Socialisation - deconstructed

Thank you, Claude and Perplexity, for actually looking.

Socialisation is usually defined as the lifelong acquisition of values, norms, patterns of behaviour and attitudes which enables individuals to take on social roles. Socialisation is said to help the individual find their way in their environment and to develop a personality of their own – that is the classical definition, which sounds neutral at first and presents the process as necessary integration into society.

So far, so neutral. But once you look at the classes of rich and poor, or people with and without a university education, it stops being neutral. The supposedly objective transmission of values turns out to be a class‑specific mechanism that, from early childhood on, sketches out different life paths. What quietly settles into people’s heads and starts sorting them in advance is an all‑inclusive package – an invisible full equipment that goes far beyond conscious upbringing and reaches deep into the unconscious structures of thinking and feeling.

Values and norms, yes – but also unique selling points that mark one’s own group as superior or inferior. Enemy images are included in the package – often subtle, sometimes blatant – defining who belongs and who must stay outside. Blind spots arise systematically where one’s own perspective is no longer questioned, where privilege remains invisible or disadvantage is seen as self‑inflicted. Abstract ideals of group belonging – that pub‑table philosophy which passes itself off as common sense – are equally passed on, unchecked, from generation to generation.

What unites all this is its narrowness: every form of socialisation creates not only belonging but also exclusion. It opens certain horizons and closes off others before a person has any chance of realising they exist. The process that is described as enabling participation is, at the same time, a mechanism for the reproduction of social inequality – a paradox neatly concealed in the neutral term “socialisation”.

This mechanism works all the more efficiently the more invisible it remains. A child from a middle‑class, highly educated home does not only learn vocabulary and grammar, but also how to handle cultural codes with ease, a habitual air of eloquence, the unspoken certainty of being listened to. It acquires a stock of cultural capital which later feels like personal talent, although it is simply inherited advantage. Conversely, a child from precarious circumstances will often internalise the message that its language does not count, its experience is irrelevant, its dreams are unrealistic. Socialisation does not only provide tools for coping with the world: it also defines what counts as worth coping with. It determines which questions can even be asked and which answers are considered legitimate. It shapes taste, which is experienced as individual yet statistically tracks strikingly closely along class boundaries. It shapes body language, ways of speaking, aesthetic preferences – all those fine distinctions Pierre Bourdieu described as markers of distinction.

The violence of this imprint becomes particularly visible in those who attempt or experience upward mobility. They have not only to acquire new competences but to rewrite their entire socialisation after the fact – a process accompanied by inner rifts, conflicts of loyalty, and a constant sense of not really belonging. We speak of “educational climbers”, as if it were an individual achievement, yet it is often a lonely battle against one’s own origins, against internalised limitations, against the nagging guilt of having betrayed those left behind. And even when this climb succeeds, it leaves a scar: the double foreignness of someone who no longer fully belongs anywhere. The new habitus sits like an ill‑fitting suit, while the old one no longer matches the new life. Socialisation here proves to be a tough, resistant material that cannot simply be shed like an old skin.

The insidious thing about this system is its taken‑for‑grantedness. No one plans inequality; no one consciously orchestrates exclusion. It simply happens, day after day, in thousands of small gestures, judgements, attributions. The teacher who does not consider the working‑class child grammar‑school material. The HR manager who pricks up their ears at the “wrong” accent. The cultural institution whose thresholds are so high that only the initiated can cross them. None of this happens out of malice, but out of socialised normality – and this normality is the real problem. It renders inequality invisible by making it appear as the natural order of things. The successful person supposedly owes their success to talent, effort and willpower – not to their origins. The person who has failed simply did not want it badly enough, did not work hard enough, made the wrong choices. Structural conditions disappear behind the individualising rhetoric of personal responsibility.

In the end, socialisation does not produce free, autonomous individuals, but subjects who mistake their shackles for wings. They internalise boundaries so thoroughly that these are no longer experienced as external constraints but as inner truth. “That sort of thing isn’t for people like us” becomes a core belief, “that’s not for the likes of me” becomes self‑limitation, “I’m just not that type” becomes identity. The cage in the head is more stable than any external barrier because it passes itself off as self‑knowledge. The greatest achievement of socialisation is that it turns its victims into accomplices who regard their own subordination as appropriate. Bourdieu calls this phenomenon symbolic violence: a form of domination that does not need to be enforced because it is recognised and reproduced by those who are dominated.

