Perfectly accomplished? Biographical trajectories and the production of inequality among exclusive boarding school alumni in Germany

Abstract

Given that exclusive boarding schools in Germany are repeatedly referred to in public and academic discourses as places of elite education, the question arises as to the consequences of boarding school socialisation and how these schools affect the post-school biographies of their alumni. This qualitative study examines the autobiographies of alumni aged approximately 30 years who attended either expensive progressive education boarding schools (in the tradition of Landerziehungsheime) or state boarding schools for the highly gifted in Germany, which likely cater to different class fractions. The autobiographical narratives of 31 alumni were interpreted using biographical analysis. The results are discussed in relation to the habitus of boarding school students and the question of what this means for alumni’s post-school biographical trajectories and their social positioning in terms of habitus and capital.