2007
270 pp.
2 illustrations, 2 graphs, 13 tables and charts
Text language: English
How do young African refugees in Germany, despite experiencing the most adverse of life situations, still manage to unfold their individual potential, develop subjective coping strategies, and achieve educational success against all odds? What can the resilient capacity of these young people teach us about education and integration policy in Germany, as well as the socio-political and educational situation in their home countries in Africa? How does this inform and deepen our understanding of what competence actually is?
The theoretical analyses and empirical surveys conducted by the educationalist Louis Henri Seukwa in this book embed the answer to these questions in a framework of structural and action theory and expand the prevailing psychologically orientated research on individual coping to the broader perspective of a social theory. One of his key finds, which is significant for the resource-based approach in educational science, is the existence of a type of competence that is acquired primarily in connection with social structures of exclusion.
The illuminating and critical insights outlined in this work have been awarded with two prestigious German prizes, the 2007 Karl Ditze Award for Outstanding Academic Work (University of Hamburg/Germany) and the 2007 Augsburg Academic Prize for Intercultural Studies.