Politics, Education and Biography: The Connection between Political Opportunity Structures and Individual Educational Advancement

Abstract

The article examines the relationship between political opportunity structure and habitual practices with regard to first-generation academics. Biography as a theoretical concept allows the connection of the macroscopic view of social circumstances with the mesoscopic view of administrative decisions, and the microscopic view of individual practices. To keep the biographical analysis as close as possible to the theoretical concept of political opportunity structure, which has a macroscopic focus, I present a method of theory-oriented case reconstruction. This method maintains the fundamental logic of case reconstruction methods, yet makes it possible to include larger samples in the analysis. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs110287

Keywords

• biography
• education
• politics
• case reconstruction
• social inequality