Fachgruppensitzung Bildung und Erziehung 2018

Begrüßung  Karten HELMHOLZ (Universität Hamburg) und Stephanie OSAWA (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf)

Non-Profit-Education: NPO-lead Career Guidance at Senior High Schools (Vincent B. LESCH, Universität Hamburg)

This ongoing PhD project re-evaluates the role of senior high school career guidance in the transition process into the labor market against the background of deteriorating job prospects. It explores the micro level praxis of schooling and career guidance at 17 municipal senior high schools in the Tokyo metropolitan area by means of participant observation of NPO–lead career guidance events and expert interviews with headmasters, teachers and NPO coordinators. By examining differences in measures to promote skills relevant for the job market and in career guidance services, the project seeks to illuminate how different actors at senior high schools currently shape graduates’ career trajectories and how the educational system tries to adapt to challenges brought forth by a deregulated labor market.

Active Ageing: Mitigating Japan’s demographic crisis? (Anna-Lea SCHRÖDER, Universität Hamburg)

The demographic crisis is one of the major international challenges of the current century. As Japan’s hyperaged society is the oldest society worldwide with elderly people making up more than 26% of the population, Japanese active ageing policy reforms with regard to care prevention through lifelong learning might provide best practice examples to the international community. In order to tackle the demographic challenge, Japan is taking a dual approach toward mitigating the demographic crisis: On the one hand, Japan is taking a universalist approach (Esping-Andersen) through universal elderly care by introducing the Long-Term Care Insurance in 2000. On the other hand, the Japanese state is also taking a shift toward an activating welfare state with neo-liberal tendencies, especially through policies of lifelong learning, in order to increase the financial sustainability of the welfare state.
In my dissertation, I would like to challenge the view that the activating welfare state, or as Ogawa calls it, the „New Public Commons“ (atarashii kōkyō), can be regarded as a purely top-down, neo-liberal approach to prolong the „third age“ – the time between retirement and loosing independence and autonomy through age related illnesses – in order to increase the financial sustainability social welfare programs such as the LTCI. Instead, I would like to argue that individual, intrinsic motivation for staying independent, healthy and active in later live actually create a demand for activating policies at the local level. This demand in turn is merging with top-down policy formulation at the national level, creating a dialogue between the different actors involved. I would also like to analyze how state actors and civil society are trying to include high-risk groups such as single, elderly men living alone into active ageing measures.

Abschlussdiskussion