Efecto de las mutaciones en las regiones conservadas del ssoA de pLSl J Una vez definidas las condiciones óptimas para la replicación a partir del ssoA de

As the students’ reflections in the last chapter emphasize, adjusting to new national and schooling contexts as adolescent migrants involves more than merely adapting to new norms and necessitates community building alongside educational goals. Simultaneously, teens build their lives in social worlds, surrounded by peers and friends who are often more central to their daily concerns than academic troubles. Many of these students who arrived recently to

Germany cannot speak the local language, drastically limiting their prospects of finding friends in school or in afterschool programs, an important aspect of adolescent identity development predicated on peer input. In the DaZ classes, classmates speak over a dozen first languages, such that German is the only true common language amongst them (some speak English, but most have better language skills in German). In order to actualize goals of community building and forming new friendships, students in DaZ thus have to participate in language learning. For some, like Oscar, a popular teen in S1, this provides a strong impetus for active engagement:

Yeah, I want to have a lot of friends and yeah, so I speak with them and I study German at home and in school… when I came to class for the first time, I met my first friend and I hung out only with him because I couldn’t speak German, but I could speak English, and we spoke together. When I began learning German, then I had more friends.

Oscar’s English competency facilitated this early friendship, yet it did not encompass his larger social goals, leading him to focus heavily on language learning. After gaining more German competency, he was able to relate more with his classmates and became integrated into the classroom culture, thereby emphasizing the language-bound relationship within this program. In this reflection, the promises of English learning are regulated by German language

Roman, Oscar’s S1 peer who is more integrated in the regular classes, provides a similar reflection from the perspective of a student who has largely moved beyond the DaZ classes yet retains a connection to the community and his old classmates. Reflecting on his first weeks in Germany as a new student at Karl-Eberhard, Roman discusses the challenges of not being able to communicate with his peers: “at the beginning it was a little difficult because I couldn’t speak the language and didn’t have any friends, but slowly after time it got better… because I didn’t have any friends or anything, it was boring”. As he gained more language skills and grew more self-confident, he began participating in a local soccer club where he met native Germans with whom he could practice his German. Two years after joining, they have grown much closer as a result of Roman’s growing capabilities, closer even than his S1 peers.

R. The friends from school are only school friends and many of my friends from the soccer club also go to school here.

S. And what about the people in S1?

R. Well they’re also like normal friends, but we don’t see each other as much, only during school time. But regarding the other friends, we’re practically always together playing soccer outside.

Roman exercises a considerable degree of control throughout this reflection, as he could have strengthened his friendships with his S1 peers instead of his soccer friends, but he wanted to be with them more often. This testifies to the power of language learning by providing options for future friendships and affording these migrants with the agency to decide their path based purely on their preferences. Importantly, Roman relates his language competency and these friendships to his incorporation, saying he feels “like I’m at home here… because I’m like the other kids and the other German kids, like I know the language just as well as them”. Roman

has mobilized his language learning to facilitate bonds with German peers and, as other scholars predicted (i.e., Czymara & Schmidt-Catran, 2016), this process also reduced cultural distancing as he framed himself alongside ‘the other German kids’. Dialogically aligning himself with Germany by calling it ‘home’, Roman has effectively suppressed his linguistic background by learning German and becoming involved in activities with other Germans. Importantly, this represents an intentionally assimilationist acculturation orientation that simply recognizes his current life in Germany while downplaying questions of cultural and linguistic differences.

Other students reported different functions of German language usage in their daily lives outside of friendships, discussing its importance for navigating their new local and national contexts in very pragmatic terms. Jonathan, from the perspective of an adolescent housed in a living group with other teenagers, emphasizes that language learning is essential for anyone seeking independence in their new lives. Extending the scope beyond his immediate school- based context, he explores how the lives of people he knows are hindered by not being able to speak German when trying to interact in the city or visiting the doctor:

German is important for everyone that’s living in Germany… you need the language when you go to the doctor, for example, so that you can speak with him in German. You can’t speak with him in your mother tongue. If he can speak English, then yeah ok, but if he doesn’t for example, then you have to speak in German. It’s really important for everyone to learn German…. Yeah you have to learn it in order to live in Germany. That’s really important for everyone. I would also say that everyone has to learn it.

