Discrimination in Munich Schools in the Guest Worker Regime: The Intersection of Language, Nationality and Gender

Abstract

After the recruitment stop of guest workers in 1973, a high proportion of migrants lived in Munich and faced a separating, marginalizing schooling situation. Using an intersectionality approach, we show how migrant pupils were particularly marginalised by the overlapping social categories of language, nationality and gender. According to our empirical observations for the period from the 1970s to the 1980s, the segregation into nationally homogeneous dual-language classes reproduced a structure of social exclusion. Our findings illustrate how past schooling policies have doomed the educational and occupational opportunities of a generation of guest workers’ children. As some of the discriminatory grievances can still be seen in today’s neoliberal conjuncture of racism, the results shed new light on contemporary (Bavarian) school policies towards migrants.