Situated in the wider framework of an ethnographic research project on multilingualism in preschools in the officially trilingual region of South Tyrol (Italy), this paper focuses on the role of language(s) and power in education. More concretely, it explores the added value of linguistic ethnography (Tusting 2020) as a “methodology of inequality” for the study of language and power in multilingual migration societies. The theoretical relevance of linguistic ethnography for educational research lies in its interest in language as "ideology and practice" (Heller 2007, S. 1) in educational institutions, as it sees language as a socially and institutionally situated practice which can (re)produce, negotiate, shift or irritate powerful relations between speakers. Methodologically, its value lies in the consistent linking of ethnographic and sociolinguistic approaches (Blackledge und Creese 2020). In South Tyrol, there are three officially recognized languages (Italian, German, Ladin). Analogously, there are separate educational systems with respective languages of instruction. This separation does justice to social multilingualism only to a limited extent, because it is oriented towards the idea of a ‘natural’ monolingualism of children and, moreover, does not sufficiently take multilingualism in migration societies into account. The 'distribution' of children with certain linguistic repertoires among these three systems is the subject of socio-political discourses that lead to a "hierarchization of minority rights" (Thoma 2022). In this context, preschools with German as the language of instruction are given the role of a "bastion" (for Switzerland: Knoll 2016) against the supposed threat to 'German' identity in the national Italian context, which is characterized by migration-related multilingualism. The paper combines fieldnotes and transcripts of interviews to reconstruct how language education policies (Jaspers 2018) and language ideologies (Jaffe 1999) are (re)produced, negotiated, or irritated in educational practice and discourse. Special relevance will be given to interactions during the ethnography, both on the level of language repertoires and language choice of all actors (children, teachers, parents, researchers) involved. The results will show how linguistic ethnography is suited to explore the enactment of language (education) policy in practice, and the relevance of (national, regional, and institutional) language ideologies for relations between individuals and groups at the micro level.

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