In Germany, as in other European countries, newly arrived children are often not given regular schooling but are taught in separate introductory classes (Crul 2017). In addition to the poor or complete lack of access to specialist subject instruction in these classes, which has been noted for almost all European countries (Koehler 2017: 27), early tracking by the German school system is criticised as being a risk factor for educational disadvantage (see also Koehler 2017: 13). Criticism of separate schooling for newly arrived schoolchildren in Germany has already been emphasized during the so-called guest worker migration in the 1960s and 70s from the perspective of intercultural pedagogy (Radtke 1996) and is currently being renewed (Schroeder & Seukwa 2017). In contrast to the earlier discourse, a strong reference is now being made to the international inclusion debate and it has been pointed out that “introductory classes are obviously not in agreement with the ideal of inclusive education” (Hilt 2017: 586). In view of this goal of inclusive pedagogy, it is all the more critical to discuss the fact that in the German education system, especially in secondary schools, due to institutional structures joint learning is either non-existent or limited (Karakayali et al. 2016; for an overview of the forms of schooling for newly arrived schoolchildren in Germany, see Terhart & von Dewitz 2018). Another problem is that “the education offered in introductory classes is based on a construction of newly arrived students as deviant from the mainstream” (Hilt 2017: 599). 

Against the theoretical background of othering (Spivak 1985; Said 1978), which is central to this contribution, the use of the label ‘Seiteneinsteiger’ (lateral entrant) in German-speaking countries can also be viewed critically. This label already established itself for newly arrived schoolchildren in Germany in the 1980s (Mecheril & Shure 2015: 113) and has regained prominence in the context of the current educational policy discourse. This designation constructs putative groups of schoolchildren ‘with’ and ‘without special needs’ and thus powerful relationships of normality and deviation (ibid: 109). The school difference orders often focus on the dimension of language: thus, newly arrived pupils are categorised by linguistic school and teaching practices as (still) non-German speakers. Qualitative and ethnographic studies show that this deficit-oriented view of multilingualism is also adopted by those pupils who are labelled as “non-German speakers” (Khakpour 2016: 67.). Furthermore, teachers’ appropriation of the government policy to integrate newcomers into the mainstream classroom not only enforces a monolingual ‘German only’ assimilation policy, it also denies children the right to use their home and other languages in learning the German language (Panagiotopoulou & Rosen 2018). 

Following on from the state of research on the construction of differences along the lines of language and multilingualism in separational forms of schooling for newly arrived children, in this contribution we address the question of which further characteristics of differentiation are engendered by interactive practices for the powerful construction of normality and deviation in partially integrative forms of schooling. The research question is: How are newcomers addressed by classmates, teachers and other pedagogical professionals in everyday school life and to what extent are they constructed as ‘the others’? And which practices of ‘doing difference’ (West & Fenstermaker 1995) can be observed and reconstructed? 

In order to expand the research question of interactive practices of ‘doing difference’ and processes of othering in schools in the context of new migration, we have chosen an ethnographic approach. On the one hand, this has to do with the general epistemic knowledge regarding everyday school life and therefore requires a disciplined inquiry and systematic analysis of everyday life (Atkinson 2015) – a central concern of ethnographic studies. On the other hand, this choice seems adequate, because the doing difference approach theoretically belongs to an ethnomethodological research tradition. In this respect, ethnography seems particularly suitable for “analysing the differences associated with social categories, inasmuch as it has a long tradition of reflecting on an appropriate approach to ‘the other’” (Fritzsche & Tervooren 2012: 25). Ethnography is also regarded as a research strategy that seeks to overcome methodological nationalism in migration research (Glick-Schiller 2003). For the purposes of this contribution, we spent one morning a week in the company of newly arrived pupils at a secondary school in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) over a period of four months of the previous school year (April–July 2018) and observed them participating in language training. This form of schooling is organised according to the partial integration principles, in which the schooling of newly arrived pupils takes place partly in regular classes and partly in separate classes within the framework of targeted language training for all age groups. The field work was realized by Fenna tom Dieck, who has already completed her master’s thesis in a comparable research field in Lower Saxony (Germany) (tom Dieck 2017) and is currently carrying out participant observations as part of her doctoral thesis – an international comparative ethnography in Italy and Germany. The choice of the form of schooling based on the partial integration principal draws on the maxim of constant comparison as described in the Grounded Theory Methodology (Przyborsky & Wohlrab-Sahr 2014: 204) to enable a comparison with an already completed ethnography of a so-called preparatory class (a form of schooling based on the separation principal) in the same city in North Rhine-Westphalia (Panagiotopoulou & Rosen 2018). For this contribution, we have carried out an initial analysis using the line-by-line coding method proposed by Charmaz (2014: 124 ff) and subsequently compared selected extracts (for focused coding see ibid: 138 ff).

We also find clear indications in the partially integrative schooling model that the newly arrived pupils are interactively identified as divergent pupils. Their participation in German language training becomes an overarching characteristic that not only distinguishes them from their fellow students, but also denies them the status of regular pupils. For example, it was observed that one pupil was forbidden by the language teacher from taking part in a cross-class project and was instead obliged to realise a project within the framework of the language training class. This does not seem to be in line with the self-image of the pupils who, for example, draw their language teachers’ attention to the fact that instead of an excursion with the language training group they would like to take part in the mathematics test with the regular class (“Mrs. Meer, I’m doing a maths test!”), insist (unsuccessfully) on their participation in the regular class (“Don’t forget, Sadin, that you’re coming to me today in the third lesson, OK?” and Sadin says, determined: “In the third lesson, I’m going to the regular class”) or – as in the example already mentioned above – ask if they can decide for themselves which project they want to participate in, as expected by all other students (“This morning I saw on the wall [on the bulletin board] that Mrs. Schiefer is doing a project [...] and I wanted to ask whether I could also take part?”). We will condense these and other examples of processes of othering in the lecture, theorize them under the perspective of ‘precarious inclusion’ and present them for discussion.

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