Parents and their children who are marginalized in terms of racism and class relations are often positioned by the school as deviating from the assumed normality (cf. Chamakalayil, Riegel & Yildiz, 2018: 58). The demand for partnership between parents and school is also permeated by these unequal accesses and power relations (cf. Gomolla, 2009: 22).

Against this background, the present contribution deals with an example of a conflict about parental involvement a primary school in Berlin-Neukölln, Germany. Two groups of parents, a parents' café existing for some time and a newly founded parents' initiative for the joint enrolment of children, fought for recognition of their commitment on the part of the school.

The analysis is based on ethnographical data, that were collected and analyzed in an interdisciplinary manner with perspectives from cultural anthropology and educational science (cf. Dean 2020). The conflict was about whose involvement inside and outside the school committees was of greater concern to the school - and not least about who determines the rules at the school.

For a long time, the parents from the self-organized parents' café were marked as 'difficult to reach' by the school. They had only felt empowered and strengthened by their exchange and mutual support in dealing with the institution. This changed when the newly founded parents' initiative entered the school. Those parents were actively involved in the committee work. As a result, the two groups of parents suddenly found themselves in a competitive relationship with each other: The members of the parents' café being mostly marginalized in terms of racism and class relations and those from the newly founded parents' initiative being predominantly white and middle-class fought for recognition on the side of the school.

The negotiations of the two groups of parents can be read as an expression of power and inequality relations in which the institution of school is involved in many ways. The relationship between parents and school is on the one hand shaped by these power relations, but at the same time it also represents a starting point for possible changes. For this reason, I will also ask about possible ways in which educational institutions might recognize and dismantle implicit valuations of competing forms of engagement (cf. Altan, Foitzik & Goltz 2009).

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