PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

This paper takes the narratives of Tamil-speaking Sri Lankan refugee women in Germany as its starting point. Selecting varied retrospective descriptions of childhood and adolescence, the chapter presents their memories spread over several decades. It delineates the entanglement of languages, location, and displacement before and after their migration. The elucidation in the open biographical-narrative interviews outlines their encounter with educational institutions in Germany and reveals the inherent influence of the political framework on policies. The ensuing joint schooling with German pupils or prevailing practices of separate classrooms and ‘segregation’ (zur Nieden/Karakayalı 2016) constitute significant points of reference. What the assessment of education in terms of opportunities, educational access, and multilingual realities meant to the research subjects (interviewees) is explored and linked to the broader context. Methodologically inspired by John Berry’s three-step-path (1990) from imposed etics via emics to derived etics, the analysis foregrounds the emic, i.e., ‘insider’ perspective. The utterances are subsequently contextualized in terms of existent regulations and practices as derived etics, i.e., perspective of an informed ‘outsider’. Thus, by working out the skewed nature of structures the question is addressed as to whether and how these regulatory structures supported and shaped or impinged upon and straitened the refugee children.