This paper focuses on the influence of education and training in the way workers in the low pay sector understand and value their work and their jobs in Britain and in Germany. Since evaluations of work and jobs take place in social contexts they relate to social constructions of values of work and jobs. In urban areas exist great dynamic and controversial debates of evaluation of low-wage work and young people in cities enjoy greater opportunities than in rural areas.

Work and jobs have values for both: workers and societies as a whole. Work and jobs provide workers with income and the possibility to be creative (Veraeusserung); both is seen as part of a dignified human life and crucial for participation as civil citizen. Work and jobs provide societies with a range of activities, production and possibilities via division of work.

The question of this research is: Does different education and training contribute differently to the perception and evaluation of low-wage work and jobs of individuals in Britain and in Germany?

As we know education and training for low wage-work and jobs is very different in Britain and in Germany (Ryan et al. 2010). For example, the British education system has been marked by a strong valuation of academic work and a concomitant devaluation of vocationally oriented education. In contrast, in Germany, the principle of equality of productive capacity (Brown, Green and Lauder, 2001) has led, in the past, to a far higher valuation of vocational education and training and of craft work. Whereas in Britain people are mainly trained on the job in a short instructional way to perform low-wage work and jobs, in Germany people may receive a two to three year vocational education even for work and jobs that are lowly paid. Referring to the relation between vocational education and specific labour markets, Britain has been characterized as a liberal market economy and Germany as a coordinated market economy (Hall/Soskice 2001). A wider object of this research is to find out whether the difference in the amount of training and education reflects a different societal perception and evaluation of low wage work and jobs.

In order to analyse the self-esteem we refer to two theoretical concepts: one deals with the (re)construction of self and competencies needed in relation to civic participation developed by Haste (2008, 2009, unpublished manuscript). The second theoretical concept outlines the nature of education and skills in relation to employment. Bourdieu/Boltanski (1981) and Offe (1975) differentiate between the technical and the social dimension of education. The technical dimension refers to the qualification that enables people to produce something or to perform a task. The social dimension refers to the reproduction of the social status in a social hierarchy. The differentiation of two dimensions of education and skills takes place in social contexts and might therefore differ between different societies. Together, both theoretical approaches, the psycho-social one and the education-economical one, seem to enable a comparative research on the self-esteem of low-wage workers.

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