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Paper short abstract

I follow "dreaming" in student refugee biographies in Germany as an intimate and private aspect, as potentially delegated by others or structurally enforced, as directed toward the self (personal achievements) or toward others (family, community, etc.).

Paper long abstract

In forced migration, decision making is inextricably linked to dreaming - dreaming of a better life elsewhere. Drawing on ethnographic data from conversations and engagements with refugee teachers in a re-qualification program at the University of Education Freiburg, I follow their collective and personal dreaming through a liminal space between paths set in the past, hopeful aspirations, real opportunities, and necessary compromises.

I explore dreaming from a temporal perspective along the ruling linear logic of arrival – recognition – retraining – gainful employment and how this regime generates waiting, postponement, repeating learning and qualification processes that had already been completed, and frustrations. Waiting for decisions, courses, exams - externally induced standstills that offer spaces for dreaming as much as they bring insights into the harsh reality, urging them to reconsider their (dreamed of, realistically intended, missed) perspectives. Others seem unable to diverge from the dreams they formulated back home, as if changing plans would compromise their reasons and motives for fleeing. Simultaneously, they often are part of collective transnational family dreams. For most I spoke to, teaching has become more than a profession; it symbolizes the validation of their identity in an unfamiliar host community.

I thus scrutinize the "dreaming" in refugee biographies as an intimate and private aspect, as potentially delegated by others or structurally enforced, as directed toward the self (personal achievements) or toward others (family, community, etc.). Ultimately, I analyze how refugee dreaming interacts with, conforms to or reconfigures the contours of their host community.