Processing uncertainty: Exclusionary institutional timescapes of German schools in the context of refugee migration from Ukraine

Abstract

This article examines institutional exclusions of refugee pupils in German state schools within the context of changing European migration and education policies following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Drawing on concepts of critical time studies and guided interviews with teachers, principals and social workers, we explore how ‘uncertain futures’ of refugee pupils are constructed and addressed within institutional ‘timescapes’ and how these practices might (re)produce (differentiated) forms of exclusion. Despite changes at EU level towards recognising biographical uncertainty, our findings reveal that schools continue to pressure pupils to transform uncertain futures into certain futures. By requiring pupils to adapt rapidly to the institutional timescape, schools impose on them a logic of ‘acceleration’ interwoven with a unilinear notion of ‘rapid integration’ that denies the individual pace of arrival processes. These institutionalised temporal expectations (re)produce distinctions between different groups of newcomers, which serve to justify (partial) exclusions in the German school system. While some school professionals challenge the dominant timescape, ‘practices of resistance’ remain fragile as they can easily be discredited.

Introduction

Schools can be seen as places that provide certainty in the form of a predictable and, ideally, safe learning environment and reliable social arrangements. They thus play a critical role in creating certainty within a context of enduring uncertainty in refugee children’s lives (Dryden-Peterson, 2017: 15). However, there is a body of critical literature that identifies fundamental tensions between the inflexible system of mass compulsory schooling prevalent in most of the affluent ‘destination’ countries and the multidimensional nature of children’s lives (Wyness and Partovi, 2024: 2). In the context of forced migration, uncertainties and discontinuities are not confined to biographical experiences and educational trajectories in the individual’s past. They can also be important for future trajectories: insecurity about residency and/or options for returning exacerbate difficulties in anticipating the future and planning ahead in any long-term sense (Seukwa, 2018). ¹ As studies have shown, schools are often ill-equipped to deal with the uncertainties arising from pupils’ experiences of forced migration (Rajan, 2021; Sriprakash, 2023; Wyness and Partovi, 2024). In this sense, Vijitha Rajan sees the ‘discord between ‘mobile childhoods’ and ‘immobile schools” as ‘the fundamental problematic of educational inclusion of migrant children’ (Rajan, 2021: 163).

With these approaches in mind, the present paper takes a closer look at the intersection of educational exclusions and the (ascribed) uncertain futures of refugee children in German state schools in the current context of forced migration from Ukraine. In doing so, we draw on concepts from critical time studies in education that investigate the effects of a temporal naturalisation of social inequalities (e.g. Facer, 2023; Lingard and Thompson, 2017). Assuming that temporal logics are particularly relevant in shaping the educational trajectories of children and youth who have experienced forced migration, we ask how ‘uncertain futures’ of refugee students are constructed and discussed by teachers against the backdrop of dominant temporal expectations of schools. We also examine how such expectations relate to pedagogical and organisational practices and how they might (re)produce (differentiated) forms of institutional exclusion. Based on guided interviews with teachers, principals and social workers in German secondary schools, our analysis focuses on the ways in which schools respond to the arrival of pupils who fled to Germany due to the war in Ukraine. ² This recent refugee movement has prompted the European Union to adopt some new political and administrative responses to forced migration. These include new educational policies indicating a more flexible approach towards pupils’ ‘uncertain futures’. In that regard, we analyse the extent to which these policy changes correspond with changing practices in dealing with the ‘(uncertain) futures’ of refugee children and youth in the German school system, and how these practices are intertwined with institutional timescapes.

In what follows, we briefly outline the state of international research on the institutional inclusion/exclusion of refugee pupils and elucidate our theoretical perspective on the temporal regime of schools in the context of contemporary forced migration. We then provide a brief overview of our research design and methodology, before presenting our empirical findings showing how temporal logics in schools are involved in the (un)making of certainty and the production of differentiated forms of institutional exclusion. Based on our analysed data, we first outline practices aimed at translating ‘uncertain futures’ into ‘certain futures’ in order to integrate newly arrived children and young people into the given temporal regime of the German school system. Second, we show how schools try to accelerate processes in order to adapt refugee children to the educational demands of the school. Third, we analyse educational practices that attempt to resist or temporarily suspend institutional timescapes. Finally, we discuss our findings by focusing on new forms of differentiated exclusion of migrant pupils that currently arise in connection with forced migration from Ukraine and as a consequence of institutional timescapes prevalent in the German school system.

