Wolfgang Lehmann
Biographic Data
| ID | 89537 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wolfgang Lehmann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wolfgang |
| FAMILY NAME | Lehmann |
| SIGNATURE | LEHMANN W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Western University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3917-9979 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 251 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
It is intimidating going into your first job
Drawing on qualitative focus groups and interviews, this paper draws on participatory and relational approaches to explore how prospective and very new workers in their early teens in Canada talk about and navigate workplace safety. We foreground our young participants' discussions and safety management strategies to discuss their shared and sometimes narrow understanding of unsafe work; their mixed, and often limited, experiences of safety train…
Going the distance
This paper draws on experiences gained in a 16-year qualitative study of the experiences of working-class students who were the first in their family to attend university. Although the study suffered from attrition and analysis was complicated because it became increasingly difficult to understand the data through any one theoretical or conceptual framework, this complexity also offered the opportunity for a more nuanced approach, to become reass…
Schooling inequality
Mobility and stability
The transition from university to the graduate labour market has become increasingly competitive. As university degrees no longer offer a guarantee for success, graduates mobilise other forms of capital to gain a competitive advantage. First-in-family and working-class students are seen to be disadvantaged as they lack access to the types of economic, social and personal capital employers prefer. This article is based on a qualitative longitudina…
Conflict and contentment
This article offers a tentative exploration of how working‐class students' mobility is affected by the push to enter middle‐class careers and lifestyles, and the pull of their working‐class origins. Based on a nine‐year qualitative longitudinal study of working‐class students at a Canadian university, I will show that few study participants experienced mobility as an uncontested or linear trajectory. Two key storylines can be identified: (a) a st…
The school‐to‐work transitions of second‐generation immigrant youth
The children of immigrants obtain high levels of post-secondary attainment in Canada, but their ability to translate these educational credentials into good jobs varies among ethno-racial groups. To understand the social processes behind these unequal outcomes, we conducted in-depth interviews with 27 second-generation immigrant youth living in the province of Ontario. Motivated by the desire for intergenerational upward mobility and trusting in …
Navigating babysitting as liminal, gendered, and undervalued work
Babysitting is a common early-work experience in the West, yet there is little research on babysitters. From in-depth, qualitative interviews with 16 babysitters, we explore three themes related to liminality and gender inequality in babysitting. First, babysitting is a skilled job; many babysitters undertook formal and informal training and used it at work. Second, babysitters occupy a liminal position between childhood and adulthood, bringing c…
If you want to have a future and a life, do an apprenticeship’
Apprenticeship programs are promoted to facilitate youth’s transition from school-to-work, especially for those who might not otherwise attend postsecondary education. These programs may help youth achieve other markers of adulthood earlier. In this paper, we draw on qualitative interviews with Canadian young men in the skilled trades to explore whether they believe their educational choices have given them an advantage in their transition to adu…
Forms of Capital and Habitus in the Decision to Go on Academic Exchange
Although Canadian universities have made internationalization a strategic priority, only few Canadian students currently participate in any international study opportunities. Drawing on interviews with Canadian students who were about to spend some of their undergraduate education abroad as exchange students, or had recently returned from a study exchange, we argue that despite the importance of relatively high costs associated with international…
I'll be more prepared than most people
We report on interviews with very young Canadian workers regarding their first jobs, with a focus on why they started working, the rewards and risks of their work, and their familial supports. Our participants were largely positive about their early work experiences, although they also raised concerns, e.g. about safety. We reflect on three inter-related themes emerging from their accounts: competence and vulnerability, independence and dependenc…
Reflections on Using Participant-Generated, Digital Photo-Elicitation in Research With Young Canadians About Their First Part-Time Jobs
Participant-generated photo-elicitation usually involves inviting participants to take photographs, which are then discussed during a subsequent interview or in a focus group. This approach can provide participants with the opportunity to bring their own content and interests into research. Following other child and youth researchers, we were drawn to the potential of participant-generated photo-elicitation to offer a methodological counterweight…
Higher education
Strategic escapes
Studying abroad is one way in which university students can develop personal capital and distinguish themselves in an increasingly congested graduate labour market. Data show that studying abroad indeed provides employment benefits, with evidence pointing to even greater positive effects for students from low socio‐economic status backgrounds. Focusing on a group of Canadian students about to embark on a study exchange, we find no evidence that c…
On the role of habitus and field in apprenticeships