Skin colour: the colour of normality

Anyone not socialised as white learns early that their very existence requires explanation. “Where are you really from?”, “Can I touch your hair?”, “Your German is very good.” These seemingly harmless questions are a daily reminder that normality has a colour – and it is not one’s own. Socialisation for Black people and other people of colour means learning an invisible script in which their role is already written: exotic, threatening, pitiable, exceptional – but never simply unremarkable.

While white children learn to experience the world as a place that belongs to them, Black children and children of colour learn that their place must always be negotiated. They internalise the need to be twice as good to get half the recognition. They learn to swallow their anger so as not to confirm the stereotype. They learn “code‑switching” – the art of presenting a different version of themselves depending on the context in order to survive. What is celebrated from outside as cultural flexibility is, in truth, a survival strategy in a world that only accepts one form of existence as self‑evident.

White socialisation, by contrast, works through invisibility. Whiteness is not experienced as a trait, but as the neutral starting point. One does not learn to be white – one learns that everyone else is somehow different. This privilege through normalisation is the most powerful form of socialisation, because it denies its own existence. Anyone who has never been marked as “foreign” can afford to believe that origins do not matter. Anyone who has never been stopped, checked or suspected because of their skin colour can keep telling the story of a “colour‑blind” society. This socialisation produces blind spots – massive, structural blind spots which allow racism to be dismissed as isolated incidents and systemic disadvantage to go unnoticed.

Gender: the corset of the gender binary

Socialisation begins with the question: “Is it a boy or a girl?” From that moment on, the child is squeezed into a binary system that claims to describe what it is but in reality prescribes what it has to be. Pink or blue, dolls or cars, gentle or strong – these seemingly harmless labels are the first bars of a cage that tightens over a lifetime.

Girls learn that their value depends on their appearance, that taking up space is selfish, that anger makes them “unfeminine”. They internalise the expectation of being there for others, looking after them, putting their own needs second. Invisible emotional and care work is sold to them as natural talent, when in fact it is learned self‑sacrifice. Boys learn that feelings are weakness, that dominance is masculine, that vulnerability equals failure. They are forced into roles that deny them emotional closeness and turn them into warders of their own humanity.

For people who do not fit into this binary system – trans, non‑binary, gender‑fluid – socialisation is a constant act of violence. They must assert themselves against a world that denies or pathologises their existence. Their bodies become battlefields for other people’s projections; their identity becomes a topic for public negotiation by those who feel entitled to have a say. Socialisation forces them to justify, explain and prove themselves again and again – while the cis‑gender majority (those whose gender identity matches the one assigned at birth) are as unaware of having a gender as they are of having a functioning organ. Here, too, we see the violence of normalisation: those who fit the norm do not need to think about it. Those outside it must fight for their right to exist every single day.

Migration: between all chairs

Migrant socialisation is doubled: one learns the codes of the culture of origin and at the same time those of the receiving society – and neither side fully accepts you. Too German for some, too foreign for others. The parents do not understand the new world; the new world does not understand the parents, and the child stands between them, as interpreter, mediator, supposed traitor to both sides. Early on, one learns that loyalty is a zero‑sum game: every adaptation to one world is a loss from the other.

Children of migrants often become parents to their own parents – they deal with authorities, translate letters, explain systems their parents will never fully grasp. This reversal of roles robs them of their childhood and burdens them with a responsibility they should never have had. At the same time, they internalise the message that their family has failed, that their parents have not made it, that their origins are something to be ashamed of. “Integration” is stylised as an individual achievement, when in truth it is a structural problem: the receiving society demands adaptation while simultaneously refusing belonging.

Socialisation in the context of migration also means living with loss. Loss of home, language, the self‑evidence of knowing how things work. One learns that one may never fully arrive, that one’s identity will remain hybrid, that there is no place where one is completely at home. This lack of belonging can be a source of creativity and breadth of view – or a deep existential wound that never fully heals. The second generation carries this pain further, even though they themselves never migrated. Transgenerational trauma is passed on like DNA; socialisation transmits not only values but also losses.

Physical and intellectual impairment: the tyranny of normality

In a world that defines functionality as a basic condition of being human, people with impairments learn that their worth is negotiable. Socialisation begins with the looks – pitying, curious, averted – that tell a child: “You are different, and that difference is a problem.” Not your problem, but you will be held responsible for it.

