Negotiating "Religion" in German School Life: Ethnographic Insights into Marginalization, Exclusion, and Pupil Agency within Religious Education Lessons

This paper presents the research results of a one-year ethnographic field study in a school class in Germany on the topic of negotiation processes of “religion” in the everyday school life of pupils. It will illustrate how non-Christian pupils experienced marginalization and exclusion and examine these situations in detail. To achieve this, religious education lessons, in particular, will be considered, focusing on the understandings of “religion” taught there and the exclusions it creates. After all, if “religion” was negotiated among the pupils, then a significant part of it either took place during these lessons or was initiated by topics taught there. However, while focusing on the manifestations and intersections of violence, this paper argues that these mechanisms can only be adequately understood if the agency of the pupils are also considered. They were often not passive in situations of discrimination but were able to actively shape and turn these situations.