In Germany, empirical research has revealed an increase in civil society engagement in 2015. This is also the case in other European countries (Rea, Martiniello, Mazzola, & Meuleman, 2019). In particular, new organisational forms of engagement have been developed, such as "Ankommenspatenschaften” [arrival sponsorships] (Schüler 2020), which are strictly limited in time and considered low threshold in order to mobilise new, previously unreached volunteers. However, it is not only the low sustainability of these short-term engagements that migration researchers are questioning, but also the risk of perpetuating or even reinforcing hierarchical relationships (Bygballe Jensen & Kirchner 2020; Maestri & Monforte 2020). The problem of power imbalances is also evident in 'traditional' community service learning (Mitchell 2008): Without drawing attention “to root causes of social problems” service-learning can involve students in the community in ways that “perpetuate inequality” and reinforce “an ‘us-them’ dichotomy” (ibid., p. 51). In particular, service-learning in the context of forced migration risks perpetuating white privilege and institutionalised racism (Endres & Gould 2009, p. 419). Participating students then tend, for example, to individualise and trivialise structural problems (Gomez 2016, p. 21). Considering this justified criticism of service-learning, we have developed a seminar for university students of Intercultural Education that is based on the concept of critical service-learning (Mitchell 2008). In our paper, we present this seminar, which has been running since 2018 at two different universities in Germany (Cologne and Kaiserlautern-Landau) and with different cooperation partners from the refugee support sector (Fißmer, Rosen & tom Dieck 2023). Furthermore, we focus on the experiences of the participating students and conduct a grounded theory analysis (Charmaz 2014) of their written portfolios for this purpose (for an analysis of peer interviews with these students, see Fißmer, Rosen & tom Dieck 2023). The explorative findings show, that on the one hand, the students feel partially disempowered in the face of the asylum regime. On the other hand, moments of self-efficacy can also be found, especially among the participating students who themselves have a family history of (forced) migration. We discuss these findings in relation to the adaptation of the seminar concept and the differences between process and solidarity vs. products and reciprocity, in order to deepen an understanding of service-learning that is more explicitly oriented towards social justice (Clifford 2017).

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