Students abroad. Case Reconstructions on the Biographical Significance of Student Exchange (AWAY)

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The student exchange represents an extraordinary biographical experience for young people, which can be characterized by an increase in autonomy. As a space of experience for adolescence, the student exchange opens up the possibility of broadening and diversifying biographical perspectives. As an adolescent step towards autonomy, it demands coping with processes of family substitution and coping with the experience of separation.The study focuses on those students who have decided to participate in a one-year student exchange. We are interested in the motives of the decision-making process, the experiences during the stay abroad and the subjective and family processing after the stay abroad. We assume that experiences are embedded in the interplay of milieu and family influences. The empirical basis of the study is provided by interviews with students and families. The interviews with the students are conducted before, during (online) and after the student exchange. The family interviews take place before and after the student exchange. The data analysis is based on ‘Genogrammanalysen’ and on Objective Hermeneutic sequence analyses of selected interview passages.The aim of the study is to gain an empirically sound insight into the biographical experience of the student exchange and to draft empirically based typologies.