Legal Status and Inequality: Young Tolerated Refugees and Vocational Training in Germany

Young migrants unsuccessfully claiming refugee status may be ‘tolerated’ in Germany. This specific legal status positions them in the host society nearly at the end of a vertical model of civic stratification, implying restrictions in accessing central institutions of the society such as the education system or the labour market. Besides, they are constantly facing a high risk of being deported to the country of origin.

However, the impending shortage of the skilled workforce in Germany enforced a new political discourse. As a consequence young tolerated refugees hesitantly have been re-defined as educational subjects and labour market resource. Despite the still persisting inequalities in the access to vocational training of tolerated youths as compared to young citizens or migrants being granted a residence permit, legal changes at the federal level have been introduced since 2009. They are to reduce vocational training boundaries for these residents with the highly precarious toleration status across Germany. But empirical evidence from our ongoing research project reveals a heterogeneous application of the new regulations. Especially migration authorities may act as institutional gatekeepers either supporting or constraining their access to vocational training. This results in regionally unequal vocational training chances for tolerated youths that cause new unequalities within this group.

What does the twofold inequality regarding the access to vocational training mean for other spheres of the social life and future prospects of tolerated youths? This is the question we would like to focus on in our presentation. To answer it we outline the current legal framework and present central findings of our comparative regional case studies that are based on document analyses, semi-structured individual interviews and group discussions with experts. The findings argue for an enhanced consideration of institutionalised inequalities that are bound to a person’s legal status in the sociology of education.