The German-speaking research fields with regard to understanding Germany as a migration society (Mecheril 2010) often deal with integration, (the lack of) educational success, multilingualism or power asymmetries between Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) persons and non-BIPOC persons within institutions or society in general. While there is knowledge about the role of researchers in qualitative studies and the importance of reflecting the powerful position they find themselves in, it seems to be a different context when the researchers themselves come from a minority within academia (Karabulut 2022). Usually, researchers are not BIPOC persons and come from educated middle-class families (ibid.) But what if the researchers have the same social positioning as the persons who are objectified for research purposes? How will data be collected or analyzed (differently)? What are the opportunities and challenges of being BIPOC for the researchers and the research process? How are BIPOC researchers perceived by interview partners or other researchers?

Based on two research projects, the problematization of the role as a BIPOC researcher will be developed and presented with reference to concepts of Othering, the Critical Race Theory, and Bourdieu’s concept of capital (1990). The research projects deal with different topics of inclusion and language learning in the migration society.

In the first project, 18 qualitative semi-structured interviews were carried out with teachers and school leaders from six different schools on the practices and challenges of including newcomer students into the school. In Germany, newcomer students are primarily educated in separate but highly diverse classes in order to learn German as a second and academic language as quickly as possible (BSB 2018). Although cultural and linguistic diversity is not a new phenomenon in the German education system, the “monolingual habitus” (Gogolin 1994) is still persistent and can be identified in the data as well as in the addressing of the researcher during data collection. While the researcher was seen as a professional and potential teacher or co-expert on the topic of teaching newcomer students and additionally as a qualified researcher coming from university to pursue a study, another component was relevant: the attribution of a natio-ethni-cultural affiliation (Mecheril 2010) and related competencies and knowledge were mentioned in some interview situations. The so-called “visible” migration background might have led to label the researcher as “other” (ibid.) and construct different social groups where the researcher is in- or excluded.

The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis according to Kuckartz (2018). With the help of the systematic approach, all relevant units of analysis could be considered in a multi-level interpretation. The analysis is complemented by an evaluative qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz 2018, 124ff.) based on selected features as those were identified as central influencing factors for the embedding of preparatory classes in the respective schools and the construction of a racial or social “other”.

The second project is about creativity and literacy development with a focus on migration-related multilingualism and examines texts which are written in German and Turkish by primary school students. With a researcher that not only has a knowledge of German as a native speaker but also Turkish language skills at a high level, the data analysis differs from that of other researchers. Research on migration-related multilingualism, which is particularly concerned with the acquisition of German as a second language, explores the linguistic development of German as a condition for school success or failure. In this context, linguistic deviations from convention are declared as errors or interference resulting in linguistic inability (e.g. Klicpera/ Gasteiger-Klicpera/ Schabmann 2006, 415). /...

.../ Researchers who are not only multilingual in foreign languages, but just like the group being researched, have themselves grown up multilingual due to migration, usually interpret these deviations not as errors, but as an interlingual transfer (e.g. Kalkavan 2012, Savaç 2020) or in the case of the dissertation project as 'translanguaging' (García 2009). It is assumed that there is a link between these two points of views on the deviation from the standard linguistic norm, because those researchers argue that on the one hand there is a language inability because of the errors, which is attributed to multilingualism (e.g. Esser 2009; Hopf 2005) instead of needs-based learning support. The difference between an 'error' and an 'interlingual transfer' is not only in the consideration of the object of study but is relevant in terms of the student’s learning development. This is because once the cause of the deviation from the standard linguistic norm is understood, needs-based learning strategies can be applied to develop the linguistic skills. This interpretation of how researchers analyze and conclude the linguistic skills in German leads to two hypotheses. Firstly, the focus on the language skills or lacks the standard linguistic norm seems to leave out the social and daily circumstances which go along with growing up as a child in an immigrated family and the social status which comes with the immigration like dealing with racism and getting worser grades than students with no migration history (e.g. Karabulut 2020). These circumstances have an impact on language development as well as on identity development. Secondly to understand how students develop language skills especially those skills which are relevant for being successful in school like literacy skills and academic language (Gogolin/ Lange 2011) it is necessary to analyze the language and literacy activities in the daily lives of the students like in school or social life. The third relevant aspect is the question according to daily use of language(s). Which language is the dominant language in the daily life of the students? /...

.../ Studies have shown that students which were tagged as Second Language Learners of German but also were alphabetized in German schools transfer standard linguistic norms from German into Turkish texts (e.g. Kalkavan 2012; Şahiner 2018). This result can be connected to the circumstance that German is the dominant language and is more developed in some skillsets than those languages which are also used in the family and social life. It should furthermore be emphasized that students are in a learning process and that language development is a lifelong endeavor. This paper contributes to filling a significant gap by pointing out the experiences of racialized emerging researchers as emerging knowledge producers and focuses on the German context while taking into account the relatively few sources from the existing North American academic literature (Park and Bahia 2022). The expected outcomes are relevant to researcher’s perspectives on language skills which should be more resource-oriented instead of deficit-oriented to contribute to the student’s language skill development. On the other hand, challenges of situational racism and othering are to be regarded from a perspective on power relations within data collection and the research process to aspire a holistic picture of what it means to foster diversity in academia and what the challenges and benefits are.

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