Institutional exclusions in the context of forced migration

Since the post-war period, (forced) migration to Germany has been constructed as a mainly temporary phenomenon that has repeatedly hit German society ‘in waves’, disrupting and upsetting social routines and ‘normality’ (Herbert, 2003; Schönwälder, 2001). As a result, migration in the German education system was mainly addressed through the temporary introduction of support mechanisms, while asylum seekers and children without a secure residency status ³ were exempted from compulsory schooling in many of the sixteen German states (Karakayalı, 2008; Krüger-Potratz, 2016: 16). Although this changed in the early 2000s with the inclusion of refugee children in compulsory education in all of the federal states, the arrival of forced migrants from Syria and other countries such as Afghanistan since 2015 has shown that forced migration is hardly recognised as a permanent reality (let alone the ‘new normal’) by state institutions and legislation. Newly arrived children and youth have since encountered ambivalent integration policies in and through education: On the one hand, such policies were aimed at ‘rapid acquisition of the German language and quick integration into school, vocational training, higher education and the labour market’, which were seen as ‘essential for successful integration and participation in our society’ (Kultusministerkonferenz (KMK), 2016: 2). On the other hand, newcomers in most of the federal states were mainly taught in separate classes, which had been set up for a period of typically up to 2 years (Massumi et al., 2015). So while administrative measures were aimed at speeding up the process of arrival, particularly with regard to integration into the labour market, the long-term future prospects of newly arrived refugees in Germany are continually jeopardised by various restrictions and barriers, as several studies have shown. To date, empirical research has focused primarily on the situation of pupils who have fled from the Middle East and North Africa to Germany, and particularly on identifying exclusions related to their (segregated) schooling. These classes, referred to as ‘welcome’, ‘arrival’ or ‘preparatory’ classes (Heidrich, 2024), have mainly been identified as ‘places of selection’ (Jording, 2022: 389). They are characterised by a lack of qualified teachers and specialised content (Karakayalı et al., 2017), putting children and young people at a significant disadvantage regarding their chances of having a successful educational career.

Empirical studies in other school systems in Europe have produced similar findings, for example, by highlighting the risks of children’s reduced participation in the wider school community when being taught in segregated classes (Dausien et al., 2020; Kauhanen et al., 2023; Kemper et al., 2022: 30). As Kemper et al. (2022: 624f.) argue, the practice of segregated education constitutes a compensatory model aimed at ‘re-socialising’ newly arrived pupils to enable them to participate, thus allowing ‘mainstream schools to be excused from questioning themselves’ (Kemper et al., 2022: 625), as no major changes to the system were required.

However, previous studies also show that so-called (partially) inclusive arrangements (in which pupils participate in regular classes on a part-time-basis, while taking part in separate language support groups for a varying number of hours per week in parallel) can produce subtle exclusions as well (Öztürk et al., 2024; Tom Dieck and Rosen, 2023). As Öztürk et al. (2024) show, some pupils view their parallel participation in mainstream classes and language support classes as an asset. However, this practice is also a potential barrier to social inclusion, as pupils are often not recognised as legitimate members of their mainstream classes (Crul et al., 2019; European Commission, Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, 2013: 74).

Against this background, the latest political and administrative developments relating to the arrival of refugees from Ukraine indicate a potential shift in perspective towards the acceptance of (forced) migration and transnationality (Karakaşoğlu, 2024). Since March 2022, in accordance with the flexibilisation of migration and social welfare regulations for Ukrainian citizens seeking refuge in the EU (Council of the European Union, 2022), conditions have been created to enable the unbureaucratic recruitment of teachers from Ukraine. Measures also included the possibility for pupils to participate in digital distance learning based on the Ukrainian curriculum ‘on a private basis’ (KMK, 2022) and to obtain a Ukrainian diploma in addition to attending regular school lessons in Germany (KMK, 2022). Whereas this provision is limited to pupils from Ukraine and leaves it up to the individual to decide how to participate in two national education systems, it seems that these measures could encourage schools to acknowledge the uncertainty of refugees’ futures by allowing educational participation in two contexts simultaneously. At the same time, however, the current rise of right-wing populist anti-migration discourse, both in Germany and in other European Union Member States, creates new uncertainties for refugees and limits their opportunities to develop long-term future prospects in Europe. In this current discourse, notions of speed and efficiency are essential: current calls for an acceleration of migration management at EU level go hand in hand with demands from conservative parties in Germany for ‘strong signals from the state’ to speed up the integration of forced migrants into the labour market (Deutschlandfunk, 2023). At the same time, there are calls for ‘more and rapid deportations’ (BMI, Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community 2023) of people from so-called ‘safe regions of origin’. Thus, current integration policies for (forced) migrants remain ambiguous and contested.

Timescapes and temporalised exclusion as theoretical perspectives

In our analysis, we use the concept of timescapes, coined by Adam (1998, 2008), as a tool to examine how temporal logics become relevant in institutional practices and shared knowledge of education professionals. The concept draws attention to how specific time practices shape social reality, and how situated and provisional notions of time and temporality are naturalised. Keri Facer argues that by appearing natural and neutral, institutional timescapes can be seen as ‘effective forms of invisible power’ (Facer, 2023: 62) that structure values and beliefs of ‘institutions, communities, particular places, or whole societies’ (Facer, 2023: 60). With reference to the education system, Facer argues that the temporal logic of schooling positions children ‘in comparative relation to each other, mapping them onto a predetermined trajectory that then reciprocally frames some as ‘ahead’ and others as ‘behind” (Facer, 2023: 61). These time mechanisms can serve as rationales for educational interventions; they can inform educational diagnoses and decisions, for example, when coordinating students towards the goal of getting them “back on track’ or ‘caught up” (Facer, 2023: 61). In this way, institutional timescapes and related practices can ‘obscure the always existing multiple temporalities and timing mechanisms of lived experience’ (Facer, 2023: 61) and thus reproduce social and educational inequalities. Through their inherent linear temporal logic, institutional timescapes create a temporal structure for educational trajectories. They shape individuals’ future options (Scherger, 2016) and can thus produce the isolation and objectification of those whose bodies or worldviews that, for whatever reason, cannot or will not align with the dominant selected rhythm.

