Since 2015, almost 1.4 million asylum-seeking refugees with various cultural, socio-economical and educational backgrounds came to Germany (bamf 2017). Many of them are families with children that (sooner or later) attend German primary schools – some of them never having been to school before. Integration as a reciprocal process is both a challenge and a chance at the same time for everybody, aiming at enabling social and cultural participation. Participation is not possible without learning the German language. At the same time, feeling welcome and eventually socially and culturally integrated is a precondition for successful language learning (that includes valuing multilingualism). Therefore, we look at language learning as being part of the social and cultural integration (King & Lulle 2016, 68). With this in mind, one of the aims of the mentoring project GeKOS (‘Gemeinsam entdecken Kinder ihren Ort mit Studierenden’; in English: ‘University students and pupils discover their town together‘) is supporting the social and cultural integration process of refugee children into their new environment through situations of incidental and tacit learning (Schugurensky 2000). In the project, every school year, 40 university students of teacher education and pedagogy take on mentorship for one refugee child each. For nine month, once a week mentors and mentees spend their leisure time together, take part in various activities and explore their neighborhood. Next to contributing to the social and cultural integration, GeKOS also aims at promoting the professionalization of future teachers and pedagogues with regards to (forced) migration (see de Boer et. al. 2018). In the presentation the development and interrelationship of the social interaction of refugee and mentor child and the acquisition of the German language throughout the project will be focused. Three types of data are taken into consideration: - interviews between mentee-child and mentor (month 3) - mentee-child telling another child about the activities throughout the project based on the log-book that each pair makes (month 8) - transcripts of various informal conversations during joint leisure time activities. First content analyses (Mayring 2010) show that the complexity of children’s utterances not only depends on the (developing) relationship of the two but also on the ability of the adult-mentee to ask questions that open up a space for complex answers, on their ability to relate to what the child says and also the ability to balance scaffolding activities concerning the language.

de Boer, H., Braß, B. & Bruns, H. (2018 i. p.). “It’s sad and nice at the same time” - Challenges to professionalization in pedagogical work with migrant children. In F. Dovigo, F. et al. (eds.), Refugee Education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp. xx-xx. Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge [bamf] (2017): Aktuelle Zahlen zu Asyl. [Current statistics on asylum]. Dezember-Ausgabe. http://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Downloads/Infothek/Statistik/Asyl/aktuelle-zahlen-zu-asyl-dezember-2017.pdf?__blob=publicationFile, 30.1.2018 King, R. & Lulle, A. (2016): Research on Migration: Facing Realities and Maximizing Opportunities. A Policy Review. European Commission, p. 68. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299387596, 20.01.18 Mayring, P. (2010): Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Grundlagen und Techniken. [Qualitative content analysis. Introduction and techniques]. 11., aktualisierte und überarbeitete Auflage. Weinheim und Basel. Schugurensky, D. (2000). The Forms of Informal Learning: Towards a Conceptualization of the Field. Toronto: Centre for the Study of Education and Work.