Conference Agenda

The study of diversity is not only about difference in the sense of colourfulness, but also about power relations, since relations of difference are often embedded in those. Researching these power relations in qualitative approaches still poses a challenge that is controversially discussed methodologically (cf. Diehm et al. 2017; Frers/Meier 2022). Since power relations develop and establish themselves historically as macrostructures over a long period of time, it is of interest, how their impact on the micro level can be empirically recorded and which methodological approaches are suitable for this.

Where and how can power be 'discovered' in the material and/or in the research process? What does a methodology of inequality look like? What approaches are advocated from different perspectives? Where are the respective potentials and where are the blind spots? Which methodological developments are necessary and conceivable in order to track down aspects of power?

The symposium brings different methodological approaches used in studying diversity into conversation with each other in order to approach the questions raised. The symposium will focus on what is understood by "(re)construction" and which aspects of power become visible (or remain hidden) in this way. In addition to the question of the empirical (re)construction of power relations, we are also interested in discussing the power inherent in research and its methodologies and the possibilities of uncovering it (Spivak 1988) – for example, regarding normativity, location-boundness and methodological nationalism (Wimmer/Glick Schiller 2003).

Since a variety of power structures emerge in the context of qualitative research, the symposium will focus with each paper on different aspects, which are further discussed in their relational references:

• Following current methodological discussions in the context of qualitative inequality research, Hinrichsen and Vehse deal with discourse-analytically informed positioning analysis in the context of biographical research. In their contribution, they show how discourse-analytically informed positioning analysis can be productive employed to trace power and domination relations regarding racism and racialisation in the German school system.
• Thoma highlights in her presentation that linguistic ethnography is predestined for the study of language and power in multilingual migration societies. She combines fieldnotes and transcripts of interviews to reconstruct how language education policies and language ideologies (re)produced, negotiated, or irritated in preschools in South Tirol (Italy).
• The paper of Chamakalayil focuses on the data collection. She illustrates, how societal power relations are discussed, shaped, and negotiated, when biographers of colour narrate experiences of racism with regard to school in Switzerland in biographical interviews – while the interview is conducted by an interviewer of colour. Further, she discusses how researchers can work towards a more reflective methodology regarding power.

The perspectives mentioned contribute to continue working together on a reflexive methodology of qualitative educational and social research that not only focuses on the production of difference itself, but also takes the power relations into account.

In qualitative inequality research, the question arises whether and how one encounters structures of power and domination in the study of diversity and difference in educational contexts by means of narrative interviews or whether these only become visible when they are brought to the empiricism by the research. For what qualitative research strives for, at least in the tradition of Schütz (1971), is a re-construction of the meaning structures of the researched and not of power structures. Whether and to what extent power structures are embedded in these structures of meaning is something that has so far remained methodologically unresolved. So far, the problem has been treated primarily as a problem of the discrepancy between micro- and macrostructures, which is bridged by increasingly supplementing the traditions of reconstructive procedures with discourse-analytical elements (Spies/Tuider 2017; Völter et al. 2005). Through the reference to social discourses, references to power structures can then be identified in the structures of meaning. The traditionally more German-speaking reconstructive approaches have strongly connected to international research and positioning analysis (Bamberg 2004; De Fina 2013; Deppermann 2015). Positioning analysis refers not only to explicit acts of positioning oneself or others, but to complex positioning activities. Discourse-analytically informed positioning analysis is currently well established in biographical research, which sees itself as research into socialization and subjectivation processes (Thon et al. 2022). Although and precisely because the two speakers work with the approach of positioning analysis, they would like to highlight its suitability for researching power and domination relations, but also to put it up for discussion. The article pursues this concern methodologically and empirically with regard to the study of racism and racialisation in the German school system. It asks specifically where and at what points the positioning analysis makes power visible in the material. For this purpose, two individual case studies from different research projects are examined comparatively: a biographical interview with a white teacher and a biographical interview with a racialised pupil of colour. The aim is to explore the possibilities and limitations of reconstructing power (structures) by means of positioning analysis and to promote an empirically grounded discussion of methodological issues in the study of diversity in educational contexts.