Other scholars situate contemporary practices of time management in schools within broader neoliberal social discourses and educational policies. Based on the capitalist notion that children and youth are an ‘investment in the future’, Povey et al. argue that time spent in school is ‘commodified: it is something fixed, something that can be ‘saved’ or ‘wasted’, something that can be ‘invested’ or ‘something that can be ‘used up” (Povey et al., 2021). In that vein, schooling in recent years has not only focused increasingly on performativity and assessments that progressively measure children’s performance over the course of their schooling, ‘with teaching and learning seen as preparation for future outcomes’ (Wyness and Partovi, 2024: 4). As Goring et al. (2023) argue, this neoliberal discourse also compels young people to be ‘aspirational’, ‘to develop a moral predisposition towards a particular version of the future [. . .] and to aspire to particular pathways into an unpredictable and risky future dominated by education, training, and certain ideas about the jobs of the future’ (p. 9). Accordingly, young people in the education system in particular are expected to become entrepreneurs of time control within highly differential relationships to time (Goring et al., 2023: 2–4).

Adopting a theoretical perspective on time and speed in education seems to be a promising approach for investigating whether and how the neoliberal timescape of the schooling system is associated with specific risks for children who have experienced forced migration. In one of the few studies adopting this theoretical perspective, Thoma (2023) highlights how notions of temporality become relevant when refugee pupils are taught in ‘transition classes’ in Austria. Thoma emphasises that the ‘multiple private difficulties and challenges [. . .] compete with the educational expectations and time limits that students want and/or have to meet’ (Thoma, 2023: 95). The processes by which individuals make sense of formal education, by linking present experiences with the past and the future, are obstructed by the ongoing asylum process which ‘affects pupils’ further (educational) opportunities’ (Thoma, 2023: 97). Moreover, she argues that notions of acceleration and speed become even more relevant in the case of education measures (transition classes) that are designed to be temporary (Thoma, 2023: 86).

Michael Wyness and Monireh Partovi, examining the ‘management of the pace of learning and integration of migrant children’ (Wyness and Partovi, 2024: 2) after school entry in the United Kingdom, point to the importance of chronological age in the organisational structure of modern education systems. They make clear how a child’s age can lead to exclusion in the context of forced migration:

Migrant children need to fit-in to a system where age-grading is a determining factor. Where children may have missed out on several years of schooling, age becomes an ever more significant factor as children try to catch up before they reach the critical later period in secondary schools where performance is particularly critical for their futures. This is often compounded by the language barriers which slow down children’s learning, making it even more difficult for children to match the relentless pace of learning in UK schools. (Wyness and Partovi, 2024: 5; see also Kollender and Schwendowius, 2024; Massumi, 2019)

As opposed to practices of speeding up, Alfonso Del Percio points to practices of slowing down as forms of temporal management that regulate time, speed and rhythm in social institutions and enable processes of differential inclusion in the context of forced migration. Accordingly, processes of settlement and integration of forced migrants are subject to ‘varying degrees of subordination, rule, discrimination and segmentation’, mediated by institutions and institutionalised practices that harbour ‘a multiplicity of times, temporal practices, intensities and rhythms’ (Del Percio, 2023: 1198).

With regard to the current forced migration from Ukraine, the question arises as to whether the temporal regime of schooling for pupils from Ukraine ‘ticks’ differently from that of refugees from other countries of origin in the context of the political and administrative reforms referred to above.

Methodology

Our analysis of institutional timescapes in the German school system in relation to forced migration from Ukraine is based on data from the ongoing research project ‘(New) inclusions and exclusions in schools in the context of current forced migration’, which focuses on the practices and routines of schools with regard to newly arrived pupils in the course of the migration movement from Ukraine to the European Union, with the aim of identifying (new) patterns of (differential) inclusion/exclusion in the German school system. Between November 2022 and February 2023, we conducted 40 semi-structured interviews with principals, teachers and school social workers from 19 secondary schools of different types in two German federal states (Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt). ⁴ While some of our interview partners had personal experience of migration, the majority of them did not. All the schools in our sample had enrolled children and young people from Ukraine for the 2022/23 school year. Most of them already had experience in receiving and teaching refugee children, with the exception of some grammar schools. While partially integrated teaching was compulsory for schools in one of the two federal states, administrative regulations in the other state were more flexible at the time of our interviews, allowing Ukrainian children to be taught either in regular classes, or in (mono-national) preparatory classes by Ukrainian-speaking teachers during their first year in Germany. In most schools, pupils were taught in mainstream classes from the outset, while also time attending a German as a Second Language (GSL) class for up to 20 hours per week. Some schools had set up separate classes, whereas some operated both teaching models in parallel, leaving the choice up to the parents. In some schools, pupils participated in Ukrainian online courses in addition to attendance in the German school system.

