How Integrated are Students with and without Graduation? Social Disintegration and its Possible Outcomes

This article takes a closer look at the so-called losers“ of the educational system in Germany. For this purpose different groups of young people with and without higher graduation are examined. The dependent variables are social disintegration and prejudices towards different target groups. A sample of 1230 youths at the age of 16 – 21 has been drawn from different surveys of the Bielefeld Group-Focused Emnity study. According to the hypotheses the quantitative results show that those adolescents who are less qualified suffer from fear of disintegration. Surprisingly the group without any academic graduation suffers significantly less from strain of social disintegration. Furthermore fear of disintegration can be linked to problematic attitudes and problematic behaviour towards different target groups. Results of this work show as well gender specific effects in prejudices towards target groups.