You learn that the world is not made for you. Stairs without ramps, texts without Braille, information without sign language – everywhere the silent message: “We did not have you in mind.” This spatial and communicative exclusion is internalised as personal deficiency, not as collective failure. You learn to be grateful for every small adjustment instead of demanding accessibility as a given. You learn to apologise for existing because you cause “inconvenience”, cost money, disrupt routines.

For people with intellectual impairments, infantilisation comes on top. Adults are treated like children; their voices are not taken seriously, their decisions overridden. Socialisation teaches them that others know better what is good for them, that self‑determination is a luxury they cannot afford. At the same time, those without impairments are socialised to see disability as tragedy, as a life less worth living, as something that calls for pity. This socialisation produces a hierarchy of humanity in which some lives count more than others.

Single parents: punishment for failing the norm

Children of single parents learn early that their family form is seen as deficient. “Child of divorce”, “broken home”, “incomplete” – the terms reveal the judgement. They internalise that something is wrong with them, that they are disadvantaged, that their life will inevitably be more difficult. Socialisation hands them a story in which they are victims – not of structural inequality, but of their parents’ supposed failure.

For single parents – mostly mothers – socialisation means being seen as having failed. The nuclear family is the norm, making any deviation grounds for devaluation. You learn that you are not enough, that your child is suffering, that you have messed up. At the same time, all responsibility is placed on your shoulders: if the child struggles, it is down to the “broken” family. Structural causes – lack of childcare, insecure employment, poor support – disappear behind the individualised narrative of blame.

This socialisation reproduces itself: children of single parents end up more often in precarious situations, not because one‑parent families are inherently dysfunctional, but because society systematically disadvantages them. Poverty rates are higher, access to resources more limited, chances of upward mobility lower. All this is then used as proof that this family form is problematic – a perfidious self‑fulfilling prophecy.

Addiction: total devaluation

Those who grow up in an environment shaped by addiction learn that reliability is a luxury. They learn early to read moods, anticipate crises, keep going when everything is falling apart. They become managers of chaos, rescuers, invisible adults while still being children. Socialisation in families marked by addiction creates lifelong patterns: hyper‑vigilance, over‑responsibility, inability to accept help, the conviction that you are on your own.

For those with an addiction themselves, socialisation means the experience of total devaluation. They are not considered ill, but weak. Not in need of help, but to blame. Society socialises all of us to see addiction as moral failure, not as a health issue. This stigma turns seeking help into a source of shame; “recovery” becomes a confession of having failed. Contempt from outside is internalised and, through this internalisation, the addiction is reinforced – a vicious circle.

Children of people with addictions carry this shame onwards. They learn to keep the family secret, to feel ashamed, to isolate themselves. They internalise the message that something is wrong with them, that they are damaged, that they are different from “normal” families. They often repeat the pattern: becoming addicted themselves, or choosing partners with addictions, because chaos is the only thing that feels familiar. Passing addiction patterns down the generations is not simply down to genes; it is socialised.

Homelessness: rendered invisible

Homeless people seem to exist outside normal processes of socialisation – or rather, they are systematically pushed out of them. As children, we are taught not to look, to walk past, not to “catch” the misery. Socialisation tells us that homelessness is self‑inflicted, that homeless people are lazy, addicted, failures. They are dehumanised, turned into an abstract category, a problem to be cleared away.

For those affected, homelessness is the most brutal form of “de‑socialisation”. Losing one’s home is not only losing a roof over one’s head, but losing civil existence. You lose your address, your health insurance, your bank account, your ability to work – all those markers that qualify you as a full member of society. You lose privacy, dignity, self‑determination. You become an object, a case file, a statistic.

Children who experience homelessness are doubly punished. They carry shame, trauma and developmental deficits caused when basic needs are not met. Socialisation tells them they are worthless, that they do not belong, that their future is over before it has begun. The path back into “normal” society is steep – not because those affected are unwilling, but because society builds systematic barriers in their way.

Vegetarianism and veganism: conflict with the majority norm

Those who decide to live vegetarian or vegan encounter a peculiar form of resistance. It is not just a way of eating, but an implicit critique of the norm – and the norm defends itself. One learns that this choice is interpreted as moral arrogance, as an attack on the majority, as missionary zeal, even when one says nothing. The mere existence of deviation is experienced as reproach.