In the interviews with the different school professionals, we were particularly interested in generating narratives about how refugee pupils were included in school and in the classroom in general, and specifically in the current ways of including refugee pupils from Ukraine. We also tried to stimulate reflection on possible changes that the interviewees had witnessed in their schools between the arrival of refugee children 2015/2016, particularly from Syria, and the current migration from Ukraine (2022). In analysing the interview data, we examined institutional practices of inclusion and exclusion, as well as the ways in which professionals in the schools relate to these practices. Drawing on concepts rooted in practice theory (Asbrand et al., 2021) and neo-institutional approaches (Schaefers, 2002), we assumed that the organisational and educational practices applied to newly arrived pupils are not arbitrary, but rather are related to social and educational policy discourses. These discourses form relevant contexts for practices in the individual schools, without determining them. We assumed that school actors find historically and socially developed institutional norms and routines, but that they must also constantly (re-)interpret and appropriate them (Reichertz, 2007: 117–118). Our analysis focused on how dominant norms and routines regarding the accommodation and schooling of refugee pupils were reproduced and legitimised and/or challenged and disrupted by individual schools and school professionals.

The analysis of the data initially was based on coding the transcribed interviews. The aim of this process was to identify prevalent themes and organisational and pedagogical practices relating to contemporary forced migration. This coding was followed by line-by-line analyses of text sequences within analytic categories that seemed particularly relevant to our research questions (Berg and Milmeister, 2011: 314). During the line-by-line analysis, the coding of the material was refined, and hypotheses were developed through differentiation and comparison with other sequences both within and across interviews. The successive selection of passages for the line-by-line analysis was based on the principle of minimum and maximum contrast (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 146 ff.). The (sub)categories, which were further developed in the line-by-line analysis, were related to each other by way of axial coding.

During this analytical process, the future prospects of children and young people from Ukraine emerged as a key issue raised by our interviewees. A line-by-line analysis of the sequences in this category then showed that teachers differentiated between supposedly different groups of refugee pupils when referring to their futures. Practices of dealing with these ‘uncertain futures’ (Schwendowius, 2025) included translating uncertainty into certainty as well as practices of acceleration. Some practices aimed at undermining the dominant institutional timescape. In the following, we present these findings in more detail and discuss them in the context of the institutional timescapes prevalent in schools and the (ambivalent) institutional frameworks described in section 2. ⁵

Findings

Translating uncertain futures into certain futures in schools

As mentioned above, the future prospects of children and youths from Ukraine are a key issue raised by our interviewees. The topic is particularly discussed in relation to pupils’ different motivations for either staying in Germany or returning to Ukraine. In many interviews, the teachers state that pupils from Ukraine were generally very negative about the prospect of a longer stay in Germany, and that this is fuelled by their desire to return to Ukraine:

It is particularly noticeable with the Ukrainian children, I think, is that the goal they always have in mind is, ‘I want to go home again. And I don’t really want to be here and what am I supposed to do here?’ (Principal, E grammar school, Rhineland-Palatinate) ⁶

Here, as in other interviews, the children’s perceived future prospects of returning to Ukraine are attributed solely to their own will and desire, while any external limitations on an imagined future in Germany, such as a temporary residency permit, are not mentioned. Some teachers, in turn, associate this uncompromising will to return with a lack of ‘will to integrate or to learn German’ on the part of the pupils, as mentioned in the following quote:

Well, we have noticed that many Ukrainian children don’t really have this absolute will to integrate or to learn German. I mean, I think there is this wish behind it, well, we’ll be going back soon anyway. This really is a big difference from Syrian refugees. (Social worker, K integrated comprehensive school, Rhineland-Palatinate)

The desire to return home is presented here as a specific attitude of children from Ukraine, which is seen as a block on any willingness to integrate or any strong commitment to learning German. By associating the ‘will to return’ exclusively with Ukrainian children, a distinction is made between them and refugees from other regions, such as Syria, thus creating two distinct groups of refugees.

