Discourses of natio-ethno-linguistic belonging and their (re)production in and through the school systems differ depending on the national and regional contexts (Mecheril 2003; Thoma 2018; Florack 2000) and the structure of the transnational educational space (Adick 2008, 2017; Faist & Brandhorst 2020; Hummrich 2018). As an important socialization agency, school can be seen as a nucleus for exploring the relationship between the school system, the nation-state, and the particular social forms of non│belonging and difference. 

Based on these theoretical assumptions, this paper analyses the extent to which belonging, and nonbelonging is constructed in minority schools in the German-Danish border region and its educational landscape. Since 1920, after the end of the First World War, there has been a Danish minority on the German side and a German minority on the Danish side in the border region of Sønderjylland-Südschleswig. In 1955, however, a new agreement was reached through the Bonn-Copenhagen Treaty, which states that both minority groups have a right to their identity and the cultural expression and interpretation associated with it. This in turn meant that anyone who felt they belonged to a minority (German or Danish) could belong to it. Since then, there has been an increasing growth of minority culture, especially on the German side of the border (Kühl, 2022). 

There is little academic research on the figurations of non│belonging and difference associated with this situation in the region, and there is a particular lack of focus on minority schools - for example, in Nusche et al. 2016; Wieser 2023, Kühl 2016; Hofmann/Hallsteinsdóttir 2016. With regard to the schools in the region of Sønderjylland-Südschleswig, the minority schools offer a unique opportunity in Europe to analyse figurations of non│belonging as a complex mixture between the two nation-state majorities and minorities within the respective school cultures (Kühl, 2021). So why do families in particular decide to send their children to a minority school if their ancestors themselves do not belong to the minority? What promises of belonging do the minority schools in particular offer? And to what extent do minority schools differ from the national majority schools? Against this background, the paper explores figurations of non│belonging and difference in minority schools in the German-Danish border region. We understand figurations of non│belonging as a relational phenomenon between inclusion and exclusion (Budde/Hummrich 2015), in which group-specific practices of non│belonging are manifested as established-outsider relations (Elias/Scotson 1993; Elias 2010). 

Based on a qualitative study including two minority schools, figurations of non│belonging within the respective school cultures are reconstructed. Configurations of inclusion and exclusion and the de/dramatisation of social categories of difference are discussed in their respective regional and transregional interplay. The main research question was: How and by what means is non│belonging established in minority schools, if this is no longer done via nation-state difference due to the freedom of affiliation in the German-Danish minority? To answer these questions, ethnographic observations and interviews were conducted in two upper secondary schools as part of a pilot study between February 2024 and April 2024. These were a German minority upper secondary school and a Danish minority upper secondary school. For the methodological design, a multiple case study (Yin, 2013) was chosen, in which ethnographic participant observations in lessons and during school activities, interviews with school management, pupils, parent representatives and teachers as well as group discussions were conducted. This was complemented by the analysis of various school documents such as curricula, school mission statements and pedagogical concepts. The data were analysed using the (reflexive) grounded theory methodology (Breuer 2010) and the situation analysis (Clarke 20212).

Regarding the schools in the region of Sønderjylland-Südschleswig figurations of non│belonging can be found as a complex mixture between the two nation-state majority societies and specific minorities within the respective school cultures. The reconstruction of the two school cultures reveals a tension between diversity orientation, inclusion, and normalisation of unchosen affiliations (Hirschauer 2016) in everyday school life (e.g., gender, sexuality, dis/ability) on the one hand, and border management practices and exclusion on the other (e.g., through language and critique of the lack of affiliation work in the minority culture). Furthermore, we would like to discuss why a differentiation from the ‘problems’ of the German school system and an orientation towards the Danish system (e.g., as a ‘village community with balanced diversity’) could be reconstructed in both school cultures of the minorities.

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