Stratification, Socialisation and Space

The social upheavals happening in Western countries through a drifting apart of society—creating a wealthy minority on the one hand and increasing insecurity on the other—carry a great potential for conflict especially when they seem to become structurally entrenched. Starting with the development and the causes of social inequality today, the process of social reproduction needs to be examined closely, the goal being a step-by-step comprehension of upward mobility in the internet age. To this end, the acquisition of knowledge and qualification (according to Pierre Bourdieu and Martina Löw, among others) must be put in the larger context of socialisation and its spatial contingency in order to be able to identify group-specific mechanisms of privilege and discrimination more thoroughly.