Following the Upper Educational Pathways

The aforementioned early selection process in the German school system forms the institutional context in which members of the second immigrant generation become overrepresented in the lower and intermediate educational tracks, while they remain a minority in the upper track or Gymnasium.⁷ Because of this minority status, the upper educational track is linked with the social risk for second-generation immigrants to become excluded from relationships with their peers and their informal networks, as shown by the following case:

7According to current figures on the second generation’s schooling in Germany (Diefenbach 2007; AG Bildungsberichterstattung2008), these pupils are still underrepresented in the upper educational track. It is nonetheless worth noting that our findings are valid for the period during which our research participants, subsequently: professionals, were pupils. It is worth asking whether this situation has changed, at least in urban neighbourhoods with a large percentage of different immigrant populations.

Lale C¸ ic¸ek,⁸ at the time of the interview working as a medical doctor, arrived in Germany in 1970, when she was 5 years old, the daughter of Turkish labour migrants. Since living conditions were hard at the beginning, she and her sister were sent back to Turkey, and emigrated again 1 year later. In the country of arrival she started elementary school, attending an integration class (Integrationsklasse) with mainly Turkish classmates before being transferred to the regular school class.

Initially she had difficulties with following the lessons, but when it was time to decide which educational track she was to follow after the sixth grade,⁹ she was among the top students in her class. Nonetheless, although her teacher used to describe her as an exemplary pupil, she did not recommend her for Gymnasium. The explicit reason noted in her account was that no German was spoken in her Turkish family. She responded to the lack of recognition as a challenge and transferred – with her parents’ support – to the Gymnasium, where she performed well, finally graduating.

Although she was integrated at an institutional level, she felt socially isolated among her native German classmates. Her social relations as she described them are similar to those presented by Elias and Scotson (1965) in their analysis of the established and the outsiders: social boundaries are not produced by formal, institutionalized rules but, instead, are created by social interactions, that is, the frequency and closeness of the social contacts between the individuals concerned.

Even though an individual may be considered equal at an institutional level, distinctions are made at an informal level which determine who belongs to a group and who is excluded. Despite this, Lale C¸ ic¸ek maintained her willingness to work hard as a student:

: : :but ultimately it never stopped me being eager to learn and I knew exactly what I wanted and right from the start I already followed the idea that if you want to be somebody in this society you have to do it in the right way by being ambitious and having distinct aims to achieve: : :¹⁰

She finds direction by pursuing goals that, in her understanding, represent a generally binding, normative frame of reference in her host country. However, in her transition to Gymnasium she continued to be in an outsider-position. In her class, where for a long time she was the only student with an immigrant background, she was only partly included in her peers’ informal relationships. Only after her entry

8For the sake of anonymity, all research participants are represented by code names.

9In Germany, the educational system falls under the jurisdiction of the L¨ander governments. In a few city-states and regions, selection occurs after six grades instead of the usual four grades which is the case in most of the L¨ander.

10All quotations are translated into English; the German original is presented in footnotes: “: : : aber letzten Endes hat es mich nie in meinem Eifer irgendwie gestoppt ich wusste genau was ich wollte und hab mir schon damals recht fr¨uh das Ziel gesetzt wenn Du in dieser Gesellschaft was sein willst musst du das entsprechend mit Fleiß und durch bestimmte Ziele die man erreicht: : :” (Interview, Lale C¸ ic¸ek).

into the university the polarization between native students and ‘others’ which she had previously encountered was altered, due to the presence of foreign students who attended the faculty of medicine at her university.

The previously described exclusion is neither uniquely characteristic of students with a working class nor of those from a Turkish background. Similar experiences were presented by Maria Ionesco, like Lale C¸ ic¸ek a doctor at the time of the interview, but in her case with parents from Eastern Europe, who arrived in Germany as political refugees. Her father was academically educated. Nonetheless, while the risk of social exclusion is always present as a result of minority status, it may not always have the same consequences as those previously described. There were also cases where individuals could handle this minority status without facing the described difficulty with regard to their peer relationships. Furthermore, a potential, even more problematic, consequence was the inability to cope with the risk of social exclusion and dropping out of Gymnasium (cf. Schittenhelm2009).

For Lale C¸ ic¸ek and similar cases, institutional participation in higher education is quite stable. However, the previously described biographical experience of being excluded in informal networks can be linked with elements of a “reactive ethnicity”

as described by Portes and Rumbaut in their analysis of the second generation in the United States (2001: 284f). On an individual level, identification is caused by the social environment of the host country and by the way a person is attributed.

For instance, in the narrative account of Lale C¸ ic¸ek this became evident from the way she described processes of ‘othering’, primarily with regard to the way she felt perceived by her environment:

I was just somehow different; maybe I didn’t look different but my name was different.¹¹ She continues with her narratives by describing interactions that lead to feelings of being socially devaluated:

: : :they invited each other to their birthday parties and met in the afternoon and I was somehow excluded because I was a foreigner, and in the outdoor breaks I was always together with those nobody else was together with.’¹²

In her narrative account of this biographical experience she presents herself by the way she was attributed by her environment. This self-assessment was constructed during her schooling when she had hardly any contact with other immigrant peers who were engaged in the same educational path. The described peer-relations have not been consistent throughout her life history. After entry into university, where there is a greater presence of foreign students, this situation was not reproduced. Yet, as I will show later, being attributed by others can still affect the second generation’s career trajectory in the long run.

11“Ich war ja irgendwie anders ich sah vielleicht nicht anders aus aber der Name klang anders.”

12“: : :die luden sich gegenseitig zu den Geburtstagen ein man traf sich nachmittags und man war da irgendwie schon ausgeschlossen weil man einfach Ausl ¨anderin war und ¨ahm (.) in den Hofpausen war ich auch immer nur mit denen zusammen mit denen sonst keiner zusammen war.”