In late modern societies education determines access to employment and social integration although the connection of education with specific occupations is being more and more dissolved. Especially those with low qualifications are disadvantaged in the competition for scarce jobs and threatened by risks of exclusion. At the same time formal education in school and training are less and less sufficient and has to be complemented by lifelong learning inclusing informal and non-formal learning.
On the research level we are interested how individuals reflect their learning biographies across formal, non-formal and informal learning processes and take educational decisions. In international perspective it needs to be analysed how disadvantage emerges from selective education; whether measures against educational disadvantage aim at the compensation of individual deficits or at flexible access to and support within regular education; and to what extent they recognise non-formal and informal learning.
On the practice level we are concerned with the development of approaches of holistic education – for example in the cooperation of school and youth serv ices or youth work and vocational training – which are not stigmatising but motivate learners for exploring their potentials.