KoNIR (Junior Research Group): Continuities and Reshaping of Institutional Racism in Schools

Location: Europa-Universität Flensburg
before: Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg

Brief description of the project 

The Junior Research Group analyses the conditions, mechanisms, and forms of institutional racism in schools. Racism is understood as an overall social phenomenon and structural principle of social relations, which often occurs in subtle forms and is not necessarily linked to the racist intentions of individual actors. 

This societal structural principle also characterizes institutional structures and action references. To better recognize and dismantle institutional racism in schools, knowledge of its conditions, mechanisms, forms, and manifestations is required, which will be investigated and worked out within the framework of the junior research group. The junior research group will work on content-related, methodical, and methodological issues through a combined approach of ethnographic school and racism research, thus contributing to further developing the specialized discourse. 

The research is also intended to contribute to developing strategies for dismantling racializing structures and practices in schools. Together with cooperation partners from the field, practice transfer processes will be initiated to come closer to the goal of opening schools to migration society. 

Goals 

• Examination of everyday practices relevant to racism in their embedding in institutional structures references to action and normalized school processes. 
• Elaboration and further development of a methodology of ethnography critical of racism.
• The practical transfer of the project results in cooperation with practice partners to further develop school practice.

To the project page