Bamberg, Michael (2004): Positioning with Davie Hogan. Stories, Tellings and Identities. In: Daiute, C./Lightfoot, C. (eds.): Narrative analysis. Studying the development of individuals in society. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, pp. 135–157. De Fina, Anna (2013): Positioning level 3. Connecting local identity displays to macro social process. In: Narrative Inquiry 23, 1, pp. 40–61. Deppermann, Arnulf (2015): Positioning. In: De Fina, A./Georgakopoulou, A./Fina, A. de (eds.): The handbook of narrative analysis. Blackwell handbooks in linguistics. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 369–387. Schütz, Alfred (1971): Wissenschaftliche Interpretation und Alltagsverständnis menschlichen Handelns. In: Schütz, A. (eds.): Gesammelte Aufsätze I. Das Problem der sozialen Wirklichkeit. Springer eBook Collection. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 3–54.

Situated in the wider framework of an ethnographic research project on multilingualism in preschools in the officially trilingual region of South Tyrol (Italy), this paper focuses on the role of language(s) and power in education. More concretely, it explores the added value of linguistic ethnography (Tusting 2020) as a “methodology of inequality” for the study of language and power in multilingual migration societies. The theoretical relevance of linguistic ethnography for educational research lies in its interest in language as "ideology and practice" (Heller 2007, S. 1) in educational institutions, as it sees language as a socially and institutionally situated practice which can (re)produce, negotiate, shift or irritate powerful relations between speakers. Methodologically, its value lies in the consistent linking of ethnographic and sociolinguistic approaches (Blackledge und Creese 2020). In South Tyrol, there are three officially recognized languages (Italian, German, Ladin). Analogously, there are separate educational systems with respective languages of instruction. This separation does justice to social multilingualism only to a limited extent, because it is oriented towards the idea of a ‘natural’ monolingualism of children and, moreover, does not sufficiently take multilingualism in migration societies into account. The 'distribution' of children with certain linguistic repertoires among these three systems is the subject of socio-political discourses that lead to a "hierarchization of minority rights" (Thoma 2022). In this context, preschools with German as the language of instruction are given the role of a "bastion" (for Switzerland: Knoll 2016) against the supposed threat to 'German' identity in the national Italian context, which is characterized by migration-related multilingualism. The paper combines fieldnotes and transcripts of interviews to reconstruct how language education policies (Jaspers 2018) and language ideologies (Jaffe 1999) are (re)produced, negotiated, or irritated in educational practice and discourse. Special relevance will be given to interactions during the ethnography, both on the level of language repertoires and language choice of all actors (children, teachers, parents, researchers) involved. The results will show how linguistic ethnography is suited to explore the enactment of language (education) policy in practice, and the relevance of (national, regional, and institutional) language ideologies for relations between individuals and groups at the micro level.

Blackledge, Adrian; Creese, Angela (2020): Heteroglossia. In: Karin Tusting (Hg.): The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Ethnography. London: Routledge, S. 97–108. Heller, Monica (2007): Bilingualism as Ideology and Practice. In: Monica Heller (Hg.): Bilingualism. A social approach. Basingstoke England, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, S. 1–22. Jaffe, Alexandra (1999): Ideologies in Action. Language Politics on Corsica. Berlin: De Gruyter (Language, power and social process, 3). Jaspers, Jürgen (2018): Language Education Policy and Sociolinguistics. Toward a New Critical Engagement. In: James W. Tollefson und Miguel Pérez-Milans (Hg.): The Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, S. 704–724.

