Paper Short Abstract:

Education as a way forward is especially significant in life trajectories of young refugees. Based on empirical research, we scrutinize structural inequalities along emotional and social costs during the (im)mobilization of refugee students within the German higher education system.

Paper Abstract:

Education as a way forward, is especially significant in life trajectories of young refugees and their families. In response to refugee dynamics in Germany, institutions of higher education have installed special programs for aspirational refugees that aim at channelling their interrupted educational or professional biographies into the German labour force. Yet, conditions of access such as university entrance qualifications, almost fluent command of the German language, finances but also diverging norms and practices of the German study culture challenge the take-up or continuation of academic studies. As a result, educational trajectories are interrupted, halted, redirected or destructed, leaving aspirational refugee students with the feeling of being stuck.

In our paper, we draw on ethnographic material we collected in the preparatory program at the University of Education Freiburg in southern Germany (2016-2023) and its new program for teachers with foreign diploma. Based on participatory observations, expert interviews with course instructors, and formal as well as informal conversations with refugee participants, we argue that both a “regular discontinuity” and a “permanent temporariness” are crucial elements of the students’ backdrop that is characterized by the entanglement of legal issues, expectations of family, former educational experiences, legacies of flight and dissonances of arrival, personal aspirations and (coping) capacities, etc. As such, we scrutinize structural inequalities along emotional and social costs during the (im)mobilization of refugee students within the German higher education system.