Migration, Education, Resilience – a Biographical Study on ‘Educationally Successful' Persons in Germany Who Have a Turkish Migration History

The results of many different studies of the last decades (e.g. Bos/Tarelli et al. 2012, Bos/Wendt et al. 2012) show impressively the lower achievement scores of students with a “migration background” in the German school system in comparison to their peers who are not classified as such. Especially students with a Turkish migration history – and in particular male students (Klieme/Artelt et al., 2010) – bring up the rear, regardless of their own or their parents’ migration. We still don’t know much about the processes and conditions, which are relevant for the “educational success” of students in Germany who have a “migration background”. Especially the relationship between formal and informal learning is seriously understudied in this context.

Against this background the focus of my current research project is on the resources in formal and informal learning, which “educationally successful” students of Turkish descent, who are living in Germany, have at their disposal. I have collected (a) autobiographical narrative interviews with women and men who completed at least the main part of their school, vocational or academic training in Germany, and (b) narrative interviews with professionals and family members who appear as significant biographical supporters of the persons with whom autobiographical interviews had been conducted. The data analysis is based on procedures developed by Schütze (2008).

In my paper I would like to discuss some results of my research from a transnational and an intersectional perspective. In particular, I would like to discuss the relationship between interviewees’ self-identification, e.g. as “bicultural”, and their (formal) “educational success” and to focus on social processes of support and mentoring by significant others and how they have evolved over time. (The interviews are also instructive with regard to historical changes in the last decades.)