Families 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). They are  confronted with interpellations which position them – for example, racialised, gendered, classist, heteronormative or ableist interpellations – and are surrounded by powerful norms and ideas of 'good’ or 'appropriate parenting'. Accordingly, some parents find themselves vulnerable (cf. Butler 2005) to be interpellated into inferior positionings within and by educational institutions. In a European school context, parents, especially those marked as 'different', risk to be exposed to deficit-oriented judgements (vgl. Betz et al. 2017; Westphal/Motzek-Öz/Otyakmaz 2017) and face a continuous pressure with regard to an ‘optimisation’ of their parenting (vgl. Bischoff-Pabst/Knoll 2020; Kuhn 2018). At the same time, within the processes of a renegotiation of public and private education responsibility, parents are increasingly addressed as being responsible for the educational progress of their children (cf. Jergus 2018; Kollender 2020; Vincent 2017). However, parental involvement or 'family background' are considered to explain the educational performance (both success or failures) of children and young people to a much greater extent than structural conditions, for example, of schools.  

Schools undertake considerable efforts to involve parents in educational processes. 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). However, for many parents, institutionally provided ways of participation go hand in hand with risks of exclusion (cf. Dean 2020; Kollender 2020; Vincent et al. 2012) and/or a considerable effort that they cannot manage to exert (cf. Andresen 2017). At the same time, parents who undertake efforts differing from established forms of participation and who involve themselves in educational processes in their own way, are often seen as illegitimate or less significant in the context of school and its routines and therefore are sometimes likely to be perceived as a disruption (cf. Dean 2020).  

With an analysis of biographical interviews with parents conducted in Switzerland, the paper aims to reconstruct analyse parental agency in educational contexts which are pre-structured by hegemonic norms and power relations. While these intersectional power relations can be limiting and discriminating, these contexts should not be seen as determining someone's actions. In connecting to concepts of agency  (Helfferich, 2012; Mick, 2012), it can be presumed that within these interconnections of diverse societal contexts, specific spaces for agency can be found. These, however, are not the same for everyone, as they are structured by discourses, hegemonial norms, societal power relation, as well as materialities and institutional and societal frameworks.  Therefore, contexts of inequality (regarding race, class, social background, gender, body and epistemic dominances (Riegel, 2016, S. 61f.) provide a framework of reference, in which specific subject positions and options for agency are produced, while spaces are contoured for specific forms of agency. In addition, biographical (cf. Dausien 1994) and subjectivation theory (cf. Butler 2001) were employed in the analysis of parental agency in the school context.

As part of a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, "Parents and School in the Context of Social Inequality" (cf. Chamakalayil, Ivanova-Chessex, Leutwyler & Scharathow, 2021), 21 biographical-narrative interviews (cf. Schütze 1983) were conducted with mothers and fathers and analysed with a reconstructive method (cf. Rosenthal 1995; 2011). 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 onthe circularity of data collection and analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1996), was implemented. Biographical (cf. Dausien 1994) and subjectivation theory (cf. Butler 2001) as well as intersectional perspectives (cf. Riegel 2016) were utilized as analytical references. For this paper, some of the reconstructed manifestations of parental agency in the school context are traced across cases.

The results of our study show that parents are willing and able to engage with school and that they are willing and able to find ways to contribute to their children's education. However, their possibilities and resources to act are powerfully structured by relations of inequality on an individual, institutional and social level. Most of the options which could be reconstructed from the date with regard to the actions chosen by parents represent individual strategies and ways of dealing with challenges. Parental strategies and tactics are often applied beyond the structures which school provides with regard to parental participation. Often, these participations can be classed as situational solutions. However, the parents’ actions seldom have a lasting effect on their children's educational biographies and hardly ever allow families to leave behind the ascribed position as ‘the other’, into which they are interpellated. Rather, this position remains the starting point for their action, which then mostly takes place within the discourse and not within the established paths of a structured system of complaints and support. In conclusion, some pointers derived from the analyses on necessary changes on an institutional level will be discussed.

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