It's not a breeze - systematic approach to the liberal exit option focussing on children and teens

In his work "The Liberal Archipelago" (2003) Chandran Kukathas designs a peacefull coexistence of different cultural communities. Three basic freedoms determine this liberal society: freedom of association, freedom of dissociation and mutual toleration of associations. To examine whether his specific conception of the "exit option" is also applicable for children and teens was the intention of my dissertation. I started my analysis from the perspective of political philosophy, bringing a mainly British-American discourse to Germany. I added a systematization of cases of children and youth trying to exit to illustrate the conflicts underlying exit and to show the obstacles of their exit. In correlation to the philosophical discussion of "private" and "public", the conclusion of my dissertation states that exit is only available if there exists a specifically designed "wider society". This is based on my concept of an "integrative multiculturalism" where minorities and wider community are linked by an interculturally opened public sphere.