Over the past decades, the research fields of trauma, forced migration, disability, and second language education have expanded significantly. Reported estimates of disability prevalence among refugees reach up to 23% (e.g., Tofani et al., 2025). While a recent meta-analysis reports high prevalence rates of mental health conditions among refugees worldwide - 31.46% for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Blackmore et al., 2020) - there are still no reliable national or international statistics on the living conditions and support needs of refugees with disabilities. What is evident, however, are substantial obstacles within medical, rehabilitative, and educational support systems, which are closely linked to legal and institutional frameworks, particularly asylum regulations (Lätzsch, 2021). These conditions significantly shape pedagogical practices in language education.

Building on the assumption that educational contexts do not engage with fully formed subjects, but that subjectivation must be continuously negotiated (Schmerfeld, 2019), processes of second language acquisition (SLA) can be understood as particularly salient sites of subjectivation and analytically distinguished from other domains such as family life or employment. From a sociological perspective, subjectivation in learning processes can be reconstructed through analyses of discourses and pedagogical practices. Subjectivation unfolds through engagement with pre-structured modes of action that temporally precede subjects and operate through social norms (Butler, 2024; Buchner, 2018). In contexts of forced migration, these processes condense into dominant forms of address aimed at producing the idealised figure of the “integrable refugee.” Bach et al. (2021) identify four central requirements embedded in these expectations: proficiency in the national language, labour-market-relevant skills, acceptance of dominant societal norms - particularly regarding gender relations - and a functionalist understanding of education. Language education thus becomes a key site in which inclusion, exclusion, and professionalisation are negotiated under intersecting legal and institutional conditions.

Extending sociological approaches through a psychoanalytic perspective allows subjectivation to be analysed at the intersection of discourse, institutional structures, and individual, psychic experience. Language is understood not only as a medium of communication but also as a psychic site in which learners respond to discursive forms of address through learning and meaning-making (Butler, 2024; Becker, 2025). In contexts of forced migration, these subjectivation processes must be understood against the backdrop of biographical vulnerability. Drawing on the concept of sequential traumatisation (Keilson, 1979), the study examines how traumatic experiences continue to shape learning processes and subject formation in post-migration educational settings (Zimmermann, 2016). Within field-specific discourses, language competence and “successful language acquisition” are frequently linked to individualised assumptions about successful or failed integration (Schlachzig, 2022). At the same time, language functions as a central medium of subjectivation: it positions learners through discursive forms of address while also enabling the articulation of thoughts, emotions, identities, and agency. Empirical findings show that refugees with experiences of disability actively negotiate negative social ascriptions and identify language learning and access to educational qualifications as key barriers shaping their biographies (Afeworki Abay, 2023).

Building on findings from a psychoanalytic-pedagogical participation study, the paper adopts an intersectional, multi-level analytical framework and addresses the following research questions:

1. How do learners with learning difficulties articulate social structures, norms, and discourses at the intersection of language learning, asylum law, and social policy?
2. Which institutional practices can be reconstructed through forms of address and interactional dynamics in inclusive language education?
3. What hypotheses can be formulated regarding the psychic dimensions of subjectivation shaped by the interaction of trauma and constrained language learning?

Methodologically, the study draws on a multi-level analytical framework informed by theories of subjectivation (Foucault, 2020; Butler, 2024). Data analysis followed an intersectional multi-level approach (Winker & Degele, 2009), combining inductive, case-oriented reconstruction of subject perspectives with a subsequent deductive, cross-case analysis informed by critical theories of disability, migration, and subjectivation. It examines (1) the macro level of legal and structural conditions of governed second language education and the normative-discursive orders they produce, and the meso level of institutional arrangements, focusing on access conditions and the general didactical approach of the investigated language course; (2) the micro level of pedagogical interactions in the language classroom, including forms of pedagogical address (interpellation) and classroom dynamics; and (4) the psychic dimension, attending to learners’ sensory-embodied and psychic experiences as subjectivation shaped by trauma and constrained language learning. The qualitative study is therefore based on a participatory, inclusion-oriented research design involving adult language course participants (n = 38) and institutional staff members (n = 10). A central component was a Photovoice project (Wang & Burris, 1994), in which 15 participants acted as co-researchers. Using photographs and facilitated group discussions, they articulated perceived needs, barriers, resources, and demands related to social and vocational participation. Data sources included ten classroom observation protocols, nine counselling observation protocols, transcribed classroom audio recordings, eleven interpreter-mediated interviews with course participants, and twelve individual and group interviews with staff members. In addition, team dynamics were documented and analytically reflected. Ethical procedures were tailored to participants’ needs through informed consent materials in plain language, supported by interpreters and visual aids, with the option to withdraw consent at any stage. From the larger participation study, a qualitative subsample was selected for in-depth analysis, combining biographical case reconstructions, psychoanalytically informed classroom analyses, and interviews with adult second language learners with learning difficulties. Selected and transcribed materials were analysed in depth-hermeneutic interpretation groups following a psychoanalytic qualitative approach.

Across all data sources, the findings of the multi-level analysis demonstrate that second language learning is shaped by intertwined legal, institutional, interactional, and psychic dimensions of subjectivation. Macro- and meso-levels: The study highlights the decisive influence of legal and institutional frameworks on individual language learning processes within the migration regime. Language learning thus emerges not as an individual cognitive endeavour, but as a process embedded in uncertainty, dependency, and regulatory control. Experiences of impairment within educational settings further intensify these constraints. Micro-level: Drawing on psychoanalytic social theory (Lorenzer, 1986; Horn, 1972) institutional routines operate as ensembles of conscious and unconscious actions and discourses through which social dynamics and subject positions are produced. Depth-hermeneutic analyses identify recurring patterns of address, including (1) ongoing struggles for recognition within pedagogical relationships and (2) a pronounced focus on learners’ perceived deficits, combined with insufficient attention to disability-related support needs. This pattern reflects a form of intersectional invisibility (Crenshaw), in which disability remains unrecognised at its intersection with migration. The analyses further discusses possibilities and the limits of trauma-sensitive inclusive language education. While efforts to establish a “safe space” were evident, classroom dynamics and pedagogical practices such as translanguaging showed ambivalent effects when power relations among learners were insufficiently reflected. Finally, the psychic dimension of subjectivation was analysed in relation to sequential traumatization and psychoanalytic perspectives on affect, anxiety, and shame in learning processes. The findings point to (1) pervasive experiences of isolation among LESLLA learners, accompanied by a strong desire for recognition by the German-speaking majority; (2) diverse individual responses to ableist and racist forms of address, particularly in relation to the discursive figure of the “integrable refugee”; and (3) processes of Sprachzerstörung (language erosion), linked to trauma and prolonged waiting within asylum regimes and experienced as temporal stagnation.

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