Transnational Mobility in Schools

Permanent? Transient? The diversity of transnational mobility as a challenge for institutional change in schools in Germany

Project Directors: Yasemin Karakaşoğlu, Dita Vogel

Researchers:Torben Dittmer, Matthias Linnemann, Dita Vogel

Funding: Federal Ministry of Education and Research, "Migration and social change"

Duration: 2/2018 bis 1/2021

Cooperation partners:

• Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (GEW) Hauptvorstand
• Freudenberg Stiftung

In the Federal Republic of Germany, school policies were developped under the primacy of rotation in the 1950s to 1970s, while today the primacy of integration is guiding school policies: Newly arrived children and youth are addressed as immigrants. They are supposed to learn German quickly and to participate in regular school that prepares for a life in Germany. Both perspectives have shortcomings. Minors have a right to school education from the beginning, even if return or further migration is planned or may be enforced by the state, for example in the case of rejected asylum applications. The question how schools can adequately deal with settings in which students with different staying perspectives learn together has been hardly posed until today, and solutions have not been developped. Nonetheless, inclusion is accepted as a guiding principle in education, and it would require addressing also the needs dependent on different migration perspectives.

The project TraMiS investigates how schools have dealt with international mobility of minors in the past, and which inclusive developments are possible in the future.

• Retrospectively, it will present a new perspective on institutional change in response to migration in the field of schools.
• Prospectively, it will identify options for institutional change – addressing the education needs of schools with minors who are – potentially or necessarily – mobile.
• Finally, it will develop targeted communication on all levels – for the participating schools and school policy, for pedagogic practice and scientific debate.

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