Although many teachers state that they can understand their pupils’ desire to return to Ukraine, it is discussed as a rather irrational, unrealistic wish that cannot be realised in the near future. At the same time, it is seen as an obstacle to creating future prospects for staying in Germany. In this context, the need to learn German despite the strong motivation to return to Ukraine is presented as a dilemma, as a deputy principal of a community school explains:

Some pupils just don’t want to learn German [I: mhh] They say they’re going back. Definitely. They don’t want to learn - no - no - no German [. . .] So we all hope for the best for the Ukrainian people [. . .] that they can return to their home country very quickly if they want to [I: mhh] But we can’t predict how long it will take. And that’s actually also this - this dilemma for us, to persuade them that it’s important to also - learn German, because we can’t say how long the children will have to be in Germany. (Principal, C community school, Saxony-Anhalt)

Here, the principal reflects on her main task of dealing with the aforementioned dilemma by breaking the children’s resistance and ‘convincing’ them of the importance of learning German, despite their uncertainty about how long they will be staying. She also mentions how teachers relate to pupils when persuasion fails:

Well, we try to convince the children that it is important for them to learn German. But um, that’s all we can do. [. . .] Yes, and [. . .] so the GSL (German as a Second Language) teacher now says that he devotes his energy first of all to the children who want to learn, so that they have a chance. And the others are integrated and included. But if they close themselves off and don’t want to, he can’t help them. That’s just the way it is. (Principal, C community school, Saxony-Anhalt)

The willingness of pupils to learn German is seen here as a prerequisite for being able to teach them. Focusing only on those ‘who want to learn’ means that pupils who fail to demonstrate a willingness to learn are ignored and most likely left behind. In this way, pupils’ right to become part of the school community is made largely contingent on their behaviour, which is then held responsible for teachers’ decisions as to whether to invest energy in them. This selection practice in the classroom is presented as a fair and reasonable way of dealing with the supposedly different motivations of refugee pupils to learn German. Exclusion therefore appears as an inevitable consequence of students’ lack of motivation, whereas the underlying normative expectation of a linear, unobstructed learning trajectory is left unquestioned.

In another interview, a GSL teacher in a grammar school reports that Ukrainian pupils seem tired in class or ‘almost fall asleep’. She quickly learns that the reason for this is the pupils’ participation in digital distance learning in Ukrainian online lessons:

Most of them take part in online lessons in Ukraine. Which means they do it in parallel, so to speak, or they attend two schools at the same time, and that’s not possible. (GSL teacher, D grammar school, Saxony-Anhalt)

The idea of dual participation in two educational systems and pursuing two qualifications at the same time is thus seen as an ‘impossible’ option. This implies that time is a limited good that cannot be divided without causing severe problems in following the German curriculum. Dual participation is seen as a ‘double burden’ with which pupils are unable to cope. ⁷ The principal of the grammar school explains that, to find a solution to the perceived problem, the children (and their parents) were urged to make a final decision either to continue their education in their regular classes and work towards the German Abitur, or to finish their schooling in Ukraine on the basis of online lessons:

Well then we - basically brought parents and pupils together and asked them what they wanted. Yes, and they said quite clearly yes - [. . .] they are doing - want to do the eleventh grade in Ukraine. ‘Well’, we said, ‘we understand’. We will support them in the sense that, for example, [. . .] that they no longer have to attend all the lessons with us, so they also get facilities where they can sit down and do the Ukrainian homework at our school. But with the precondition that if they decide to do it (proceed with online classes from Ukraine, E.K./D.S.), they can’t proceed any further. They definitely won’t enter grade eleven. ⁸ (Principal, D grammar school, Saxony-Anhalt)

Thus, the school responds to pupils’ biographical uncertainty – the impossibility of making long-term biographical plans in the present – by urging them to take a definite decision. While this practice may relieve the pupils of a ‘double burden’ in the short term, it neglects the legal option of pursuing a transnational educational path that has been opened up for children and youths with Ukrainian citizenship (see section 2 above). It also limits their future educational and career opportunities in the medium term: those who wish to obtain a Ukrainian diploma cannot proceed with their educational careers in higher education in Germany directly and without further delay.

So far, our analysis has shown that the responses of teachers and schools to their pupils’ futures in the context of forced migration are intertwined with a specific institutional timescape. This presupposes the idea of an inherently limited ‘learning time’. It also implies the normative expectation that this limited time should be devoted to one education system only. These normative presuppositions seem to encourage practices that enforce the translation of ‘uncertain futures’ into ‘certain futures’. Contrary to this, there is no allowance in this institutional concept of time for ‘the provisional’, ‘the transitory’ or ‘the uncertain’. The consequence is a disregard for notions of ambiguity and ‘not yet’ that may dominate students’ present experiences. Instead, the ability to create a future perspective that is certain is seen as an important prerequisite for working with and being able to support pupils’ educational careers beyond the short term. A certain future is therefore institutionally imagined and enforced, even if it does not reflect the pupils’ lived experiences in the present.

These and other sequences show how schools perpetuate normative expectations linked to the concept of a linear, mono-national school career. These expectations are intertwined with a one-sided understanding of integration that requires refugee pupils to adapt to the school’s timescape and express this by either learning German quickly or deciding to continue their educational path outside the German education system. Thus, while the institutional regulations potentially enable pupils to pursue their education in both school systems, this is not necessarily put into practice.

