Education is increasingly evolving into a dispositif characterized by specific measures, practices, and materialities (Jergus, 2018). Political discourses emphasize the extension of education to all phases and spheres of life, accompanied by calls to enhance educational quality. Education is progressively framed as a "magic formula" capable of improving individual life circumstances while contributing to broader societal progress (ibd.). In these discourse developments, parents play a central role. By neoliberally activating their responsibility for education – their responsibilisation (Vincent, 2017) – the promise of equal educational opportunities becomes linked to parental engagement. Thus, parental educational efforts (rather than societal and institutional structures) are discursively negotiated as one of the key influencing factors in children’s educational biographies.

For migrant parents, uncertainties associated with responsibilisation are compounded by potential interpellation as "hard-to-reach" or educationally indifferent. Although research consistently challenges this picture and shows that they are often committed to providing their children with a meaningful education in different ways, their educational efforts are often not recognised (Chamakalayil et al., 2022). Parental practices and educational involvement are subject to critical observation and/or optimisation (Kuhn, 2018; Westphal et al., 2017). Parents who are perceived as potentially ‘non-fitting’ in the ‘normality’ of educational institutions encounter strong demands to align themselves with hegemonic norms of good parenting (Walsh, 2018; Westphal et al., 2017). This suggests that neoliberal ideas embedded in the dominant educational dispositif are also intertwined with migration and integration dispositifs (Kollender, 2020) and intersecting power relations, especially for migrant parents.

This paper focuses on migrant parents as educational agents and their educational practices in the context of integration dispositif. Particular attention is given to educational efforts that are not carried out under the mandate of schools or formal educational institutions. Drawing on findings from the Swiss National Science Foundation-funded research project “Parental Engagement in the Context of Childhoods Shaped by Education: Formations and Negotiations within Migration Relations” (Project No. 215484), the study explores how parents position themselves in self-initiated educational efforts within the educational dispositif and how their engagement is embedded into power relations. Building on the assumptions of subjectivation theory (Butler, 1997a, 1997b) and incorporating a critical interrogation of the integration dispositif (Bojadžijev, 2018; Lingen-Ali & Mecheril, 2020), the proposed paper explores, how the educational imaginations and endeavours of parents are possible and socially recognisable beyond hegemonic discourses and power relations.

The educational positionings of parents in self-initiated educational projects are analysed by means of qualitative social research. The basis of this paper is the data set of the aforementioned research project, which includes biographical-narrative interviews with parents who are active in self-initiated education, family interviews and group discussions with other active parents in the context of these projects. Theoretical sampling, with a focus on the circularity of data collection and analysis, has been implemented. The data is analysed through a hermeneutic approach, employing heuristics grounded in subjectivation theory (Rose, 2019) while applying intersectional perspectives (Riegel 2016). The paper presents results of the analysis of group discussion that unfolds around parental engagement in educational projects under the conditions of a society shaped by migration. The analysis focuses on the negotiations between various actors of the parent cafè concerning the use and organization of this space, particularly focusing on the language practices.

This paper examines parental engagement in a neighborhood initiative, the parent café, situated at the nexus of schools, social pedagogical neighborhood work, and parental engagement. Our analysis centers on the negotiations between various actors concerning the use and organization of this space, particularly focusing on the language practices within the parent café. Through the reconstructive analysis of a group discussion, we elucidate what is at stake for differently positioned actors, depending on their social and discursive subject positions. The efforts of establishing a safe space by the ‘hosts’ as community workers are threatened by the potential co-optation through integrationist discourses. These discourses operate as normalizing and subjectifying forces, originating from both (in this case, school-based) institutional actors and volunteers from the societal majority. We demonstrate that spaces of parental engagement are contested terrains of subjectivation, where struggles over interpretive and organizational dominance occur, as well as possibilities for the recognition of alternative epistemologies and social practices can be opened. These struggles are framed by hegemonic discourses that shape the subjectivation of the participants, influencing their positioning within these spaces and their potential for resistance or alignment with dominant norms. Critical educational research can expose how integration discourses function as technologies of governance, interpellating migrantized subjects into socially intelligible positions. At the same time, such research can foreground the agency of migrant parents as deliberate and self-determined struggles for intelligibility, inclusion, and recognition within contested educational and social spaces.

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