Moral and legitimate? Historical, legal, and affective issues around educational privatization in Germany

Karen Lillie and Luisa Hideg

No 26/3, MPIfG Discussion Paper from Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Abstract: Germany's education system is in the midst of privatization. Although this trend, which started in the 1980s, ostensibly parallels neoliberal education reforms across Europe and the Anglophone world, Germany's case is a special one. Privatization in the country is happening within a historical and legal context that favors public schooling; however, families increasingly exercise school choice to select "the best" for their children. The tension between historically and legally informed norms, on the one hand, and affective desires, on the other, is morally problematic for parents navigating between what is generally accepted as good for society and what they believe is good for an individual. At stake in this struggle is whether school choice becomes a "legitimate" part of the German education system, in a Bourdieusian sense. If it does, it risks strengthening social class closure mechanisms and heightening resultant social class anxiety.

Keywords: educational inequality; education privatization; German education system; school choice; social class; sociology of education; Bildungsungleichheit; deutsches Bildungssystem; Privatisierung der Bildung; Schulwahl; soziale Klasse; Soziologie der Bildung (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:mpifgd:341981

DOI: 10.17617/2.3715792

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