In our paper, we focus on the constructions of refugee students’ futures and the associated notions of temporality and uncertainty in German schools with reference to newly arrived students who have fled to Germany in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine.

Our contribution is based on the observation that constructions of “future” in the context of (forced) migration biographies are often closely linked to notions of uncertainty. These biographies and educational paths are not only characterized by discontinuities in the (individual) past. They often also appear uncertain with regard to the future, e.g. due to unclear residence and/or return options that can hardly be planned in terms of time. Future uncertainty in this context can therefore be understood as a social construction of time, which arises through institutional regulations on migration and asylum with regard to the associated political and social discourses. However, the education system assigns additional significance to uncertain futures by translating them into individual life chances. It functions as a temporal structure for individual biographies and educational paths and, through its inherent linear temporal logic, shapes the future options for action of the subjects (Solga/Becker 2012; Scherger 2016). However, the individual temporal logic of educational processes as a lived experience can deviate from this “dominant timescape” (Facer 2023), which can be highly consequential for the future (educational) biographies of individuals (cf. Dausien/Rothe/Schwendowius 2016). For example, the (ascribed) uncertainty of students’ futures in the context of migration can be decisive for pedagogical diagnoses as well as for predicting future developments and deciding on students’ educational pathways (based on the institutional time regime). Moreover, uncertain futures are often associated with attributions and interpretations of vulnerabilities which can lead to educational practices that imply specific risks and opportunities for individuals and their educational trajectories. 

In our paper, we examine how students’ uncertain futures are anticipated and constructed by educational professionals and what (temporal) expectations are associated with them. Furthermore, we ask how the educational pathways of refugee students are institutionally processed and how these practices are embedded in specific timescapes (Adam 1998). Empirically, our study is based on the analysis of documents and guided interviews with teachers, head teachers and social workers conducted at schools in Germany (in the federal states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt). We show how dominant timescapes inform school and pedagogical practices with regard to refugee students from Ukraine, how they are entangled with constructions of uncertain futures, and how these open up or close off educational options and thus create (new) precarisation (or new opportunities for educational participation).

In our qualitative study, we combine analyses of school administrative structures with analyses of school practices and the (experiential and interpretative) knowledge of educational professionals. In order to analyse these practices and knowledge, we conducted 35 guided interviews in 19 public secondary schools. These schools, which were selected according to the principle of theoretical sampling (cf. Strauss/Corbin 1990), enrolled children and young people from Ukraine at the time of the interviews. In order to shed light on the educational inequalities that are rooted in the segmented school system in Germany, our sample includes both grammar schools, community schools and comprehensive schools. Taking into account that perspectives on forced migration can vary depending on professional position (Tom Diek/Rosen 2023), interviews were conducted with school headmasters, teachers, German-as-a-second-language teachers, teachers of ‘reception classes’ and social workers. In order to gain insights into the political framework and legal requirements for the schooling of refugee children and young people, we also analysed selected political documents on the topic of migration and integration, including regulations issued by the education ministries and authorities of the federal states of Saxony-Anhalt and Rhineland-Palatinate. In addition, we conducted guided interviews with representatives of the local school authorities. The data analysis was initially based on a multi-stage coding process for the transcribed interviews. This process was based on the coding paradigm of Grounded Theory (cf. ibid.) and aimed to identify dominant themes and relevant attitudes as well as organisational and pedagogical practices with regard to current refugee migrations. The coding process was followed by a detailed analysis of selected minimum and maximum contrasting text sequences. We understand the professionals’ experiential and interpretative knowledge as being generated by the shared experiential space of the respective school and characterised by the "conjunctive experiential space" (Mannheim 1980) of the professional milieu as well as by biographical experiences and current socio-political discourses. The analysis focused both on the organisational and pedagogical practices of the school in the narrated situation and on the actors' reflective engagement with these practices in the interview. As part of this analytical framework, the school practices and professionals’ perspectives were related to current policy changes throughout the analysis in order to capture the interplay of policy, pedagogical practice and professional knowledge in which inclusions and exclusions of refugee children and young people in schools takes place.

Our analyses show that the ways in which teachers interpret uncertain futures in relation to current forced migration are intertwined with a specific time regime of the school. This invokes a morality in which time is a 'currency' (Thompson 1967), while notions of development, of progress and “of the correct order” are crucial to how school is “constructed, and (…) lived” (Lingard/Thompson 2017). Against this backdrop, teachers face the challenge of quickly integrating newly arrived students into the school's time regime (Thoma 2023). This seems to presuppose that their ‘uncertain futures’ are translated into ‘certain futures’, because ‘the temporary’, ‘the transitory’, ‘the uncertain’ is hardly foreseen in this concept of time. Against this background, we describe various fields of tension that arise, firstly, with regard to the institutional (im)possibilities of ‘rapid integration’ of refugee students into the school system. For example, the (partly) separate schooling of newly arrived students in German-as-a-second-language classes and reception classes proves to be a practice of participation in the “not yet” (Khakpour 2022), which works with the promise of a future that should soon enable the student to participate in ‘regular classes’ – a future that remains uncertain, however. Secondly, we focus on the ambivalences of pedagogical practices that aim to address discontinuous educational biographies of students by temporarily suspending the dominant timescape and allowing students to extend their time at school. Third, we describe tensions that arise when students who do not (yet) seem to have internalised the institutional timescape and are perceived as unwilling (or unable) to fit in with it - attitudes that are often countered by practices of culturalisation, disciplining and partial exclusion from support measures.

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