Preparation classes for newly arrived students have become a stable feature of the German school system and other European contexts shaped by migration. Although often framed as temporary support structures facilitating inclusion, these classes represent a historically persistent form of institutional separation (Karakayali et al. 2017). They operate according to a distinct “Sonderlogik” that suspends the norms of the regular school system while simultaneously claiming to prepare students for it (Stichweh 2009). This contribution builds on the assumption that such arrangements are not merely pragmatic responses to migration but part of a longer genealogy of segregating educational solutions that have repeatedly been justified through discourses of support, transition, and exception.

The paper focuses on a specific and under-researched dimension of this institutional order: the systematic involvement of teacher education students in preparation classes. In many contexts, students take on substantial teaching responsibilities during their studies, often without full professional qualification and under precarious employment conditions. This practice introduces a second “Sonderlogik” into the institutional arrangement: students, themselves positioned outside the regular professional system, are assigned to an educational setting that is likewise positioned outside the normative structures of schooling.

Against this background, the central research questions are:
(1) How are preparation classes institutionally constructed and legitimised as exceptional spaces within the school system?
(2) How do teacher education students interpret, negotiate, and normalise their role within these settings?
(3) What does the coupling of preparation classes and student labour reveal about the institutional production and stabilisation of educational inequality?

The objective of the study is to analyse preparation classes as institutional border zones in which social justice, professional norms, and epistemic hierarchies are renegotiated. Rather than approaching student involvement primarily as a question of individual professionalisation or competence development, the paper examines how professionalisation itself is institutionally reorganised under conditions of migration-related segregation and resource scarcity (Gomolla 2022; Cicourel & Kitsuse 1963).

The theoretical framework combines perspectives from social justice and intercultural education with institutional and profession-theoretical approaches. Drawing on critical migration and education research, preparation classes are conceptualised as sites of epistemic differentiation in which certain forms of knowledge, language practices, and pedagogical expectations are systematically devalued or deferred (Jording 2022). Profession-theoretical concepts of antinomies and boundary work are used to analyse how students’ practices simultaneously stabilise and unsettle professional norms (Helsper 2016). This framework allows for tracing continuities between historical forms of educational separation and contemporary arrangements shaped by neoliberal governance, teacher shortages, and migration regimes.

By linking institutional analysis with actors’ perspectives, the paper contributes to ongoing debates on how social justice is negotiated through everyday practices, and how seemingly inclusive reforms may reproduce structural inequalities over time.

The study is based on a qualitative exploratory design using a reflexive grounded theory approach (Breuer et al. 2019). The empirical material consists of semi-structured interviews with teacher education students who are or have been teaching in preparation classes for newly arrived students while still enrolled at university. The interviews focus on students’ biographical trajectories, their entry into preparation classes, everyday teaching practices, perceived responsibilities, and reflections on professionalism, inclusion, and institutional expectations. Reflexive grounded theory is employed to reconstruct meaning-making processes and implicit knowledge guiding students’ actions. Coding proceeds iteratively, combining open, axial, and selective coding with continuous memo writing. Particular attention is paid to tensions, contradictions, and justificatory narratives that indicate how institutional “exceptions” are normalised in practice. In addition to interview data, contextual information on local regulations, school policies, and employment arrangements is incorporated to situate individual accounts within broader institutional frameworks. The methodological approach is explicitly reflexive, acknowledging the researcher’s positioning within teacher education and migration-related research fields. While the current contribution focuses on interview data, the paper also discusses the methodological limits of interview-based reconstructions and reflects on the potential of ethnographic approaches to further capture everyday practices, implicit hierarchies, and situational decision-making in preparation classes.

The analysis is expected to show that preparation classes function as institutional buffer zones that absorb systemic tensions related to migration, resource scarcity, and accountability pressures. Student teachers play a key role in sustaining these arrangements by compensating for structural deficits while simultaneously experiencing accelerated and distorted forms of professionalisation. Preliminary findings indicate that students often interpret their involvement ambivalently: as an opportunity for meaningful practice and responsibility, but also as an experience of professional uncertainty, limited recognition, and moral pressure. Their narratives reveal how exceptional arrangements become normalised through discourses of commitment, flexibility, and pedagogical care. At an institutional level, the coupling of preparation classes and student labour appears to stabilise segregating structures by lowering the threshold for maintaining parallel educational tracks. This raises critical questions about how social justice is institutionally organised and whose professional and educational trajectories are rendered provisional or expendable. The paper contributes to Network 7 discussions by highlighting how historical continuities of separation are reproduced through contemporary governance mechanisms and by foregrounding the epistemic and professional implications of these arrangements for social justice and intercultural education.

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