Children who grow up vegetarian or vegan learn early that what is normal for them is not normal for others. In nursery, at school, with friends – everywhere they have to explain, justify, adapt. They learn that their needs are seen as complicated, that they “make a fuss”, that they are different. Socialisation teaches them that majority decisions are right simply because they are majority decisions. Their own ethical or health‑based convictions must constantly assert themselves against the taken‑for‑grantedness of the norm.

Adult vegetarians and vegans face a specific form of non‑recognition. Their decision is trivialised, dismissed as a phase, ridiculed as a mere “lifestyle”. The socialisation of the majority makes it almost impossible to talk about animal ethics without being branded radical. You learn to play down your convictions in order to remain socially acceptable – or you accept exclusion and wear it like a badge. Once again, socialisation works not only through direct instruction, but through subtle sanctions against any deviation.

Overweight: the body as public test

People who are overweight are socialised early on to see their bodies as a problem. Before they can even perceive themselves as persons, others have already measured, commented and judged them. “Too much”, “unhealthy”, “your own fault” – such messages cling like a second skin to their sense of self. Socialisation teaches them that their body cannot simply be, but constantly needs explaining: diets, medical reasons, inner struggles – all supposed to serve as justification, to make the mere fact of existing in this body a little less attackable.

At the same time, people without excess weight are trained to read large bodies as warning signs: as a cautionary tale, as deterrent, as projection screen for fantasies about discipline and willpower. The slim body is treated as visible proof of control, self‑restraint, virtue – the fat body as visible proof of loss of control, laziness, excess. That metabolism, poverty, psychological strain, medication and social exclusion play a central role disappears behind the moral tale of the “right” and “wrong” body. Those who are overweight learn to apologise, to hide, to make themselves smaller – in a body that is, at the very same time, marked as “too big”. Socialisation thus creates a double devaluation: you are both too much and not enough.

Unemployment: the devalued status

People without paid work learn early on that their status is not only economically but also morally downgraded. “Unemployed” is not a neutral label in socialised language, but a character judgement. One is seen as unwilling to work, lazy, not properly adapted. Socialisation tells a simple story: “If you really want a job, you’ll find one.” Anyone who does not have work simply does not want it badly enough. That labour markets are unstable, qualifications get devalued, health, care responsibilities or discrimination play a role – all this is systematically blended out of that story.

Children of unemployed parents internalise early that people talk differently about their family – as a problem case, a burden, a cost factor. They can sense the unspoken suspicion that “something is wrong” with them long before they know what paid work is. For those affected, unemployment means not just loss of income but loss of status: daily routines collapse, recognition disappears, social contacts break away. Socialisation in the majority teaches them to experience this devaluation as personal failure. Shame takes the place of entitlement; withdrawal takes the place of protest. Instead of questioning the structure, they end up questioning themselves. And so the circle closes: individualised blame stabilises an order in which paid work is the condition for full human status – and all those who fall out of that grid are marked as “deficient”.

Cracks: when the boundaries become visible

Yet socialisation is not an inescapable fate. There are moments when the construction becomes visible, when the supposedly natural order shows itself for what it is: a made, changeable, surmountable structure. These cracks are no guarantee of liberation, but they are spaces of possibility – fissures in an apparently closed system through which something else can shine.

Sometimes a single encounter is enough. A teacher who believes in a child that does not believe in itself. A book that reveals a different world from the one you were born into. A friendship that crosses class boundaries, background boundaries, all the learned dividing lines. Such encounters cannot be forced; they happen by accident, contingently, in fragile ways. But when they do happen, they can change everything. They show that the world is larger than the inherited fragment, that there are other paths than the ones laid out, that one’s own limitation is not the end of all possibilities.

Sometimes a crisis forces questions. The collapse of the family that was the foundation. The loss of the job that provided identity. Illness that exposes invulnerability as an illusion. Crises are painful, destructive, traumatising – but they can also create the compulsion to re‑orient oneself. When the old order no longer holds, new paths have to be found. Sometimes those paths just reproduce the old patterns, but sometimes they lead into the unknown. The question is not whether crisis will come – the question is what is made of it.

