This presentation deals with the biographical constructions formed by care leavers with a back-ground of migration in the context of societal conditions of inequality. It focuses on the question of how young adults constructing their biographies deal with topics related to difference and with normalising societal requirements, and what subjective constructions of normality they develop as a result.
There have been numerous investigations on transitions to adulthood (Hof, Meuth & Walther, 2014), but until now research on the youth welfare services in German-speaking countries has only very rarely studied the effect of residential care. In English-speaking countries, renewed attention has recently been paid to young people’s transition from care to adulthood (e.g. Stein, 2011). Studies show that care leavers are at a higher risk of exclusion and marginalisation (e.g. Mendes, Johnson & Moslehuddin, 2011). For example, it has been shown that compared with their peers, care leavers have far lower educational qualifications and are far less likely to enter higher education (Berridge, 2012). Studies from Switzerland also suggest that these young people experience numerous challenges during this transition. Among other things, social and economic disadvantages have been shown to make the transition more difficult for care leavers (Schaffner & Rein, 2015).
However, considering the higher risk of discrimination and exclusion suffered by young people with immigrant origins – especially during transitions to vocational training and work (Imdorf, 2010) – such young people must be assumed to encounter even greater discriminative structures for reasons of racism. As a construction of difference, race also intersects with other constructions such as class, gender, ability or sexual orientation (Crenshaw, 1991; Riegel, 2013). This presentation takes an intersectional position when referring to the differences exhibited by care leavers as a group; this also underlines the importance of taking into account difference-based social categorisations during analyses, and examining the effects they have on subjective possibilities and positionings.
The presentation starts out by defining the context based on theories of subjectivation and differ-ence, then goes on to set out the considerations behind the research methodology and present the results of the study.
One conclusion is that “non-normality” is an everyday condition for care leavers with regard to vari-ous constructions of difference. Care leavers are shown to take an approach extending from normalisation to problematisation. Their biographies also reveal how, when it comes to the young people’s contact with the welfare system, the complex, contradictory nature of their individual biographical experiences should be set out as a need for support which is recognised in terms of legal and institutional logic. This is related to the fact that the complex circumstances in their biographies mean that their cases need to be viewed in an individualising manner, e.g. in laying out their individual disorders, diagnosing psychological illnesses or articulating experiences of violence. The trajectory of their biographies shows that they are the subject of additional categorisations and attributions with negative implications to which they sometimes maintain a distance. During the transition to work, further experiences of exclusion are also revealed with regard to being labelled as having immigrant backgrounds, deviating from an imagined standard for physical and mental abilities, or homosexuality, and the consequences for care leavers are set out.
To sum up, the presentation describes the effects which constructions of normality have on care leavers, then asks what lessons can be learned from this on how to guide and support these young people.
