Learning democracy in a new society: German orientation courses for migrants through the lens of buber’s dialogical education

Abstract

Migrants, coming to Germany, must attend integration courses in order to obtain a residence permit. These courses are comprised of a language section as well as an orientation section. The latter’s purpose is, according to the German Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), the transmission of knowledge of the German legal system, culture, and history and especially of democratic values of the German political system (BAMF, 2017, p. 6). This article examines the challenges that instructors and participants of those courses face when it comes to the teaching and learning of democratic values, based on a qualitative research conducted in 2018. As the theoretical lens, this article incorporates the concept of dialogue by Martin Buber.