The research programme Social Exclusion and Pedagogy in the Welfare State (SEP) at DPU, Aarhus University have establish a European network with focus on inequality and social exclusion for children and youth in education and society. The purpose of establishing a European network is to gather research competencies and knowledge, as well as to strengthen cooperation and opportunities for fund applications to European research funds related to inequality and social exclusion for children and youth in education and society.

The relations between inequality and social exclusion in society and education opens up for exploring how society and the education system both reproduce and maintain different forms of inequality. Inequality that not only emerges as socio-economic differences in society, but also relates to discussions about social categories such as class, gender and ethnicity.

Within this framework, the following key issues arise for discussion:

• what are the social mechanisms that regulate the relations between (socio)pedagogical institutions and the forms of inequalities experienced by various societies
• what is the role of the welfare state and the inner workings of educational agencies
• how do individuals navigate the social landscape and the key institutions
• how education prevents inequality and social exclusion in society, but also ways in which education reproduce inequality and exclusion processes among, children and youth in society
• at the same time opportunities for discussing and exploring how children and youth in the society experience and handle inequality and social exclusion.

The network is expected to work interdisciplinary that involves various theoretical and methodological approaches as well as research areas related to children and youth, education and to societal research that open up for general discussions about inequality and societal structures and systems bound by power, deviation and stigmatization processes. Thus, the approach have not been determined in advance, however, the broad term associated with inequality and social exclusion will rather be focusing on a jointly approach bringing discussions, angles and perspectives on this.