Paper short abstract:

Concerning a power struggle at a primary school in Berlin-Neukölln between a group of racially and socially disadvantaged parents on the one hand and of mainly white, middle-class parents on the other, the contribution asks how spaces of resistance may close again against hegemonic relations.

Paper long abstract:

Some years ago, a power struggle erupted between two groups of parents at a primary school in Berlin-Neukölln. The question was, which of the groups would have more influence on decisions at the school.

One of the groups, consisting of racially and socially disadvantaged parents, initiated a self-organized coffee bar, where the parents took their space in a physical and in a metaphoric way: Gradually, they felt empowered in dealing with the school. This was especially important for them, as they used to be addressed by teachers as disinterested in educational matters (vgl. Chamakalayil, Riegel & Yildiz, 2018: 58).

The second group consisted of mainly white, middle-class parents, ,daring‘ to send their children to the local school which they perceived to be a “hotspot school”. In order to do so, they built groups of like-minded families and enrolled several children in each class of the first grade. These parents engaged actively in the existing committee structures. This was regarded as a legitimate form of parental commitment by the school itself (vgl. Gomolla, 2009). As a consequence, the two parental groups found themselves in a competitive relationship.

In my contribution, I analyze how the former "space of racism" concerning racially and socially disadvantaged parents opened up as space in which empowerment grew. Furthermore, I examine, how this space of empowerment closed again in favor of hegemonic relations.

The contribution is based on ethnographical data, that had been collected and interpreted with perspectives both of cultural anthropology and educational science (Dean 2020).