Practices of acceleration in the context of current forced migrations

The schooling of refugee children in Germany’s state education system is organised and structured by a range of temporal regulations. For example, education policies in the two federal states examined here set timeframes that define the maximum duration of GSL classes, accompanied by fixed-term employment contracts issued by the authorities for GSL instructors who teach these classes. There are also specific time limits for suspending the grading of newly arrived pupils. Furthermore, there is a maximum age for admission to secondary school in both federal states; young people exceeding this age are expected to enter vocational education. These time limits impose a specific pace of education on both pupils and schools. Within that context, many of the teachers interviewed for our research stated that the newly arrived children and youths from Ukraine were learning German at a slower pace than is needed to ‘catch up’ and be able to follow the curriculum in regular classes. In some interviews, this observation is accompanied by a feeling of impatience and sometimes a lack of understanding as to why the pupils do not learn German more quickly:

For example, they’ve been at my school for a year, now, and I’ve never had pupils who could speak so little German after one year. (Teacher, N. grammar school, Rhineland-Palatinate)

But I think more and more that they should actually start saying things a bit more in German, it’s been long enough now. (Principal, C grammar school, Rhineland-Palatinate)

These and other sequences from the interviews highlight the tensions that arise when pupils do not (yet) seem to have internalised the dominant institutional timescape, and the likelihood that they will be perceived as unwilling (or unable) to adapt to it. In expressing their impatience with the Ukrainian children, some teachers implicitly or explicitly refer to ‘other refugee pupils’ who had arrived a few years earlier, especially from Middle Eastern countries such as Syria, and who are reported to have adapted more quickly to the school’s institutional time regime. In some interviews, these pupils (again) form a reference group to which the Ukrainian pupils are compared in order to emphasise the impression that children and youth from Ukraine learn German particularly slowly. This is expressed, for example, in the following statements:

So it’s so complicated when I look at my Arab pupils who come from Syria or from other European countries, who learn relatively quickly and rapidly and who are also open, and I quickly realise that it makes a big difference whom I teach. (GSL teacher, F. integrated comprehensive school, Rhineland-Palatinate)

And then our teachers also have a bit of a problem at the moment, we keep getting feedback that these pupils are actually the most exhausting and the situation is actually the most difficult we’ve ever had as far as GSL pupils are concerned. (GSL teacher, F. integrated comprehensive school, Rhineland-Palatinate)

The distinctions made between Ukrainian and ‘Arab pupils’ both generalise and single them out as distinctive ‘ethnic groups’: the perceived slowness on the part of refugee pupils from Ukraine to adapt to the expectations of the German school system is attributed to alleged group-specific characteristics, which are presented as a burden for the teachers and the school. This alleged ‘failure to adapt’ is rated as something that the pupils cannot really afford to do. It is seen as reflective of a careless, irresponsible attitude which forces the school to intervene, as the following GSL teacher explains:

The pupils actually have to give up their reticence when they are 14 or 15. Because it’s about entering the labour market, it’s about skills that they’ll need no matter where they end up living. But next year they would practically get normal school certificates. If they have lived here for two years, according to education law, they then move to regular classes and actually get grades [. . .]. So, um, it’s time to check on them and to have one-on-one conversations, and to say, ‘So, what’s the situation, what can we do now, can the next step come now?’ So that this reticence ends and one finally starts doing and working. (GSL teacher, F. integrated comprehensive school, Rhineland-Palatinate)

The perceived self-inflicted isolation of Ukrainian pupils is seen as an obstacle to the acquisition of skills that are considered relevant regardless of where ‘they end up living’. The need to ‘give up this reticence’ is associated with a certain age (14 or 15), which in turn is linked to the transition to working life. This can be seen as a reference to the modern life course regime (Kohli, 1985) that relates specific ages to certain institutional status passages that must passed in a chronological order. In order to fulfil this expectation, it seems necessary for pupils to be included in formal grading procedures from a certain age. The time pressure articulated here by the teacher due to time constraints and administrative requirements for grading is passed on to the pupils, who are individually encouraged to take concrete and specific steps towards their future. This focus on working life and the need to ‘make progress’ according to institutional expectations is presented here as a prerequisite for being able to ‘act and work’ with them.

These interview responses shed light on institutional practices of acceleration that shape the school’s timescape, which sets the pace for refugee children’s and young people’s integration into the school. It is within that context that refugee pupils are differentiated, segmented and assessed according to national and/or ethnic origin, namely ‘pupils from Ukraine’ and ‘pupils from other countries’ (i.e. from Syria). This differentiation poses a particular risk to newly-arrived pupils, who are generally suspected of failing to adapt (quickly enough) to the dominant institutional timescape. They run the risk of teachers losing patience with them, which can lead to the withdrawal of pedagogical support and thus to institutional exclusion.

