Definition
Socialisation is the lifelong process by which a person acquires the language, norms, values, roles, and behavioural repertoire of the cultures they live in. It is what turns a biological infant into a competent social participant — and what keeps adults aligned (or misaligned) with the groups they move through.
Sociologists conventionally distinguish primary socialisation, which happens in early childhood within the family and shapes the most durable layer of identity, from secondary socialisation, which happens in school, peer groups, workplaces, and the media, and which is more variable and contested. The term is associated with Talcott Parsons in functionalist sociology and was extended by symbolic interactionists like George Herbert Mead, who saw the self as constructed through internalised reactions of others.
Why it matters
How it works
Primary socialisation embeds an early grammar of self, attachment, and authority that is hard to overwrite. Secondary socialisation layers on professional identities, gender scripts, political worldviews, and consumer tastes — anything specific to a sub-domain of life. The two can reinforce each other or pull in different directions, which is why adolescence and migration are such common sites of identity strain.
For criminology, socialisation is a hinge concept. Strain, subcultural, and control theories all ask the same question in different keys: what happens when socialisation is incomplete, inconsistent, or oriented to values that the dominant society criminalises? Modern accounts add that socialisation is two-way — children also shape parents, and digital platforms now socialise users at industrial scale.