Processes of Differentiation in Vocational and Grammar School Education: Institutional Frameworks and Teacher Perspectives

Abstract

Social selectivity shapes the attainment of educational qualifications within the Swiss education system. Educational opportunities for children and adolescents from different social backgrounds remain unequally distributed. Educational success is also influenced by various axes of inequality and difference, such as social and geographical background, migration history, and gender. This paper presents initial findings from the research project «Migration and Social Conditions in the Context of Vocational and Upper Secondary Education». Drawing on postcolonial theoretical approaches, the study investigates how young people in vocational and upper secondary education pathways are positioned as «Others» through processes of othering and boundary-making related to migration and gender, and how these dynamics may reproduce or shift existing asymmetrical social relations.