Society is permeated by multiple relations of power and inequality. Children and young people with a migration history or from socioeconomically disadvantaged families in Switzerland face an unequal education system, as national as well as European comparative studies demonstrate (cf. SKBF, 2014; Becker 2013; Heath, Rothon, & Kilpi, 2009). In pedagogical institutions, these relations of power and inequality manifest themselves especially when it comes to families and parents who are positioned as not conforming to a hegemonically presupposed normality. Such notions of normality are reflected as a hegemonic image of a 'normal family' that is "conceptualized and partly naturalized as bourgeois, white, heterosexual, cisgender, monogamous, sedentary, healthy, and capable" (Fitz-Klausner/Schondelmayer/Riegel 2021: 7). Research on these contexts of inequality takes place within these contexts of inequality, and in the face of dominant social and institutional contexts, processes of devaluation, othering, and inclusion and exclusion, can be reinforced, cemented, or even constructed by research. Mecheril, Scherschel, and Schroedter (2003: 109) call for being aware of the "productivity of the research process for the continuation of difference-constituting relations". The focus therefore should not be on the (unavoidable) avoidance of repetition, but on "reflecting on the question of how this repetition takes place." (ibid., p. 109). Within the framework of a now concluded Swiss National Science Foundation project on parents and schools in the context of societal inequality (cf. Chamakalayil, Ivanova-Chessex, Leutwyler & Scharathow 2022), narrative biographical interviews (cf. Schütze 1983) with mothers and fathers were conducted. In this context, biography is understood as a construct, «where both the subjective acquisition and construction of the social reality as well as the societal constitution of subjectivity» take place (Dausien, 1994: 152). This paper aims at exploring, how societal power relations are discussed, shaped, and negotiated, when biographers of colour narrate experiences of racism with regard to school in biographical interviews – while the interview is conducted by an interviewer of colour. Differing ways of biographers of broaching the topic, what is said and what remains unsaid, careful, or angry explorations, addressing or involving the interviewer and being involved and reacting to being addressed by the interviewer are explored and analysed with regard to making societal power relations visible. Pointers as to how researchers can work towards a more reflective methodology are discussed.

Becker, R. (2013). Bildungsungleichheit und Gerechtigkeit in der Schweiz. Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Bildungswissenschaften, 35 (3), 405-413. Chamakalayil, L., Ivanova-Chessex, O., Leutwyler, B. & Scharathow, W. (Hrsg.) (2022). Eltern und pädagogische Institutionen: Macht-und ungleichheitskritische Perspektiven. Weinheim u. a.: Beltz Juventa. Dausien, B. (1994). Biographieforschung als Königinnenweg? In A. Diezinger (ed.), Erfahrung mit Methode: Wege sozialwissenschaftlicher Frauenforschung (pp. 129-153). Freiburg i.Br.: Kore. Fitz-Klausner, S., Schondelmayer, A., Riegel, C. (2021). Familie und Normalität. Einführende Überlegungen. In: Schondelmayer, A., Riegel, C., Fitz-Klausner, S. (Hrsg.): Familie und Normalität: Diskurse, Praxen und Aushandlungsprozesse. Opladen: Barbara Budrich, S. 7–23. Heath, A. F., Rothon, C., & Kilpi, E. (2009). The second generation in Western Europe: Education, unemployment, and occupational attainment. Annual Review of Sociology, 34, 211–235. Mecheril, P./Scherschel, K./Schrödter, M. (2003): „Ich möchte halt von dir wissen, wie es ist, du zu sein“. Die Wiederholung der alinierenden Zuschreibung durch qualitative Forschung. In: Badawia, T./Hamburger, F./Hummrich, M. (Hg.): Wider die Ethnisierung einer Generation. Beiträge zur qualitativen Migrationsforschung, Frankfurt: IKO, 93-110. Riegel, C. (2016). Bildung – Intersektionalität – Othering: Pädagogisches Handeln in widersprüchlichen Verhältnissen. Bielefeld: transcript. Schütze, F. (1983). Biographieforschung und narratives Interview. Neue Praxis, 13 (3), 283-293. SKBF (2014). Bildungsbericht Schweiz 2014. Aarau: Schweizerische Koordinationsstelle für Bildungsforschung