Agency or constraint? The mutual shaping of control beliefs and working lives in East Germany after 1989

The situation in Eastern Germany after 1989 brought about a dramatic change in the opportunities for continuing the existing lifepath, and also for pursuing new life goals. In this article, interdependencies of events in the working life on the one hand and control beliefs on the other are investigated. Specifically, the question is addressed as to whether the conditions of an abrupt and sudden system change allowed for differences in these beliefs to become accentuated and more important for successes and failures in working life. Empirical analyses rely on data of the three birth cohorts of 1939 - 1941, 1951 - 1953, and 1959 - 1961 of the East German Life History Study. Results show, first, that control beliefs were strongly influenced by labour market mobility over all the different periods of the East German transformation, but not by all types of labour market mobility in the same way. Second, in the other direction, only a rather limited impact of perceived control on working lives was observed. For a situation of abrupt social change this is a rather astonishing result, which is obviously due to a closure of structural opportunities despite an opening of institutional barriers.