Sometimes it is the friction at boundaries themselves that creates awareness of how constructed they are. Anyone living between worlds – between culture of origin and receiving society, between gender identity and social ascription, between classes – experiences socialisation as contradictory. The norms that apply in one context contradict those in another. These contradictions are painful, but they can also open the eyes. They show that there is no single truth, no one right way to live. Everything is context‑dependent, everything is negotiable, everything is made.

Collective cracks are especially important – social movements that challenge the dominant order not just individually but structurally. The women’s movement, which showed that gender roles are made, not natural. The civil rights movement, which named the racist order as injustice. The queer movement, which exposed the gender binary as an instrument of domination. The disability rights movement, which demands self‑determination rather than pity. Such movements create alternative spaces of socialisation – places where other norms hold, other values are transmitted, other forms of belonging become possible.

These spaces are fragile. They often exist at the margins, precarious, under threat. They are not free of exclusion themselves, nor of new hierarchies. But they show that it is possible. That people can be socialised differently, if the structures are there. That the reproduction of inequality is not inevitable, but a question of how society organises itself.

It is crucial not to romanticise these cracks. Overcoming one’s own socialisation is not easy. It is painful, lonely, often doomed to fail. The educational climber who never fully arrives in their new milieu and no longer fits into the old. The trans person who must assert their identity against a world that denies them. The second‑generation migrant who is at home nowhere. These people pay a high price for crossing boundaries – and it is cynical to expect them to be grateful for that tearing‑apart.

The yardstick cannot be “don’t fail”. The yardstick must be: see the boundaries in the first place. See that what passes as natural is made. That what seems unchangeable is historically produced. That what is experienced as an individual trait was socially created. This insight is no guarantee of change, but it is its precondition. You cannot cross boundaries you cannot see.

Nor is this about blaming yourself when you do not manage to overcome them. Socialisation is powerful. It is lodged deep in bodies, feelings, unconscious reflexes. You cannot simply decide to be different, cannot simply think differently overnight. Working on yourself matters, but it is not the solution. The solution lies in structural change – in education systems that do not reproduce but open up; in work relations that do not exploit but enable; in social security that does not stigmatise but protect; in cultural practices that do not exclude but invite.

The cracks show: change is possible, but not easy. It is possible, but not achievable by individuals alone. It is possible, but it requires more than goodwill. It requires structures, resources, solidarity. It requires a society that consciously decides to break the reproduction of inequality – not through appeals to personal responsibility, but by creating real spaces of possibility.

The most important crack may be the insight that failure is not the end. That the attempt counts, even when it does not succeed. That slipping back into old patterns does not mean everything was for nothing. Socialisation is a lifelong process – which means change is always possible, not as a grand liberation, not as a single revolutionary break, but as continuous, arduous, resistant work against the inertia of what has been learned.

And sometimes, in rare, precious moments, something new emerges. Not the overcoming of old socialisation, but its transformation. People who live between worlds sometimes develop a particular breadth of view. People who have had to struggle against norms sometimes develop a particular sensitivity to exclusion. People who have recognised their own limits sometimes develop a particular openness to the limits of others. There is no guarantee here, no automatic gain – but there is a possibility.

Socialisation will never be completely overcome. It is too fundamental, too deeply embedded, too much a part of what makes us human. But it can be reflected upon, questioned, changed. Boundaries can be recognised as boundaries – not as natural givens, but as historical constructions. And what has been constructed can be constructed differently. Not from one day to the next, not without pain, not without setbacks. But it can.

Conclusion: the question of society

In the end, the question of socialisation is always also the question of what kind of society we want. A society that turns difference into hierarchy, that sanctions deviation, that makes origin destiny? Or a society that recognises the diversity of life paths as a shared wealth?

That would mean democratising socialisation itself – a project that goes far beyond education reform and reaches down to the foundations of the social order. It would mean creating spaces in which children are not fixed to their background. In which difference is not treated as deficit. In which the narrowness of every perspective is acknowledged and can be exceeded. In which failure is not the end but part of the process. In which the cage in the head is not mistaken for self‑knowledge but named for what it is: a boundary that can be crossed.

That society does not exist. But the cracks show that it is possible. Not as a distant utopia, not as some far‑off ideal, but as a continuous practice of questioning, solidarity and change. Socialisation will always shape us – the only question is whether we accept it as fate or take it on as a task.

Written on February 3, 2026 at 14:50. © 2026 Whisper7. All rights reserved.