Poverty, well-being and educational opportunities for children in contemporary Greece: the cases of two after-school programmes

Abstract

This is an ethnographic study dealing with childhood and children’s education in after-school programmes. Its purpose is the sociological investigation of the social construction of child subjectivity in the workshops of two different after-school programmes (ASPs). The participating children are socially differentiated in terms of living conditions and opportunities in education. The study focuses on the specific experiences of these children in ASPs, as well as the interweave of ASPs’ activities with educational and social inequalities from a sociological angle. A main assumption in this chapter is that the reproduction and expansion of inequality occur not only at the level of economy but also of culture and, specifically, that of cultural capital.Under that prism, we examine the interaction between the children (subjects) and the ASPs (structures) as symbolic mechanisms that transmit a specific cultural capital to their child members, aiming in their well-being; how children experience and actively manage their presence in them; as well as the way in which children’s cultural capital is articulated with that of the ASPs. © Lourdes Gaitán, Yannis Pechtelidis, Catarina Tomás and Natália Fernandes 2020. All rights reserved.