Habitus is generally discussed in relation to academic forms of education. In other words, a working-class habitus disadvantages students in academic subjects or higher education. In contrast, it is often assumed that students who struggle with academic demands (perhaps because of habitus dislocation) can be served by vocational programmes such as apprenticeships, regardless of their social backgrounds or their habitus. Drawing on interviews with…
Habitus Transformation and Hidden Injuries
As the numbers of working-class students at university grow, we need to gain a better understanding of the different ways in which they consolidate their working-class habitus with the middle-class culture of the academic field. Drawing on data from a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study of working-class students at a large, research-intensive Canadian university, I focus on the experiences of those participants who fully embraced, became in…
Ethnicity as social capital
In this article, we use interview data collected in a four-year longitudinal study of first-generation university students to answer the question: how might the ethnicity of first-generation students impact their university experiences? After briefly examining previous literature written on the educational achievement levels of ethnic-minority Canadians, specifically Asian-Canadians, and on first-generation students, we explain the concept of soc…
Working-class students, habitus, and the development of student roles
As their numbers at university grow, we need to gain a better understanding of the different ways in which working-class students negotiate their potential outsider status in what is often considered an essential middle-class institution. Based on data from a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study of working-class students at a Canadian university, I argue that their acceptance of the ends and means of both the academic and social demands of u…
Extra‐credential experiences and social closure
Human capital theorists perceive of educational expansion as beneficial to individuals, corporations and national economies, while social closure theorists have claimed that inflation of credential requirements maintains traditional status inequalities. In this paper I argue that status inequalities are not only maintained by credential inflation, but also the inflation of extra‐credential experiences. As undergraduate degrees become more common,…
University as vocational education
Labor market conditions, a pervasive public discourse about the benefits of higher education, and parental hopes push many young working‐class people into university. The institutional culture and demands of university, however, often remain elusive and fraught with uncertainty. In this paper, I draw on qualitative interviews with first‐generation, working‐class students at a Canadian university to analyze the ways in which these students discuss…
Becoming Middle Class
This article analyses the expectations and experiences of a group of Canadian working-class, first-generation university students. I outline the structural disadvantages, in terms of economic, social, and cultural capital, these young people encounter. Rather than viewing working-class status exclusively as a barrier, I show how these students draw on their working-class backgrounds to construct uniquely working-class moral advantages, such as th…
Choosing to Labour?
Choosing to Labour
Young people about to leave high school argue that they are determining their own destinies. Scholarly debates also suggest that the influence of structural factors such as social class on an individual's life course is decreasing. Wolfgang Lehmann challenges this view and offers a detailed comparative analysis of the inter-relationships between social class, institutional structures, and individual educational and career choices. Through a quali…
The First Year out
Separating "Rotators" From "Nonrotators" in the Mental Rotations Test
Items of mental rotation tests can not only be solved by mental rotation but also by other solution strategies. A multigroup latent class analysis of 24 items of the Mental Rotations Test (MRT) was conducted in a sample of 1,695 German pupils and students to find out how many solution strategies can be identified for the items of this test. The results showed that five subgroups (latent classes) can be distinguished. Although three of the subgrou…
Work to Welfare
Reviewed by: Work to Welfare: How Men Become Detached from the Labour Market Wolfgang Lehmann (bio) Pete Alcock, Christina Beatty, Stephen Fothergill, Rob Macmillan, and Sue Yeandle , Work to Welfare: How Men Become Detached from the Labour Market, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 291 pp. With this book, the authors promise to provide new perspectives on why increasing numbers of working-age men become detached from paid work. Based o…
Habitus Transformation and Hidden Injuries
As the numbers of working-class students at university grow, we need to gain a better understanding of the different ways in which they consolidate their working-class habitus with the middle-class culture of the academic field. Drawing on data from a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study of working-class students at a large, research-intensive Canadian university, I focus on the experiences of those participants who fully embraced, became in…
Becoming Middle Class
This article analyses the expectations and experiences of a group of Canadian working-class, first-generation university students. I outline the structural disadvantages, in terms of economic, social, and cultural capital, these young people encounter. Rather than viewing working-class status exclusively as a barrier, I show how these students draw on their working-class backgrounds to construct uniquely working-class moral advantages, such as th…
For Some Reason, I Get a Little Scared’
