Attitudes of Viennese Secondary School Graduates Towards Political Participation Against the Background of Social Inequalities
With Israel et al (2021) differences such as gender, education or migration history do not in principle act as “barriers” or “enablers” (ibid.) of political engagement. They gain significance only through individual processing and specific biographical embedding by the youth.Literature therefore calls for a stronger examination of this field based on the meaning making and subjective processing of the young people themselves (Schwanenflügel 2015; Abs/Hahn-Laudenberg 2016; Walther et al. et al. 2020; Cuconato et al. 2020).
The project thus aims to analyze the relevance of social inequality in the formation processes of young people’s attitudes towards political participation. Main theoretical reference builds on Bourdieu’s Habitus theory, that argues connections between social origin and social practices.
The data basis of the research consists of semi narrative interviews with young people aged 16-18, collected as part of the “Paths to the Future” project of the Institutes of Sociology and Education at the University of Vienna (Flecker et al. 2020; Flecker et al 2023). For this purpose, young secondary school leavers in Vienna were followed over a period of five years resulting in a big body of empirical data.
The intended contribution presents first findings of a qualitative cross section analyses (following the documentary method by Bohnsack and Nohl) of the interviews. Narratives on political participation by the interviewees are presented and analysed to what extend traces of different living conditions can be found in them.