Political orientations of adolescents and young adults in the interplay between family and peers

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Cathleen Grunert
• Subject Area: Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 514242611

The project focuses in a new manner on the political socialization processes in adolescence and early adulthood. With the family and the peers it takes a look at central contexts of young people's lives in their mutual relationships as spaces of experience and arenas of negotiation for the social construction of political orientations and practices. Against the background of current sociological diagnoses of the increasing polarisation and politicisation of everyday culture in late modern societies, firstly the research project pursues to identify a broad range of adolescent’s and young adults’ political orientations and practices and how these are biographically embedded. Secondly it intends to systematically examine the familial and peer-related spaces of experience, what meaning and interpretations they offer, as well as the interactional relationships - also conveyed by the media - in their importance for shaping individual and collective political orientations and practices in their interrelatedness. Thirdly, in order to identify social differences in the processing of these relationships in adolescence and young adulthood, the study analyses the relations between these political orientations and social milieu contexts.Theoretically, the research project with a qualitative approach is based on a broad concept of the political and connects to social constructivist, praxeological and relational concepts in biographical, socialisation, and political culture research. Methodologically, the study explores the issues with the use of biographical interviews with adolescents or young adults, group discussions with the families and the selected adolescents, and group discussions with them and their peers in formal or informal groups with varying political orientations. The analyses of the qualitative data is based on the Documentary Method to interpret political orientations and practices in their interdependencies and sociocultural embedding. With its research question, the research project combines the fields of youth biography, family and peer research in an innovative way.In contrast to previous research findings and against the background of the increasing intrusion of political discourses into everyday culture which is emerging as a result of the digital transformation, the consequences of the Corona pandemic and current war situation in Europe, the study contributes new and profound insights to the debate on the importance of different socialisation contexts in their interrelatedness and socio-cultural embedding for the formation of adolescents’ and young adults’ contrasting political orientations and social order concepts.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Heinz-Hermann Krüger