Despite late modernity and risk society discourses about the decreasing influence of structural factors on educational and occupational attainment, it has also been argued that socio‐economic background and gender continue to influence individuals' school–work transitions. Comparing youth apprentices and academic high school students in Canada and Germany, I show how working‐class students planning on attending university perceive these plans as …
University as vocational education
Labor market conditions, a pervasive public discourse about the benefits of higher education, and parental hopes push many young working‐class people into university. The institutional culture and demands of university, however, often remain elusive and fraught with uncertainty. In this paper, I draw on qualitative interviews with first‐generation, working‐class students at a Canadian university to analyze the ways in which these students discuss…
Working-class students, habitus, and the development of student roles
As their numbers at university grow, we need to gain a better understanding of the different ways in which working-class students negotiate their potential outsider status in what is often considered an essential middle-class institution. Based on data from a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study of working-class students at a Canadian university, I argue that their acceptance of the ends and means of both the academic and social demands of u…
Extra‐credential experiences and social closure
Human capital theorists perceive of educational expansion as beneficial to individuals, corporations and national economies, while social closure theorists have claimed that inflation of credential requirements maintains traditional status inequalities. In this paper I argue that status inequalities are not only maintained by credential inflation, but also the inflation of extra‐credential experiences. As undergraduate degrees become more common,…
I'm still scrubbing the floors
Based on interviews with youth in Canada participating in a high school based apprenticeship programme, this article investigates the extent to which such programmes affect stated policy goals of facilitating school-work transitions and developing workplace skills. Although embedded in very different education and labour market structures, Germany's dual system is often discussed as a successful model for youth apprenticeship programmes. A compar…
I'll be more prepared than most people
We report on interviews with very young Canadian workers regarding their first jobs, with a focus on why they started working, the rewards and risks of their work, and their familial supports. Our participants were largely positive about their early work experiences, although they also raised concerns, e.g. about safety. We reflect on three inter-related themes emerging from their accounts: competence and vulnerability, independence and dependenc…
On the role of habitus and field in apprenticeships
Habitus is generally discussed in relation to academic forms of education. In other words, a working-class habitus disadvantages students in academic subjects or higher education. In contrast, it is often assumed that students who struggle with academic demands (perhaps because of habitus dislocation) can be served by vocational programmes such as apprenticeships, regardless of their social backgrounds or their habitus. Drawing on interviews with…
Is Germany's Dual System Still a Model for Canadian Youth Apprenticeship Initiatives
Many Canadian provinces have introduced youth apprenticeship initiatives to facilitate transitions into the labour market. As the German dual system is often considered a model for such initiatives, this paper attempts to introduce a critical perspective on issues affecting the system's future. Economic restructuring, work reorganization, changing hiring practices, and young people's increasing preference toward higher education form the main cha…
Reflections on Using Participant-Generated, Digital Photo-Elicitation in Research With Young Canadians About Their First Part-Time Jobs
Participant-generated photo-elicitation usually involves inviting participants to take photographs, which are then discussed during a subsequent interview or in a focus group. This approach can provide participants with the opportunity to bring their own content and interests into research. Following other child and youth researchers, we were drawn to the potential of participant-generated photo-elicitation to offer a methodological counterweight…
Strategic escapes
Studying abroad is one way in which university students can develop personal capital and distinguish themselves in an increasingly congested graduate labour market. Data show that studying abroad indeed provides employment benefits, with evidence pointing to even greater positive effects for students from low socio‐economic status backgrounds. Focusing on a group of Canadian students about to embark on a study exchange, we find no evidence that c…
Ethnicity as social capital
In this article, we use interview data collected in a four-year longitudinal study of first-generation university students to answer the question: how might the ethnicity of first-generation students impact their university experiences? After briefly examining previous literature written on the educational achievement levels of ethnic-minority Canadians, specifically Asian-Canadians, and on first-generation students, we explain the concept of soc…
The school‐to‐work transitions of second‐generation immigrant youth
The children of immigrants obtain high levels of post-secondary attainment in Canada, but their ability to translate these educational credentials into good jobs varies among ethno-racial groups. To understand the social processes behind these unequal outcomes, we conducted in-depth interviews with 27 second-generation immigrant youth living in the province of Ontario. Motivated by the desire for intergenerational upward mobility and trusting in …
Navigating babysitting as liminal, gendered, and undervalued work