Jonathan’s reflection provides a different perspective on the importance of learning German by discussing its application in daily life based on his friends’ experiences. At the same time, however, he references visiting the doctor’s office with his peers who cannot interact in

him with more opportunities to practice his German. Moreover, this reliance serves to solidify their interpersonal bonds and adds another layer of support outside of Karl-Eberhard: “I think it’s also good that I have friends that call me when they need help. When I need help, then they also come to me because I also help them.” Nonetheless, Jonathan maintains that everyone should learn German because it allows for individuality in their new contexts, an important consideration for young adolescents developing personal identities about to be entering adult lives in Germany which, as last chapter reviewed, are marked by individuality.

While Jonathan furthers the ideology that everyone should learn German, Hannah provides a different perspective that discusses how different situations lead to varying degrees of necessity. As an adolescent approaching high school graduation, Hannah frames her personal need to learn German in a similarly practical manner that applies Jonathan’s circumstantial anecdote to questions of daily interactions in Lübeck:

Well like I said, it’s really important for me to learn the language, not just for my education, because you need the language everywhere. Not just in school with Germans, but also on the street. When I’m going shopping for example, I have to talk in German. It’s really important to learn the language.

For Hannah, a student with friends throughout the city who constantly interacts with others, learning German is framed through pragmatic terms of simply trying to navigate the urban environment. When reflecting on her family’s language learning endeavors, however, she provides a very different perspective than Jonathan’s universal claim. As a retired teacher, Hannah’s mother mainly remains at home during the day, does not have to worry about starting (or continuing) her career in Germany, and has limited interactions with people in the

city. Hannah’s mother nonetheless has engaged herself in language learning by enrolling in a course in the city, and Hannah disagrees with this decision:

I said to her, that if I were her, I would have skipped past learning the language because she doesn’t really need the language…. She’s done with her education, what else does she need? I spoke to her about it and she said that it doesn’t depend on whether you want to continue your education, for example, but rather it’s really important to master the language so that she can feel better here. I don’t know why, but that’s what she said to me… she spends the majority of her time at home, what does she need the language for? I’ve asked myself the same thing, but she has a completely different opinion.

Embedded within this reflection are highly contextualized notions of the application of learning German to particular circumstances. Hannah’s mother, a relatively secluded individual without a career to pursue in Germany, does not have as many daily interactions as Hannah, indicating an ideology about language learning dependent on particular contextual factors like age, occupation and communication. At the same time, her mother could want to communicate with neighbors, making her consideration not entirely encompassing. In this sense, Hannah advocates language learning for people who will have to interact in particular ways in society. Interestingly, as learning German is so important for integration or assimilation orientations, her reflection proposes that older people could follow a separation acculturation ideology, a perspective in contrast to national narratives, yet highly attuned to these contextual factors.

For these students, learning German has more applications than linear pathways to future educational success and career goals. Many adolescents are temporally removed from these prospective futures and emphasize the importance of language learning for making new friends in this new environment. Others, however, recognize the importance of using German for operating within their larger urban and national contexts. Throughout these reflections, the

students discussed appropriating their language learning to personal goals of building a network of friends and navigating their daily lives, both important for personal identity

development and acculturative goals. None lamented over having to learn German, indicating that these students are highly emotionally engaged and do not feel compelled to participate due to national pressures. Rather, they display individual agency by selectively choosing to engage in this learning process based on their contextualized future life goals.

In this last section, the importance of learning German for these adolescents was framed through the assumption that they would remain in their new national context. I have discussed their current circumstances as ‘migrants in Germany’, a relatively neutral term that does not presume that they want or can to stay in the country (especially important for students who migrated illegally, or who were forced to flee their countries of origin). For students seeking to further their educational and career goals, they imply that German will remain important in the future and, likely, will remain in the country. Similar to the reflections in Chapter V, many students want to return to their previous national contexts but lack the power to choose this option. For some, this new context is the gateway to future success, and for others it acts as a reminder of their loss of agency. With this intentional framing, it is important to conclude with future prospects for these students with a focus on questions of belonging in the context of language learning and national identities.