Christian Imdorf

Wie Ausbildungsbetriebe soziale Ungleichheit reproduzieren: Der Ausschluss von Migrantenjugendlichen bei der Lehrlingsselektion

Die duale Berufsausbildung mit ihren beiden Lernorten Schule und Betrieb ist traditionell in den deutschsprachigen Berufsbildungssystemen stark verankert. In der Schweiz stehen uber 200 verschiedene Ausbildungsberufe zur Wahl, deren Zertifikate den Eintritt in den qualifizierten Arbeitsmarkt regulieren, wobei die Arbeitsmarktchancen von Personen ohne berufliche Qualifikation in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten abgenommen haben (Meyer 2009). Auch wenn eine abgeschlossene Berufslehre noch keine sichere Arbeitsstelle garantiert, so gilt sie noch immer als wichtige Voraussetzung dafur. Die berufsrelevante Humankapital-vermittlung sowie der Erwerb eines beruflichen Titels sind dabei zwei wichtige Ertrage der beruflichen Erstausbildung, die vor Jugendarbeitslosigkeit, prekaren Berufskarrieren und den damit verbundenen Merkmalen sozialer Benachteiligung und Ungleichheit schutzen (Imdorf 2008).

New Models of Apprenticeship and Equal Employment Opportunity. Do Training Networks Enhance Fair Hiring Practices

This study investigates whether occupational training networks enable the selection of apprentices to be less discriminatory. Training networks are a new organisational form of VET that is becoming increasingly widespread in Switzerland, as well as in Germany and Austria. In the Swiss model, an intermediary lead organisation recruits the candidates. It also attends to the apprenticeship itself and effects a placement of the young adults with the training network companies every year anew. The study is based on the sociology of conventions, which allows organisational mechanisms of selection in training institutions to be understood and the dangers of discrimination harboured therein to be appreciated. Based on a case study of a medium-sized training network, the study shows how this form of organisation permits a fairer selection, i.e. one that is gauged more by performance and less by social attributes of the applicants, as compared to selection processes in single SMB.

The use of ethnicity in recruiting domestic labour

Purpose – Referring to the sociology of conventions, the purpose of this paper is to examine how various conventions of work coordination and employee relations affect how recruiters in the domestic labour industry use ethnic categories to match jobs to applicants in the domestic services sector and how institutional gatekeepers relegate immigrant women to jobs with poor career opportunities.Design/methodology/approach – Case studies of a public job centre, a domestic service provider and an occupational integration service show the core conventions structuring job placement in Marseilles domestic service industry. Based on nine semi‐structured interviews with representatives of the three respective intermediaries, the authors reconstructed conventions and compromises between them related to the use of ethnic categories as significant criteria in recruitment.Findings – Characteristic compromises of work conventions frame the organisational use of ethnic categories in the job placement process. Market and...

Differentiation in secondary education and inequality in educational opportunities: The case of Switzerland

Sociologists working in the field of education and stratification have long been concerned with how far not only ability and performance but also selection by social and migration background along with gender account for differences in young people’s educational attainment. Research has recognized the complex entanglement of institutional, social, and individual characteristics that shape both educational opportunities and educational attainment. The significance of these characteristics is most visible at transitions in the educational system. In differentiated and stratified educational systems, these transitions involve placement into educational tracks with different academic requirements. For Switzerland, we examine how ability, school performance, and student social characteristics affect track placement to lower and upper secondary schooling and how allocation to secondary-level tracks determines tertiary education enrolment.

How unemployment scarring affects skilled young workers: evidence from a factorial survey of Swiss recruiters

We ask how employers contribute to unemployment scarring in the recruitment process in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. By drawing on recruitment theories, we aim to better understand how recruiters assess different patterns of unemployment in a job candidate’s CV and how this affects the chances of young applicants being considered for a vacancy. We argue that in contexts with tight school-work linkage and highly standardised Vocational Education and Training systems, the detrimental effect of early unemployment depends on how well the applicant’s profile matches the requirements of the advertised position. To test this assumption, we surveyed Swiss recruiters who were seeking to fill positions during the time of data collection. We employed a factorial survey experiment that tested how the (un)employment trajectories in hypothetical young job applicants’ CV affected their chances of being considered for a real vacancy. Our results show that unemployment decreases the perceived suitability of an applicant for a specific job, which implies there is a scarring effect of unemployment that increases with the duration of being unemployed. But we also found that these effects are moderated by how well the applicant’s profile matches the job’s requirements. Overall, the worse the match between applicant’s profile and the job profile, the smaller are the scarring effects of unemployment. In sum, our findings contribute to the literature by revealing considerable heterogeneity in the scarring effects of unemployment. Our findings further suggest that the scarring effects of unemployment need to be studied with regard to country-specific institutional settings, the applicants’ previous education and employment experiences, and the job characteristics.

