Navigation and Negotiation towards School Success at Upper Secondary School: The Interplay of Structural and Procedural Risk and Protective Factors for Resilience Pathways

Abstract

Young male migrants, in particular, are at higher risk of not completing upper secondary education and do not have the same opportunities to put their educational resources to use in existing educational contexts. This work examines how socially and structurally disadvantaged male adolescents (migration biography and low SES) can be supported in attaining educational success at the upper secondary level by applying the resilience concept of navigation and negotiation. Within the framework of grounded theory and by a qualitative coding paradigm, we applied an exploratory heuristical approach in order to understand school success under a micro-sociological passage. Data were collected in German-speaking Switzerland as part of the programme’s evaluation, which show, firstly, that inter-individual processes of navigation and negotiation differ depending on the specific people involved and their objectives. Secondly, different forms of development of navigation and negotiation are seen within a single individual, and thirdly, the importance of institutional flexibility becomes apparent when adolescents experience successful processes of navigation or negotiation. The findings are discussed in the context of questions of justice and to their classification within the context of educational and psychological aspects for promoting resilience and on the basis of their overall significance for education policy.