Babysitting is a common early-work experience in the West, yet there is little research on babysitters. From in-depth, qualitative interviews with 16 babysitters, we explore three themes related to liminality and gender inequality in babysitting. First, babysitting is a skilled job; many babysitters undertook formal and informal training and used it at work. Second, babysitters occupy a liminal position between childhood and adulthood, bringing c…
Choosing to Labour
Acquisition of Employability Skills by High School Students
Much of the debate about enhancing the employability skills of Canadian youth is premised on untested assumptions. This paper examines Alberta high school students' self-reports of the employability skills they have acquired in high school courses, formal work-experience programs, paid part-time employment, and volunteer work. Certain types of employability skills are considerably more likely to be acquired in some settings than in others. Most s…
Girls' spatial abilities
Background: Gender-related differences in spatial abilities favouring males are well established but have also generated a great deal of controversy. Cross-cultural research, meta-analyses and training studies could show the influence of socio-cultural and experiential factors on spatial-test performance. However, little is known about how experiences and gender-role stereotypes mediate performance differences in this area.Aim: The relationship b…
Schooling inequality
The First Year out
"Reinventing" Vocational Education Policy
This article traces vocational education policy in the province of Alberta from the 1960s federal Technical and Vocational Training Assistance Act to the provincial endorsement of new curriculum and transition initiatives in the 1990s. The purpose is to understand the implications of shifts in policy over time. Our examination suggests that although the current provincial approach is strengthened by the commitment of local educators and employers…
“I just didn’t feel like I fit in”
In recent years, there has been an increasingly pervasive discourse regarding the need for high levels of post-secondary education for life course success in a knowledge economy. Correspondingly, most Western industrialized nations have seen a drastic increase in university enrolment. Although we do know that access to university continues to be constrained by social class, we know little about factors contributing to dropping out of university. …
The dermal ridge system of the Skolt Lapps, Finland
Is Germany's Dual System Still a Model for Canadian Youth Apprenticeship Initiatives
Many Canadian provinces have introduced youth apprenticeship initiatives to facilitate transitions into the labour market. As the German dual system is often considered a model for such initiatives, this paper attempts to introduce a critical perspective on issues affecting the system's future. Economic restructuring, work reorganization, changing hiring practices, and young people's increasing preference toward higher education form the main cha…
Acquisition of Employability Skills by High School Students
Much of the debate about enhancing the employability skills of Canadian youth is premised on untested assumptions. This paper examines Alberta high school students' self-reports of the employability skills they have acquired in high school courses, formal work-experience programs, paid part-time employment, and volunteer work. Certain types of employability skills are considerably more likely to be acquired in some settings than in others. Most s…
"Reinventing" Vocational Education Policy
This article traces vocational education policy in the province of Alberta from the 1960s federal Technical and Vocational Training Assistance Act to the provincial endorsement of new curriculum and transition initiatives in the 1990s. The purpose is to understand the implications of shifts in policy over time. Our examination suggests that although the current provincial approach is strengthened by the commitment of local educators and employers…
Girls' spatial abilities
Background: Gender-related differences in spatial abilities favouring males are well established but have also generated a great deal of controversy. Cross-cultural research, meta-analyses and training studies could show the influence of socio-cultural and experiential factors on spatial-test performance. However, little is known about how experiences and gender-role stereotypes mediate performance differences in this area.Aim: The relationship b…
Redundant Masculinities
For Some Reason, I Get a Little Scared’
Despite late modernity and risk society discourses about the decreasing influence of structural factors on educational and occupational attainment, it has also been argued that socio‐economic background and gender continue to influence individuals' school–work transitions. Comparing youth apprentices and academic high school students in Canada and Germany, I show how working‐class students planning on attending university perceive these plans as …
Redundant Masculinities? Employment Change and White Working Class Youth
List of Plates. List of Tables. Preface. 1. Introduction: Young, White, Male and Working Class. 2. The Rise of Poor Work: Employment Restructuring and Changing Class and Gender Identities. 3. The Contemporary Crisis Of Masculinity: It's Hard To Be(Come) A Man or The Problem of/for Boys. 4. Living on The Edge: Marginal Lives In Cambridge and Sheffield. 5. Leaving School: Pathways To Employment and Further Education. 6. Actively Seeking Employment:…
Work to Welfare
Reviewed by: Work to Welfare: How Men Become Detached from the Labour Market Wolfgang Lehmann (bio) Pete Alcock, Christina Beatty, Stephen Fothergill, Rob Macmillan, and Sue Yeandle , Work to Welfare: How Men Become Detached from the Labour Market, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 291 pp. With this book, the authors promise to provide new perspectives on why increasing numbers of working-age men become detached from paid work. Based o…
Choosing to Labour
