ABSTRACT
Capabilities of urbanites to create lives and livelihoods depend not just on means and instruments, but also on whether one is able to do the things one values (permissions in the broad sense and recognition on a meta-level), as we said in the introduction. Whereas the previous chapters have shown how the middle classes make the city work and how their practices marginalize others, we will now turn to some of the groups at those margins and ask how they make the city work. In contrast to the ‘gender fate’ of mothers discussed in the previous chapter, as long as women are still girls they are seen as having better chances to achieve stable social positions in contemporary society than boys. Although currently adult women still earn less than men, work more often part-time and make fewer career steps on the ladder, most societal communities worry about boys from low-income households, not so much about girls. In Germany, girls are commonly perceived as the winners in the educational system (Legewie and DiPrete 2012). Even though girls seem to fare better in schools, definitely not all girls have an easy school life. Girls from migration families seem to lack the ‘right’ habitus to make the transition from school to vocational training (Schittenhelm and Granato 2004; Bednarz-Braun and Heß-Meining 2004; Granato 2006) and experience difficulties in defining a future (Schittenhelm 2008). One may hence wonder how they find ways to succeed not just in school, but maybe sometimes despite their school performances.
