In the areas of institutionalized education – be it schools, universities or vocational training – concepts of human capital are increasingly applied in most countries of the world in order to analyze or influence inequality. This is reflected in research projects such as PISA, to name only the most prominent one. Some of these studies focus very much on pupils’ competences as outcomes of their school achievement, others try to assess instrumentally competences necessary for participation in modern societies including the demands of the labour market.

The papers of the planned symposium will explore concepts and approaches which exceed a mere human capital perspective with respect to the relation of children, youth and education, focussing on the development of capabilities in the sense of Armatya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Their socio-philosophical Capabilities Approach provides conceptualizations of agency and social well-being useful for the attempt to explain educational inequality within a broader explanatory approach.  Under the light of these notions the processes of socialisation can be reframed by evaluating the options provided for the individual by (types of) socializing processes and educational institutions. Furthermore, the approach highlights new research questions such as   how inter-individual differences in people‘s competences result in their abilities to convert resources and services into states, actions and affiliations they have reason to value. In this perspective the notion of ‘success’ includes the well-being of children and youths and their relative freedom of choice. School achievement is thus embedded into a larger framework of individual goals.

This symposium-session currently described is the first part of a larger symposium. By using the Capabilities Approach as an overarching framework, the papers of this session examine the relationships and interplays between the capabilities and competences acquired in families and those that are important in societies’ institutions, especially in schools. Focussing on previous research on the linkage between socio-economic status (SES), migration background and parenting practices, they shed light on the actual mechanisms which are ultimately responsible for social inequality and exclusion.

In the symposium, special emphasis is put on linguistic and communicative key competences. Therefore, in different contributions families’ role in language socialization is investigated. These papers are aligned as they reconstruct interactive patterns in families, i.e. parental instruction, by the use of different methodological approaches. Linguistic skills which are empirically investigated include narrative and argumentative discourse.

Three different national cultures are covered: Thailand, Germany and India. In addition, different migrant cultures in Germany (Turkish, Vietnamese, Russian) are represented in the session of the symposium. By connecting different scientific disciplines (education science, psychology, linguistics and sociology) and quantitative as well as qualitative research methods, this part of the symposium will offer broad and differentiated insights into some of the micro- and macro-structural mechanisms of the construction of social justice, viewed  as entailing the invidual’s freedom of choice and well being.