PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Against the background of the long-time educational disadvantages of the migrant youth in Germany that again have been explicitly indicated by the dissatisfactory PISA results, this dissertation project has explored the contingencies in online informal learning space to moderate the educational inequalities of the disadvantaged migrant youth against the perpetual excluding mechanisms of the stratified educational system in Germany. On the whole, two clues are found out in this research. On the one hand, the excluding mechanisms in various forms which limit the disadvantaged migrant youth to get equal Bildung chances in general are not only still continuingly existent but also further reproduced in the online informal learning space. The milieu-specific inequalities especially the structural deficits of the formal educational institutions are directly reproduced in the access of the migrant youth to online bonding and bridging networks as the first dimension. Through the network-related inequalities in fostering the acquisition of Internet competences between bonding and bridging networks online as the second dimension, the structural inequalities are further reproduced into the general informal learning processes online of the migrant youngsters. On the other hand, however, the contingencies of reconstruction - reducing the structural deficits - as well as the according new Bildung chances particularly for the disadvantaged migrant youth, to some extent, do exist in the informal learning online. The active role like the factor of motivation for integration of the disadvantaged migrant youth as social actors to some extent can be well fostered in online informal learning space to construct or reconstruct their network social capital especially bridging networks online, and critical contingencies therefore can be somewhat enabled to moderate their disadvantages. To redress all these forms of inequalities as well as to enable the contingencies of reconstruction in informal learning online for the sake of reducing the educational inequalities of the disadvantaged migrant youth, the "inequality-sensitive and -reflexive" youth work in supporting the Internet use of the migrant youth then needs to be articulated. The motivating and linking work in fostering the social networking online for the disadvantaged migrant youth is specifically of vital necessity.