Which person is presumed to fit the institution? How refugee students' and practitioners' discursive representations of successful applicants and students highlight transition barriers to German higher education

Abstract

During recent years, German higher education institutions implemented a variety of support programs for refugees on their way to higher education. This newly highlighted questions of widening participation and informal as well as formal access barriers to higher education. This paper looks into discourses on successful students as a form of knowledge that implicitly highlights transition barriers to higher education. The qualitative study is based on expert interviews with teachers, program coordinators and student counsellors as well as interviews with prospective refugee students in a case study of a preparatory college ('Studienkolleg') and a university in a case study of one city in Germany. They are analysed using Keller's (Forum qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum Qualitative Social Research 8(2), Art. 19:1-32, 2007) approach to discourse analysis. The paper describes personal, institutional and structural characteristics of ideal higher education transitions. Institutional presuppositions and assumptions about individual characteristics, the social organisation of time, academic practices and knowledges as well as discursively represented norms are discussed as crucial factors influencing higher education transitions. The paper ends with a working hypothesis on the influence of discourses on transitions and recommends that institutional settings should develop more awareness of and adapt to diverse applicants and students in order to widen access to higher education.