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Political participation is socially distorted: Socio-economic resources affecting the probability of individuals becoming politically active question the principle of political equality. Such inequality in participation based on social stratification is well documented for elections, while research on inequality in referendum participation is still scarce. Based on the observation that such inequality varies between referendums, this paper explores referendum-specific contextual factors that may affect socially distorted referendum participation. We leverage information from an original dataset covering 1788 districts in 35 German municipalities for 68 local referendums held between 2000 and 2019. The results of our multilevel models indicate that concurrent first-order elections boost referendum turnout and decrease social stratification, while the closeness of the decision increases turnout but does not affect stratification bias. Moreover, we find a curvilinear relationship between turnout and stratification, with stratification only diminishing from participation levels above 40–50%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secondary education is associated with a comparatively high level of inequality in Germany. This has often been attributed to the early ability-based between-school tracking in the German school system. However, as yet there has been no empirical evaluation of the actual impact of initial track placement on social inequality in final school attainment. Since educational reforms in the 1960s increased educational mobility after track placement, it can be expected that initial track allocation has become less important for the process of secondary educational attainment and the inequalities therein. By drawing on longitudinal life-course data for different birth cohorts from the 1930s to the 1980s, this paper analyses temporal developments in the connections between track placement, educational mobility and social inequality in final school outcomes. The analyses reveal that the impact of track placement actually diminished for those cohorts exposed to the reformed school system. Instead, social inequalities in school attainment are increasingly influenced by processes of educational mobility after track allocation. Furthermore, the analyses show that developments in educational mobility have contributed more to declining inequalities in access to upper secondary education than changes of the selectivities in the transition to secondary education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a widely recognised European phenomenon that practices associated with minority populations provoke political actors, who have previously not related to gender equality, to participate in debates – apparently on the behalf of women. This tendency can be observed in the policy debate on the German New Immigration Act (2007): restrictive regulations on family reunification are said to protect migrant young women from forced marriage. This paper argues that discursive processes of ethno-gendering and class-gendering (intersectional hyper-visibility) are mobilised at the expense of (women's) citizenship status (intersectional invisibility). Such constructions of ‘the other’ as unworthy of equal treatment have to be understood against the backdrop of an ethno-cultural citizenship regime, which restrictive migration policies seek to maintain. The contribution of this paper to citizenship studies is not only empirical, but also methodological: it introduces a model of Intersectional Discursive Policy Analysis that helps to understand discursive constructions of citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of inter-cohort comparisons, this paper describes patterns of intra-generational occupational mobility in Germany and their long-term trends since World War II. It also presents conceptual links between individual mobility and developments of inequality along the life course, with a special focus on the question of the extent to which employment careers are characterised by specific forms of cumulative advantage and disadvantage. Finally, it is asked how intra-generational developments are related to inter-generational social mobility. The paper also discusses how mobility patterns can be linked to specific institutions which - together with labour market conditions - are crucial determinants of the development of inequality within a cohort. In its empirical part, the paper presents evidence from cohort-specific analyses based on life-course data from a broad range of West German birth cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scope of immigrants' transnational ties and the relationship to their social position is subject to a controversial debate that suggests a dualistic picture. On the one hand, globalization theorists argue that an elite of highly educated and economically most successful professionals intensively engages in and benefits from transnationality. On the other hand, most scholars in migration and assimilation studies hold that it is the most underprivileged immigrants who maintain strong ties across state borders, which in turn furthers their marginalization. Yet, to date, very little systematic research has been conducted into the nexus between social inequalities and transnationality. This paper aims to fill this gap. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we show that the economic, cultural and social forms of capital are related to transnationality in different ways, rather than reflecting one uniform pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores participation in higher education in Germany and Spain through two case studies from the RANLHE project. There is one case in each national context (Germany and Spain) based on biographical interviews undertaken between 2008 and 2010. Social, economic and cultural dimensions are explored in order to better understand the German and Spanish contexts. In addition, we look at the comparison of the two cultural and institutional contexts, searching for a more complex description of the processes related to access, retention, completion and learning in higher education from a European and transnational perspective. These issues are connected to social challenges regarding inequalities and social class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the impact of temporary work on two dimensions of social inequality: income and career mobility. Additionally, we are taking a comparative perspective on this subject by comparing Germany and the UK. To investigate the effects of temporary work we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Study on non-self-employed respondents. The results show that temporary work does influence the system of social inequality: we found wage penalties and an increased probability of severe negative effects on the working careers of temporarily employed persons in both countries (net of education, age, and a variety of other covariates). Thus we can conclude that temporary employment represents a substantial socio-economic risk for employees. Most importantly, this holds true for both the German and the British case, two quite distinct labour market regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]