Society is permeated by multiple relations of power and inequality. Children and young people 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). In pedagogical institutions, these relations of power and inequality manifest themselves especially when it comes to families and parents who are positioned as not conforming to a hegemonically presupposed normality. Such notions of normality are reflected as a hegemonic image of a 'normal family' that is "conceptualized and partly naturalized as bourgeois, white, heterosexual, cisgender, monogamous, sedentary, healthy, and capable" (Fitz-Klausner/Schondelmayer/Riegel 2021: 7). Research on these contexts of inequality takes place within these contexts of inequality, and in the face of dominant social and institutional contexts, processes of devaluation, othering, and inclusion and exclusion, can be reinforced, cemented, or even constructed by research. Mecheril, Scherschel, and Schroedter (2003: 109) call for being aware of the "productivity of the research process for the continuation of difference-constituting relations". The focus therefore should not be on the (unavoidable) avoidance of repetition, but on "reflecting on the question of how this repetition takes place." (ibid., p. 109). Within the framework of a now concluded Swiss National Science Foundation project on parents and schools in the context of societal inequality (cf. Chamakalayil, Ivanova-Chessex, Leutwyler & Scharathow 2022), narrative biographical interviews (cf. Schütze 1983) with mothers and fathers were conducted. In this context, biography is understood as a construct, «where both the subjective acquisition and construction of the social reality as well as the societal constitution of subjectivity» take place (Dausien, 1994: 152). This paper aims at exploring, how societal power relations are discussed, shaped, and negotiated, when biographers of colour narrate experiences of racism with regard to school in biographical interviews – while the interview is conducted by an interviewer of colour. Differing ways of biographers of broaching the topic, what is said and what remains unsaid, careful, or angry explorations, addressing or involving the interviewer and being involved and reacting to being addressed by the interviewer are explored and analysed with regard to making societal power relations visible. Pointers as to how researchers can work towards a more reflective methodology are discussed.

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