Books in the Life Course Research series

Philipp M. Lersch shows that residential relocations may change individuals' lives for the better but also for the worse depending on their resources, restrictions and contextual conditions. A comparative analysis of English and German panel data reveals that relocations improve the quality of dwellings on average in both countries but improvements strongly depend on life course stages and economic resources of individuals. Only few individuals improve their neighbourhoods when relocating. Conditions in the housing market are important determinants of these changes. Gender inequality persists in the occupational outcomes of relocations in England and West Germany. Due to institutional conditions, residential trajectories in England exhibit more variation and a higher risk of changes for the worse than in Germany. These innovative findings will inspire further research on the consequences of residential relocations.

Ruth Achenbach develops a model of individual return migration decision making, which examines both the process and the decisive factors in return migration decision making of Chinese highly skilled workers and students in Japan. She proposes to answer a question yet insufficiently explained by migration research: why do migrants deviate from their migration intentions and return sooner or later than planned, or not at all? Her study integrates factors from the spheres of career, family and lifestyle, and redefines stages in long-term decision-making processes, thereby contributing to decision and migration theory. She analyzes migrants' shifting priorities over the course of migration, including a perspective on life course and on the impact of the triple catastrophe of March 11, 2011.

In ihrer Studie untersucht Jessica Ordemann den beruflichen Status und das Einkommen von nichttraditionellen Hochschulabsolventen ohne Abitur. Diese Bildungserträge werden anhand von Daten des Nationalen Bildungspanels (NEPS) mit den Erträgen traditioneller Hochschulabsolventen mit Abitur verglichen. Zentraler Befund der Untersuchung ist, dass nichttraditionelle Absolventen niedriger in der Berufshierarchie platziert sind, aber ebenso viel verdienen wie traditionelle Absolventen.

Wie flexibel ist heute der Arbeitnehmer in Deutschland? Wer erfährt die größten Nachteile auf dem zunehmend flexibilisierten Arbeitsmarkt? Wie entwickeln sich soziale Ungleichheiten im Flexibilisierungsprozess? Sandra Buchholz geht diesen Fragen mit modernen Methoden der Längsschnittanalyse nach.

Over the past few years, the area of volunteer work and civic engagement are topics that have received increasing attention from both the public as well as sociological research. In particular, there has been a controversy as to what - gree voluntary work can be regarded as a collective solution for attenuating - bour market problems and risks of social exclusion. Empirical evidence for the employment effects of voluntary work has made scholars more sceptical than many optimistic scenarios. So far, however, the links between paid work and voluntary work have mainly been discussed as either a phenomenon on the macro-level of society (like the question of substi- tion effects) and/or on the basis of results from cross-sectional research. While there has been some evidence for an association between unemployment and reduced engagement in voluntary work ¿ which may represent cumulative dis- vantage rather than means of compensation ¿ we know relatively little about the dynamics and directions of causality on the individual level. In contrast to conventional research, the study by Susanne Strauß offers a careful and thorough analysis of mutual relationships between unemployment and voluntary work as they show up as activities in individual life courses.

Sophie Hahn analyses downward mobility in educational attainment from a sociological life-course perspective. In order to avoid status loss children of higher-educated parents have to persevere through long educational careers. How large is their risk of intergenerational downward mobility in educational attainment and how does it shape their educational pathways? Does their parents' education still play a role in decisions at late stages of the educational career such as dropping out of and re-entering higher education? Drawing on retrospective longitudinal data of the German National Education Panel Study (NEPS) this book addresses these questions.