Security and Insecurity from the Perspective of (migrantized) Secondary School Teachers in Germany

Wednesday, 9 July 2025: 00:30
Location: SJES028 (Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences (JES))
Oral Presentation
Leonie STOLL, Institute of Educational Science, University of Osnabrück, Germany, Resarch Training Group "Jewish and Muslim Life Worlds from a Social Science Perspective", Germany
Current research shows that german right-wing populism emerges particularly through discourses on 'order and security issues' concerning migration, participation, and opposition to democracy.This threat situation, including the presence of a (violent) far-right scene, particularly affects people who potentially do not fit into the worldview of right-wing individuals.

Schools can be understood as places where nearly all young people come together, thus reflecting a cross-section of society. Discourses on social heterogeneity, including security and migration discourses, manifest in particular ways in schools and can have negative, discriminatory effects on migrantized teachers and students. They are continuously threatened and affected by (symbolic) exclusion. How questions of security and insecurity are negotiated in schools and how the relationship between security and insecurity plays out in the everyday lives of migrantized teachers remains a gap in educational research.

The researcher-team reconstructed the (varied) orientations of (non-)migrantized teachers based on their experiences of security and insecurity in German schools. To protect the target group, which is already at risk due to escalating violence, the decision was made to forgo the survey of students. The researcher-team used problem-centered interviews. Following Witzel this interview method allows for a subject-centered and tailored approach to respondents' narratives. Using Ralf Bohnsack's documentary method, the interview results have been analyzed sequentially. Findings and derived recommendations for action for teachers and other educational professionals will be presented.