The research project presented here is aimed at representing the relation between habitual dispositions and the prevailing political opportunity structure. In other words, the study exam-ines whether a micro-macro link can be identified by tracing successful educational proc-esses and how social justice can be reached according to changing meaning of social and educational contexts. In order to study very different political opportunity structures, a com-parison between Eastern and Western Germany in three different decades has been under-taken. The question under study leads to the following sample: • The first generation: Successful protagonists of educational advancement (social class) in East and West in the 1950s. The period is marked by a favorable political opportunity structure in East Germany and an unfavorable political opportunity structure in West Germany. • The second generation: Successful protagonists of educational advancement in East and West in the 1970s. The period is marked by an unfavorable political opportunity structure in East Germany and a favorable political opportunity structure in West Germany. • The third generation: Successful protagonists of educational advancement in united Germany in the 1990s. The period is marked by a rather unfavorable political opportunity structure for educational advancement, and the children of immigrant workers are a new target group.

Miethe, Ingrid / Schiebel, Martina (2008): Biografie – Bildung – Institution. Die Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Fakultäten der DDR. Reihe „Biographie und Lebensweltforschung“, Band 6, Frankfurt/ New York: Campus. Miethe, Ingrid (2007): Bildung und soziale Ungleichheit in der DDR. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer gegenprivilegierenden Bildungspolitik in der DDR. Leverkusen: Budrich-Verlag. Miethe, Ingrid (2009): “Workers to University!” The East German Workers' and Peasants' Faculties as an Answer to the Social Question? in Barry. K- Hake/Françoise F. Laot (eds.) “The So-cial Question and Adult Education/ La question soicale et l’éducation des adultes. Euro-pean Perspectives in the 19th and 20th Centuries/ Perspectives européennes, XIVe-WWe siècles. Frankfurt u.a.: Lang.