the rise in recent decades. This process, however, is defined not only by time but also by space. We start from the assumption that opportunity structures for young people are not simply objective, but also subjective, and we understand access to the vocational education and training market to be the result of selection processes on the part of training institutions (firms, schools) as they interact with socio-culturally mediated self-selection processes. Spatial structures can affect these mechanisms on different levels. Regional labour market characteristics as well as neighbourhood socio-cultural milieux can be assumed to influ­ence vocational educational aspirations, occupational interests and access to and positioning in the vocational education and training system. Matching life course data on the starting cohort 4 of the National Educational Panel (NEPS), ‘School and Vocational Training – Educational Path­ways of Students in 9th Grade and Higher’, with space-related aggregate data will allow us to conduct a detailed analysis of this transition process, combining the micro and the macro level in a multi-level design.

Wicht, A. 2016. “Occupational Aspirations and Ethnic School Segregation: Social Contagion Effects Among Native German and Immigrant Youths.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (online first) [link].

Wicht, A. 2015. “Von Orten zu Räumen: Regionale Kontexte in der Bildungssoziologie.” In Stadtbaustein Bildung, edited by T. Coelen, A. J. Heinrich, A. Million. Wiesbaden: VS [link].

Weßling, K. and A. Wicht. 2015. “Möglichkeiten der Nutzung regionaler Daten im Nationalen Bildungspanel — ein Überblick.” NEPS Working Paper 54. Bamberg: Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsverlaufe, Nationales Bildungspanel [link].

Wicht, A. and W. Ludwig-Mayerhofer. 2014. “The Impact of Neighborhoods and Schools on Young People’s Occupational Aspirations.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 85 (3), 298–308 [link].

Three years, beginning in spring 2012

German Research Foundation (DFG)