Career wish "Footballer" and the vocational orientation of young persons of differing social backgrounds

Abstract

"The starting point of the current study was the notion that young people develop their job aspirations against the background of rational assessments of which occupations can bring them high status with an amount of effort that is realistically achievable. Here it was assumed that young people perceive that there is an alternative option of careers in professional sports that depends on talent but which does not require good performance at school or prerequisites within the family - as with the classic occupations involving technical knowledge and university-level training. Firstly, the findings of a local study among school students in Nuremberg confirm that professions with high status are primarily aspired to by young people who are good at school and have parents with a high level of education. Social differences in the choice of a profession are thus already a feature of these young persons' aspirations. The desire for a career in the field of professional sport fits in here as well, and is aspired to as an attractive option just as much by young persons with a higher social background. Young people from upper social levels also tend to be supported more often by specific promotional programmes. Although young men of differing social backgrounds are addressed by professional sport in the media and by club structures which offer them role models, this does not mean that social differences in the choice of profession likewise become less. However, differences in performance at school do not have an effect on aspirations to become a professional sportsperson, which would at least tend to suggest that there is an occupational alternative outside the professional options canalised by school performance." (Text excerpt, IAB-Doku)

Cite article

Schels, B., Abraham, M., Dietrich, H. & Sachse, H. (2014): Berufswunsch "Fußballer" und die berufliche Orientierung Jugendlicher unterschiedlicher sozialer Herkunft. In: M. Löw (Hrsg.) (2014): Vielfalt und Zusammenhalt : Verhandlungen des 36. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Bochum und Dortmund 2012, p. 1-11.