Transition systems and non-standard employment in early career: comparing Japan and Switzerland

Abstract Even though Japan and Switzerland are characterised by comparatively low youth unemployment rates, non-standard forms of employment are on the rise, posing a risk to the stable integration of young labour market entrants. Drawing on the French approach of societal analysis, this paper investigates how country-specific school-to-work transition systems stratify the risk of non-standard employment in early career differently in Japan and Switzerland. Our results reveal that in Japan, young entrants who completed university education are least at risk of becoming employed in non-standard work. On the contrary, it is the highly educated university graduates who mainly enter the labour market via non-standard employment in Switzerland, where vocational education promotes smooth transitions into standard employment relationships. Our findings suggest that the transition systems of the two countries differ in the way they revert to non-standard forms of employment. However, while job insecurities may not endanger labour market integration of highly skilled university graduates holding good career prospects in Switzerland, they may go hand in hand with social exclusion processes for the low-educated young entrants lacking bargaining power in the segmented Japanese labour market.

Understanding discrimination in hiring apprentices: how training companies use ethnicity to avoid organisational trouble

Abstract Children of immigrants from non-EU countries face particular problems to access apprenticeship training in German-speaking countries. In this context this article asks how recruiters in small and medium sized companies (SME) make sense of national and ethnic origin when hiring new apprentices. The author proposes Boltanski and Thévenot’s theory of justification in order to conceptualise ethnic discrimination in hiring. Accordingly, the social body of a company consists of multiple interweaved (industrial, domestic, market) ‘worlds’ of social coordination and justification. In order to avoid organisational trouble and to guarantee the further existence of the company, these worlds claim different principle of personnel assessment, some of them penalising applicants of specific ethnic origin. Empirically, the article refers to apprentice recruitment in Switzerland and Germany. It illustrates that employers in SME expect trouble in the domestic and in the market world of the company when hiring school leavers they perceive as foreigners. Hence, discriminatory categories such as ethnicity are used as symbolic and organisational resources for trouble avoidance in hiring apprentices.

Ermöglicht die Flexibilisierung in der Berufsausbildung mehr Chancengerechtigkeit bei der Ausbildungsplatzvergabe? : Fallstudie eines Schweizer Ausbildungsverbundes

„Also, was die Selektion anbelangt, ich mache immer sozusagen eine Gratwanderung. Ich mochte nicht irgendwie Superstars haben, die uberall eine Lehrstelle finden. (…) Ich mochte immer auch Leute nehmen, die irgendwo ein Problem haben. Und ich habe auch schon viele Vorurteile abbauen konnen. Dass z.B. Leute aus dem ex-jugoslawischen Raum und dunkle Menschen, dass die auch Menschen sind, das haben viele Firmen bei unserem Lehrbetriebsverbund gemerkt“ (Geschaftsfuhrer eines Ausbildungsverbunds)

Do Vocational Pathways Improve Higher Education Access for Women and Men from Less Privileged Social Backgrounds

Educational policy developments in France and Switzerland have increased eligibility for higher education. This paper explores the extent to which vocationally orientated pathways to higher education reduce social inequalities in France and Switzerland. More specifically, we analyse how the vocational pathway facilitates access to higher education for male and female students from lower cultural capital backgrounds. We refer to gender theory to link young people’s subjective self-image and its corresponding institutional fit with different educational pathways. We use panel data from France (panel DEPP) and Switzerland (panel TREE) and multinomial logistic regression to analyse the accessibility of different institutional pathways to higher education for male and female students separately. Our results show different consequences of the two national educational systems with regard to social reproduction and gender inequalities. An intersectional analysis highlights that, in France, vocationally oriented programmes foster higher education access for young women with lower cultural capital. In Switzerland, the vocational pathway to access higher education is primarily used by young men from privileged educational backgrounds as a compensation for their underrepresentation in the traditional general education pathway to higher education.

Do vocational pathways improve higher education access for women and men from less privileged social backgrounds? A comparison of vocational tracks to higher education in France and Switzerland

Educational policy developments in France and Switzerland have increased eligibility for higher education. This paper explores the extent to which vocationally orientated pathways to higher education reduce social inequalities in France and Switzerland. More specifically, we analyse how the vocational pathway facilitates access to higher education for male and female students from lower cultural capital backgrounds. We refer to gender theory to link young people’s subjective self-image and its corresponding institutional fit with different educational pathways. We use panel data from France (panel DEPP) and Switzerland (panel TREE) and multinomial logistic regression to analyse the accessibility of different institutional pathways to higher education for male and female students separately. Our results show different consequences of the two national educational systems with regard to social reproduction and gender inequalities. An intersectional analysis highlights that, in France, vocationally oriented programmes foster higher education access for young women with lower cultural capital. In Switzerland, the vocational pathway to access higher education is primarily used by young men from privileged educational backgrounds as a compensation for their underrepresentation in the traditional general education pathway to higher education.