As a theoretical framework of the panel, the first lecture will focus on four relevant transitions in the development of children and youth to emphasis the significance of emotion in processes of emancipation in education in general. (1) The starting point is the assumption, that the very first approaches of independency can be seen as a function of the primary emotions. In particular, the exploration behaviour in the early childhood illustrates the significance of emotion for all processes of disengagement and attachment in the future live (Litman 2005). (2) In the next step, it will be shown that, considering the interplay between the primary and secondary emotions, emotional processes are a precondition for breaking away from the parental home. Simultaneously emotions enable the adoption of perspectives and the identification with social groups, understood as an identity-forming function in the individual development of youth (Scheve 2011). (3) The third example will focus on youth risk in adolescence and will demonstrate, bearing in mind the theory of the maturity gab (Steinberg 2008), that specific emotional processes can be taken into account as an explanation of apparent delinquent behaviour. Moreover, youth risk characterizes exceptionally the fundamental ambivalence in the process of emancipation. (4) Finally, it will be shown that at the transition point from youth to adult hood emotions can be understood as a crucial factor for one’s own educational career and consequently for the future development of one’s own identity (Gieseke 2007). Emotions and emotional evaluations empower the process of emancipation in a lifelong perspective.