Social diversity is particularly reflected in everyday school life. Pupils with different abilities, interests, language proficiencies and contexts of origin form a heterogeneous schoolscape. In this context, the experience of migration can be seen as significant. Yet in national and international discourses, the topic of migration is generally dealt with from a perspective marked by attention to deficits, and thus problematized. The question of the readiness of pupils from a migration background to perform and achieve, and their ability to integrate, often occupies center stage in national and international-comparative educational contexts Bruneforth et al., 2012: 154; OECD, 2016: 8). Many studies show that the topic of ‘migration’ in the schools is often not treated as a normal or universal phenomenon. Rather, it tends to be viewed as an exceptional phenomenon; as a consequence, pupils from such families are construed in terms of a deviation from normality (Leiprecht & Steinbach 2015). Current research findings also show that juveniles and young adults from migration families, despite their more difficult living conditions and institutional discrimination, can embark upon successful careers at school and professionally in national educational systems (King/Koller, 2009; Krüger-Potratz et al., 2010).

 In our proposed lecture, we plan to present a current Citizen Science Project with the programmatic title “Faces of Migration – Youths from Tyrol Researching Together Their Family Migration History.” The topic of migration here is analyzed from a biographical perspective in a mode of cooperation between educational scientists and pupils. Central in this project is that scientists guide all pupils in a class to investigate their family migration histories, seeking traces of migration in local and regional contexts. For example, they can explore why their uncle migrated to Canada or what prompted their grandparents to relocate from Vienna to the Tyrol (internal migration). Through a process of learning and inquiry grounded on discovery, the pupils gain the possibility to explore their own family migration histories, thus becoming young tyro researchers. In addition, it is envisaged that the knowledge gained from the research can be constructively utilized for educational processes of inclusion and for the juveniles themselves, as well as for the teaching staff and the educational sciences more broadly.

Our socio-historical departure point is that migration has been part of human existence since time immemorial (Bade 2002; Bacci 2015). Since migratory movements are as old as humankind itself; world history can also be read as a history of migrations. For that reason, this research project seeks to include all juveniles in the five participant school classes at two schools. One participating school is located in rural Tyrol, the other in an urban environment. We investigate the respective ideas regarding migration, proceeding on the assumption that immigration experiences have been part of the experience of every family, both rural and urban. In terms of theory, we adopt a postmigrant perspective (Yildiz, 2013; Yildiz/Hill 2017; Terkessidis, 2017; Foroutan et al., 2018).

 The research project examines the current discourses in research on migration, the city, the family and education. The research focus on family and everyday migration experiences enables the researchers to develop overarching, new and innovative approaches. One potential for innovation in the project is to link scientific concepts with perspectives grounded in everyday life of juveniles, so as to examine the scope of scientific theories and analyses and where necessary to develop new ideas, perspectives and visions. From the ideas developed, based on the research findings gained, gaps in teaching materials for school projects on the topic ‘migration’ can be theoretically grounded in the broadest sense.

“Faces of Migration” is a participatory project working with the concept of inquiry-based learning and oriented to the methods of socio-spatial youth work (Deinet 2009). Central are the experiential knowledge of the youths and their reflection. They appear as experts on their own life praxis, co-determining the direction of the research process. A key aim of this methodological approach is to playfully expand the possibilities of juveniles for articulation, and in addition to promote self-determined inquiry and joy in doing science. The pupils are empowered to think critically about the processes of knowledge production and positionings in the everyday world and to develop further ideas. We accompany the youths on a weekly basis in the project as scientific co-workers, giving them project instruction and guidance. Knowledge is provided about topics such as migration, biography and family; the pupils are also introduced to empirical methods. In this way, the young researchers are motivated to formulate their own research questions and, with the aid of simple guidelines, to conduct interviews with family members (mother, brother, aunt, etc.). In this connection, the following research questions can be asked: Why are migration experiences in the family context relevant for me? What transnational relations does my own family have? How does my family deal with migration? These questions are discussed together both in the project instruction itself and also in individual project workshops. The ‘interpretive interview’ (Kaufmann 1999) is utilized as a survey method, combined with narrative, semi-biographical elements as based on Schütze (1983) and Fischer-Rosenthal & Rosenthal (1997). The pupils learn how to conduct an interview independently with their parents or relatives about family migration experiences. The interviews are recorded, transcribed and jointly evaluated. Parallel with the interviews, ethnographic field observations in the respective urban neighborhoods are conducted. Subsequently, interesting localities influenced by migration are photo-documented and expert interviews with selected persons are carried out locally. Oriented to theoretical conceptions, we proceed on the assumption that the pupils generate specific forms of knowledge in the matrix of encounter with their family histories and life praxes locally. In addition, we define European society as a migration society, with migration as a historical normality impacting on all strata of the population. Cities are urban spaces in which migration becomes visible. Through a strategic linking of different theories (pertaining to migration, diversity, city, family education), new ideas are developed that are significant for current scientific discussion.

In current discourse on migration, little attention is paid to the fact that mobility in the form of migration is a normality in Europe, indeed even an “anthropological constant” (Lehners 2007: 7), while sedentariness tends to have been the exception (Bade 2002). If migration is addressed as a topic, then almost automatically an evaluative distinction is introduced between migration and mobility. Mobility is perceived positively as a resource and promoted; by contrast, migration is seen as a problem and deficit. Migration-related phenomena tend to be perceived as a deviation from normality. Two different discourses have developed from this, impacting very concretely on everyday life. This way of thinking has to date had a powerful impact on social perception. Only if we go beyond the dualistic notions of “us” vs. the “others,” “natives” and “migrants,” can new perspectives be opened up in thinking in a new different way about migration – a perspective which foregrounds migration as a historically normal phenomenon. In this connection, the findings of research can make a fundamental contribution to rendering visible the invisible and repressed knowledge, in this way envisaging other images of migration and diversity. A glance into everyday normality at schools clearly shows that the topic ‘migration’ is always present. We seek with our research project to develop a bias-free perspective on the topic of migration and family migration processes. Initial partial findings show that far more pupils have a family relation to processes of migration than is apparently perceived. Thus, not only juveniles from migration backgrounds can talk about processes of migration within the family; autochthonous ‘local’ pupils can as well, when for example an older brother has migrated to Canada or a grandfather lives in the Netherlands. From this biographical perspective, the normality of migration is underscored in a particularly pronounced manner.

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