Challenging and undermining the dominant institutional timescape

Although our analysis above shows how institutional timescapes guide the management of (uncertain) futures of refugee children in German schools, some interviewees in our sample openly criticise the exclusionary consequences of some administrative temporal regulations. This concerns, for example, the regulation stipulating when newly arrived pupils have to be assessed on a regular basis. While the administrative regulations in the two federal states allow schools to exempt newly arrived pupils categorised as ‘non-German speaking’ from assessment for the first 1–2 years after their arrival, teachers from one state reported that the situation had suddenly changed due to a new regulation that schools received in the middle of the school year, some 6–9 months after many of the pupils from Ukraine had arrived. This new regulation stipulated that Ukrainian pupils had to be assessed in all subjects from now on. Such a measure can be seen as a means of speeding up the ‘integration process’ by involving the children in formal procedures and thus making them accountable for their ‘performance’. One teacher describes the consequences of this new regulation as ‘frustrating’:

But now, unfortunately, [. . .] the decision was made that the pupils should be assessed and, of course, they now have to be challenged to a certain extent, which actually leads to great frustration for me and many other colleagues and certainly also leads to great frustration (1) among the pupils. The pupils are assessed like normal (1) um, native speakers, even though they don’t have anywhere near the same chance of mastering the whole thing [. . .]. So before, they were doing quite well and were able to arrive at their own pace and try to work through the whole thing [I: yes]. And then they (local authorities, E.K./D.S.) just said: ‘Yes, the pupils receive regular GSL lessons and many have already made great progress linguistically, from now on they will be assessed’. (2) Yes, which is of course great for the pupils if they only get D’s and E’s ⁹ from one day to the next. (2) Very frustrating for the pupils, for us, because I think it’s impossible to catch up in such a short time. (Teacher, B grammar school, Saxony-Anhalt)

This teacher criticises the exclusionary consequences of the authorities’ sudden decision to include all Ukrainian pupils in the grading system. He anticipates that being treated as ‘normal native speakers’ will lead to deep frustration among the pupils, as they will inevitably receive poor grades due to their limited command of German at this stage. The teacher’s critical statement indicates the underlying normative expectation that regular GSL lessons will lead to a linear and rapid improvement in German language skills. The criticised policy change suggests a logic of acceleration, which demands that individuals ‘quickly integrate’ by learning German, while ignoring the fact that learning processes occur at different speeds. According to the authorities’ argumentation, this rigid expectation is justified by those individuals who succeed in learning German quickly, whereas the ‘failure’ of many students who do not meet this expectation is individualised. ¹⁰

While the above statement is an example of practices that criticise the authorities’ ‘policy of speed’ (Flubacher, 2023), we also found some examples of how schools attempt to actually resist institutional time pressures to some extent. One aspect of the prevailing timescape that was discussed as a problem in many interviews concerns the admission of pupils who are 15 years or older when they enter the German school system. These pupils have a limited amount of time to acquire a level of German that will enable them to pass their final exams. In this regard, the principal of one community school reported that her school offers pupils aged 15 and over the opportunity to repeat classes more than once, in order to achieve a higher qualification level. To this end, she also reported more generous assessments of performance:

We’ve cheated a lot, sometimes we say ‘yes, then it’s still a ‘D’. Then it’s not the ‘E”. Whatever. But they are going to get that degree, right? It doesn’t hurt us, and they’ll go their own way, right? They’ll get there eventually. (Principal, E-community school, Saxony-Anhalt)

We interpret this approach of granting extended learning time and adapting grading practices to the situation as a way of undermining the institutional timescape that otherwise determines the educational trajectories of refugee children and youths. The principal takes a long-term view of young people’s learning and educational processes, rather than strictly adhering to formal requirements that are supposedly neutral and objective. The more generous grading policy signifies an attempt to keep educational paths open for as long as possible, relying on trust in young people’s ability to find their own path at their own pace. However, by labelling her school’s actions ‘cheating’, the principal portrays this approach as clandestine. Furthermore, allowing pupils to repeat classes several times may not benefit them in the long term, since age-related norms also apply at later stages of formal education. Allowing pupils to exceed the maximum age may therefore limit their educational opportunities at a later stage.

Discussion and conclusion

Our study’s findings show that institutional timescapes dominate how teachers relate to the educational trajectories of children from Ukraine. As Bob Lingard and Greg Thompson argue, notions of progress and ‘the correct order’ are crucial to how school is ‘constructed, and [. . .] lived’ (Lingard and Thompson, 2017: 5). This institutional logic invokes a morality in which time is a ‘currency: it is not passed, but spent’ (Thompson, 1967: 61, cited in Lingard and Thompson, 2017: 5). On the one hand, the results of our study support previous empirical findings on the management of the pace of learning and the integration of refugee pupils in state schools, as outlined in section 2. On the other hand, however, the current refugee migration from Ukraine reveals new dynamics of inclusion/exclusion in the temporal regime of schools:

We see that the changes at EU and national levels towards recognising biographical uncertainty by allowing pupils to participate in more than one educational system simultaneously do not necessarily imply that schools actually use the options open to them: whereas education policy offers pupils from Ukraine the opportunity to pursue degrees in both national school systems, the schools themselves reproduce historically grown practices and logics by urging pupils to focus their school careers in only one national context. Instead of keeping futures open, they push the pupils to quickly transform uncertain futures into certain futures. At the same time, this practice reflects the fact that education policy places the responsibility for realising transnational educational biographies and the pursuit of a ‘double degree’ solely in the hands of the individuals. Schools are therefore relieved of the obligation to develop ideas and practices supporting refugee pupils in managing their (precarious) present and to encourage them to develop future perspectives that are not necessarily centred on one national context.

