From Heterogeneities to Inequalities in the Life Course of Individuals
The six projects of Project Area A of the collaboratice research centre are dedicated to the genesis and the effects of inequality-relevant features of heterogeneity in the individual lifecourse under different contextual conditions. Four classes of heterogeneity features (ascriptive features, cultural differentiations, skills as well as activities) will be discussed and analyzed by their interaction. First, these features are essential because they determine individual lifecourse decisions, as they are personal resources influencing the development of preferences. Second, they are features which are perceived and judged on by collective actors, thus becoming criteria for being selected and be treated inequally in the context of networks and organizations. And third, they play a role for the development of preferences and for judging on perceived inequalities, most of all in the form of attitudes to justice.
Theoretically and methodically researching the development and effects of these individual features as a contextual enlargement of a purely individual lifecourse research is considered an important methodological future task of an explanantion-oriented research in the social sciences. Here, independently measured contextual development conditions are identified in families of origin, social networks, day nurseries, schools and housing environments, even in the variance of institutions of the nation state in the context of international comparisons. By integrating lifecourse and individual development, concerning the genesis of social inequalities it will become possible to distinguish psychic mechanisms from the path dependency of institutionalized lifecourses and to analyze their interaction. Furthermore, there is the attempt to make such a lifecourse- and individual development-integrating research internationally comparable, by reaching back to one´s own longitudinal data surveys as well as by help of the SOEP´s own secondary analyses and other data sources.
Project Area A
-
Project A1
Social Closure and Hierarchization: Contextual Conditions of Unequal Developmental Opportunities in Early Phases of Life -
Project A2
The Emergence and Development of Deviant and Delinquent Behavior over the Life Course and its Significance for Processes of Social Inequality -
Project A3
Gender-Specific Patterns of Opportunity in Employment -
Project A4
The Heterogeneity of Skills, Technological Change, and Changing Perspectives on the Labor Market -
Project A5
The Welfare State and Education: An International Comparison of Educational Poverty -
Project A6
The Legitimation of Inequalities – Structural Conditions of Justice Attitudes over the Life-span
