Digital infrastructures and EdTech in schools participate in renegotiating the social fabric of schools. They differentiate, categorize and hierarchize (Rafalow & Puckett 2022) actors in digital education practices. One overlooked dimension of the relationship between EdTech and inequalities is the way in which digital education practices create temporal borders between actors. Therefore, in this paper, we zoom in on practices of waiting. We make use of the double meaning of the German verb ‘warten’, in which both the waiting for something (in the sense of pausing; Warten) and the maintenance of something (in the sense of preventive measures to avert breakdown; Wartung) are inscribed. Based on a year of ethnographic research in six schools (three in Germany and three in Sweden) the paper draws links between ‘warten’ practices, EdTech, and social inequality. It asks: Which practices of ‘warten’ (as waiting/maintenance) can be observed in the sociotechnical infrastructure of German and Swedish schools and to what extent are social inequalities negotiated in these practices? The paper draws on two perspectives on ‘warten’: First, an infrastructure studies perspective, which does not consider digital infrastructures as stable entities, but as fragile assemblages of practices, objects, policies, and actors (Star 1999) that need to constantly be sustained, maintained, or repaired. Different temporalities are inscribed in these practices, and for this paper, the concept of maintenance-as-waiting (Schabacher 2021) is particularly relevant. Second, the conceptualization of waiting as part of temporal bordering from critical border studies and migration studies (Andersson, 2014). In this literature, "waiting is the feeling that one is not fully in command of one's life" (Khosravi 2017, p. 81). Digital infrastructures and EdTech in schools give rise to practices of ‘warten’ in the double sense (Warten/Wartung; waiting/maintenance) – and temporal bordering sensitizes us to the unequal ways in which different actors are affected by these practices. Our analysis shows that while ‘warten’ is a central aspect of everyday school life shaped by digital technologies in European countries, it affects different people unevenly. As digital infrastructures and EdTech materialize as actors of temporal bordering, they evaluate the time of certain people in school as more valuable and important than that of others – forcing some to wait or to practise maintenance-as-waiting. By laying out differences and similarities between and within the German and Swedish contexts in relation to ‘warten’, this paper offers thick descriptions and deep insight into the state of European digital classrooms.

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