Moreover, our findings show that the logic of acceleration that has been described for segregated schooling models (Thoma, 2023) also prevails in long-term, ‘partially inclusive’ learning arrangements in regular classes. Here, it is interwoven with a unilinear notion of ‘rapid integration’ that denies the individual pace of arrival processes and ignores the need for refugee children and youths to navigate a fragile present. This reflects the dominant neoliberal timescape of the state school that is characterised by a logic of linear progress and competition.

In contrast to suggestions of a profound shift in perspective within the German education discourse following the influx of Ukrainian refugees – namely, that these migrations may constitute a new perception of migration and transnationalism as a normality to which schools must adapt (Karakaşoğlu, 2024: 45) – our analysis reveals that exclusionary practices are being structurally maintained: schools tend to rely on old systems of (partially) segregated schooling, while comprehensive and sustainable institutional responses to migration during times of global crisis and conflict are rare. This reflects the prevailing view of forced migration as an extraordinary and temporary phenomenon. Thus, any measures that would allow a more comprehensive response to uncertain futures of children and youths who have experienced forced migration remain temporary. Furthermore, the dominant understanding of full participation in school is based on the idea of a one-sided integration process on the part of newcomers that must be completed at a predefined pace. As a consequence, pedagogical support during this integration process depends partly on teachers’ patience and pupils’ explicit expression of their ‘will to integrate’, which is primarily measured by the speed at which they learn German.

What is also evident is that temporal expectations embedded in schools’ organisation are also productive insofar as they (re-)produce new distinctions between different groups of newcomer pupils. By drawing on typifications based on nationality or ethnicity, a distinction is made between children and youths from Ukraine versus those from other regions who seek refuge in Germany, and a hierarchy is established based on which groups are perceived as willing and able to adapt to the institutional timescape. These essentialising distinctions are used to justify and legitimise institutional exclusions, such as leaving pupils from Ukraine behind in GSL classes. In this way, the reasons for educational inequalities in the context of current forced migrations are individualised. These observed dynamics are analogous to, for example, those previously seen with students who came to Germany from Syria in 2015/16, who were labelled as ‘newcomers’ at that time. This labelling was partly linked to racist distinctions, resulting in comparable symbolic and material exclusions (Jording, 2022; Karakayalı et al., 2017; Thoma, 2023). However, some attributions specific to the group of ‘Ukrainian refugees’ are currently being made, some of which align with anti-Slavic racist logic that will require closer examination in future analyses. While it may be surprising that pupils who fled from Syria and often experience anti-Arab and/or anti-Muslim racism at school are retrospectively referred to as having ‘integrated’ more quickly in by some of the teachers we interviewed, this does not imply that racist logics and exclusive practices targeting these pupils are no longer relevant. Moreover, we also identified (new) institutional practices that particularly disadvantage newly arrived pupils from countries other than Ukraine (Kollender and Schwendowius, 2025). Therefore, the distinctions we have highlighted here rather seem to indicate that there is a repertoire of ethnic/racialising attributions is applied flexibly and may vary according to changing situations and experiences.

However, our findings also show that many educational professionals are aware of the institutional timescape dominating everyday school life, and some of them reflect on its potentially harmful effects on the educational biographies of pupils. While some pedagogical practices criticise, resist, or temporarily suspend the dominant timescape, these ‘practices of resistance’ are fragile because they are easily discredited or come under pressure from unexpected policy changes and/or demands from local authorities. Professionals feel they have to legitimise any measures that could be interpreted as undermining the idea of meritocracy and the validity of high-performance requirements. Moreover, practices of slowing down and reducing time pressure on refugee pupils can lead to mixed results, including long-term exclusion, given the prevailing institutional timescape. Professionals are therefore ‘trapped in a constant balancing act when it comes to pursuing the best future for their students’ (Kemper et al., 2022: 637). While our findings do not suggest any simple deductions regarding the relation between professionals’ views on the one hand, and their positionality in migration society on the other, our sample does reflect that policy measures aimed at diversifying teaching staff and facilitating access for teachers who experienced (forced) migration themselves are being implemented only hesitantly.

In light of these findings, it apparently does not suffice to encourage and empower educational professionals to challenge institutional timescapes and their inherent specific logics of exclusion for children and youths who have experienced forced migration. While this certainly remains an important task, it requires a change of perspective in societal and political discourse that needs to shift from the short-term, particularistic and assimilationist logic of temporary support measures for ‘newcomers’ to a sustainable vision of an education system based on its democratic promises.