We still know relatively little about how young people rationalize their educational and occupational plans and what this might tell us about the relationship between structure and agency in school-work transitions. In this paper, based on a multi-method comparison of youth apprentices in Canada and Germany, the range of school-work transition alternatives realistically under consideration was circumscribed by socio-economic status, habitus, cult…
Choosing to Labour
Work to Welfare
This book provides a new perspective on joblessness among men. During the last twenty years vast numbers of men of working age have moved completely out of the labour market into 'early retirement' or 'long-term sickness' and to take on new roles in the household. These trends stand in stark contrast to rising labour market participation among women. Based on an unprecedented range of new research on the detached male workforce in the UK, and loc…
I'm still scrubbing the floors
Based on interviews with youth in Canada participating in a high school based apprenticeship programme, this article investigates the extent to which such programmes affect stated policy goals of facilitating school-work transitions and developing workplace skills. Although embedded in very different education and labour market structures, Germany's dual system is often discussed as a successful model for youth apprenticeship programmes. A compar…
Separating "Rotators" From "Nonrotators" in the Mental Rotations Test
Items of mental rotation tests can not only be solved by mental rotation but also by other solution strategies. A multigroup latent class analysis of 24 items of the Mental Rotations Test (MRT) was conducted in a sample of 1,695 German pupils and students to find out how many solution strategies can be identified for the items of this test. The results showed that five subgroups (latent classes) can be distinguished. Although three of the subgrou…
Choosing to Labour?
Choosing to Labour
Young people about to leave high school argue that they are determining their own destinies. Scholarly debates also suggest that the influence of structural factors such as social class on an individual's life course is decreasing. Wolfgang Lehmann challenges this view and offers a detailed comparative analysis of the inter-relationships between social class, institutional structures, and individual educational and career choices. Through a quali…
The First Year out
University as vocational education
Labor market conditions, a pervasive public discourse about the benefits of higher education, and parental hopes push many young working‐class people into university. The institutional culture and demands of university, however, often remain elusive and fraught with uncertainty. In this paper, I draw on qualitative interviews with first‐generation, working‐class students at a Canadian university to analyze the ways in which these students discuss…
Becoming Middle Class
This article analyses the expectations and experiences of a group of Canadian working-class, first-generation university students. I outline the structural disadvantages, in terms of economic, social, and cultural capital, these young people encounter. Rather than viewing working-class status exclusively as a barrier, I show how these students draw on their working-class backgrounds to construct uniquely working-class moral advantages, such as th…
Working-class students, habitus, and the development of student roles
As their numbers at university grow, we need to gain a better understanding of the different ways in which working-class students negotiate their potential outsider status in what is often considered an essential middle-class institution. Based on data from a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study of working-class students at a Canadian university, I argue that their acceptance of the ends and means of both the academic and social demands of u…
Extra‐credential experiences and social closure
Human capital theorists perceive of educational expansion as beneficial to individuals, corporations and national economies, while social closure theorists have claimed that inflation of credential requirements maintains traditional status inequalities. In this paper I argue that status inequalities are not only maintained by credential inflation, but also the inflation of extra‐credential experiences. As undergraduate degrees become more common,…
Ethnicity as social capital
In this article, we use interview data collected in a four-year longitudinal study of first-generation university students to answer the question: how might the ethnicity of first-generation students impact their university experiences? After briefly examining previous literature written on the educational achievement levels of ethnic-minority Canadians, specifically Asian-Canadians, and on first-generation students, we explain the concept of soc…
Habitus Transformation and Hidden Injuries
As the numbers of working-class students at university grow, we need to gain a better understanding of the different ways in which they consolidate their working-class habitus with the middle-class culture of the academic field. Drawing on data from a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study of working-class students at a large, research-intensive Canadian university, I focus on the experiences of those participants who fully embraced, became in…
On the role of habitus and field in apprenticeships
Habitus is generally discussed in relation to academic forms of education. In other words, a working-class habitus disadvantages students in academic subjects or higher education. In contrast, it is often assumed that students who struggle with academic demands (perhaps because of habitus dislocation) can be served by vocational programmes such as apprenticeships, regardless of their social backgrounds or their habitus. Drawing on interviews with…
Sociology (29 works) · Political science (23 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Social science (19 works) · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics (15 works) · Gender Studies (14 works) · Pedagogy (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Cultural capital (11 works) · Economics (11 works)