Children and young people with a migration history or from socioeconomically disadvantaged families in Switzerland face an unequal education system, as national as well as European comparative studies demonstrate (cf. SKBF, 2014; Becker 2013; Heath, Rothon, & Kilpi, 2009). Even though Switzerland has a rather low parental participation in the school context (cf. OECD, 2016), parental involvement in school is discussed as a premise for successful schooling, raising school quality and a way forward towards more educational equality (cf. Baier, 2015; Neuenschwander, 2009). In the German language area, the relationship between parents and schools is increasingly discursively discussed as a partnership (cf. Gomolla, 2009), where parents and schools are portrayed as equal players with a common responsibility for education and upbringing of children and young people. However, these expectations towards parents are in conflict with existing gendered, racialized, and class-based societal inequalities as well as the schools mandate of selection. The normatively aspired partnership `on an equal footing` therefore could obscure, that parents in contexts of societal inequality experience limited opportunities to influence education institutions (cf. Gomolla, 2009; Jünger, 2008; Lareau & Cox, 2011).

Profound knowledge about parents’ viewpoints on educational institutions, their experiences, reasons and ways to act and interact with school is required. However, these research perspectives, particularly with a focus on parents who can be described – in the context of inequality – as deprivileged, are relatively rare in the German language area. There is a latent orientation on `normality`, as research from Germany and Switzerland demonstrates, produces parents, who diverge from this `normality` and are described as `different`, `special`, `divergent`, `difficult to reach` or `disinterested` (cf. Gomolla, 2009; Neuenschwander et al., 2005). Here, social categories provide a differentiation knowledge, supporting the social production of the `other` (cf. e.g. Wiezorek & Pardo-Puhlmann; Riegel, 2016; Spivak, 1985). Parental attempts to be included in school are often interpreted as hostile and aggressive behavior towards school and their issues are trivialized (cf. Gomolla, 2009).

The Swiss National Science Foundation project this paper is based on focuses on parents and schools in the context of societal inequality and aims at reconstructing the perspectives of parents on educational institutions.

Social contexts of inequality are understood here as an interdependency of different societal power relations, as in class, gender, body or racialized contexts of belonging (cf. Riegel, 2016), resulting in consequences with regard to an unequal distribution of resources and consequently, societal positions. These asymmetrical and intersecting contexts are looked at in their impact, on the level of societal contexts, social discourses and practices as well as the level of the subjective thinking and acting. For this, theoretical perspectives on subjectivation and biography are utilized. Biography is understood as a construct, «where both the subjective acquisition and construction of the social reality as well as the societal constitution of subjectivity» take place (Dausien, 1994: 152).

Butlers ideas on subjectivation (Butler, 2001; 2006), Foucaults explorations on power (Foucault, 1982) and Halls discussions on articulation (Hall, 1980) are utilized to allow for parents to be looked at in their institutional and discursive dependencies as well as with regard to their capacity to act.

Central research questions focus on parents’ experiences with the school of their children, how experiences, positionings and strategies can be looked at based on their own biographical experiences and how these experiences are formed discursively.

Biographical-narrative interviews (Schütze, 1983) were conducted with 20 mothers and fathers in contexts of social and societal inequality. Here, a stimulus generated a biographical narration, followed by immanent questions, generating narration arising from themes of the interview. Additional, exmanent questions towards the end of the interview allowed for themes and topics to be explored, which were relevant for the research questions, but had not been addressed as yet. Theoretical sampling, with a focus on the circularity of data collection and analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1996), was implemented. For the analysis, the research project orients itself on the sequential steps of the reconstructive or biographical case analysis (Fischer-Rosenthal & Rosenthal, 1997; Rosenthal, 1995; 2011), supplemented by context reflectivity, critically looking at societal contexts of inequality and exclusion resulting in concepts of normality and practices of normalization. Narrations are not only analyzed with regard to the biographical context, but with regard to the discursive contexts shaped by inequalities as well. In this, the analysis does not aim to produce homogeny but instead aims at analyzing subjects with their ruptures, inconsistencies and pluralities (cf. e.g. Rose, 2012).

For this paper, the complex relationship of mothers in contexts of inequality with regard to their own lives and education as well as to the school of their children is explored. It can be observed, that the responsibilities of engaging with the school of their children often falls to mothers, even if fathers are part of the families. In case studies of mothers presented in this paper, the biographical perspective helps to explore, how societal discourses are actively negotiated within the biographical narration and how life experiences, within different societal power structures, shape negotiations. The intersectional perspective, looking at the interdependency of sexism, classism and racism, allows for an analysis of societal power relations and their impact on biographies of women, who are mothers as well. Mothers, being positioned as well as positioning themselves, try to utilize these positionings at the confluence of e.g. gender, class, dis/ability and racialised contexts of belonging, which simultaneously limit and hinder as well as enable them in their capacity to act. In conclusion, it can be demonstrated, how the relationship between schools as institutions and mothers as subjects can be seen as an ongoing negotiation process, where unequal positions are offered, taken over or denied. A contextualised understanding of experiences, positionings and strategies of mothers in contexts of inequality contributes to increased pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical professionality.

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