Authority is a main issue for teachers. Many teachers are interested in being seen as an authority. Using this perspective and combining it with questions of social inequalities is part of this paper. Therefore, the ethnographic PhD project is focused on the relevance of social background in interactions between pupils and teachers in inclusive primary schools in Germany. Furthermore, I am interested in exploring the role of teachers in ‘un/doing difference’ practices and also in uncovering mechanisms leading to educational inequality. To explore these activities in inclusive classes, I participated in lessons as observer over the course of eight months. Apart from the field notes, I also collected certificates, evaluations of pupils and interviews with the teachers. In addition, I used a questionnaire for the pupils to get insights into their social demography (i.e. the family affluence scale (Boyce et al. 2006)). My findings illuminate processes of preference for and discrimination against children in daily school life. As interplay of categorization, non-verbal signals and subversion, there are emotional orders produced and negotiated. The focus on negotiation of authority makes it possible to analyse constitutive practices that lead to inequality in schools. These insights are reflected with theory of authority and social inequality. Especially, my findings emphasize the matter of reciprocal vulnerability and exclusion in escalated teacher-pupil-relations. It could be reconstructed that – for avoiding conflicts – judgements and decisions of teachers should be displayed as being accepted. This means that even if pupils do not accept those ‘authoritative’ actions, they should not neglect or opportune too visibly on it. If not, this behaviour can be read as an undoing authority: Teachers feel vulnerable and as it is not acceptable for them to be seen like this, a doing authority is visible, which is related to a re-staging of social inequalities.

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