In qualitative inequality research, the question arises whether and how one encounters structures of power and domination in the study of diversity and difference in educational contexts by means of narrative interviews or whether these only become visible when they are brought to the empiricism by the research. For what qualitative research strives for, at least in the tradition of Schütz (1971), is a re-construction of the meaning structures of the researched and not of power structures. Whether and to what extent power structures are embedded in these structures of meaning is something that has so far remained methodologically unresolved. So far, the problem has been treated primarily as a problem of the discrepancy between micro- and macrostructures, which is bridged by increasingly supplementing the traditions of reconstructive procedures with discourse-analytical elements (Spies/Tuider 2017; Völter et al. 2005). Through the reference to social discourses, references to power structures can then be identified in the structures of meaning. The traditionally more German-speaking reconstructive approaches have strongly connected to international research and positioning analysis (Bamberg 2004; De Fina 2013; Deppermann 2015). Positioning analysis refers not only to explicit acts of positioning oneself or others, but to complex positioning activities. Discourse-analytically informed positioning analysis is currently well established in biographical research, which sees itself as research into socialization and subjectivation processes (Thon et al. 2022). Although and precisely because the two speakers work with the approach of positioning analysis, they would like to highlight its suitability for researching power and domination relations, but also to put it up for discussion. The article pursues this concern methodologically and empirically with regard to the study of racism and racialisation in the German school system. It asks specifically where and at what points the positioning analysis makes power visible in the material. For this purpose, two individual case studies from different research projects are examined comparatively: a biographical interview with a white teacher and a biographical interview with a racialised pupil of colour. The aim is to explore the possibilities and limitations of reconstructing power (structures) by means of positioning analysis and to promote an empirically grounded discussion of methodological issues in the study of diversity in educational contexts.

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