Introduction

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Germany are of an exclusionary nature. They operate according to a general access regulation that requires degrees and qualifications from within the educational system and thereby creates an unequal point of departure for students; this can be seen beyond the borders of the educational and social sciences. However, the situations international students are confronted with, including, for example, extremely strict access regulations enforced by the university and immigration offices and financial requirements, are not as widely known.

As part of an attempt to open up the university to the specific group of people arriving as refugees or migrants in the city of Giessen, the Branch Out Project was launched under the auspices of the chair of general sociology in the Institute of Sociology at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen in January 2016. I joined this project right at the beginning after Encarnacion Gutierrez Rodriguez approached me, and coordinated the project by integrating NGOs in town, giving lectures to the classes and supporting those who were interested in entering the university.

Branch Out (hereafter BO) was implemented and received funding from the Ministry of Science and Arts in Hesse (the Bundesland where Giessen is located) for the period 2016 and 2017. Today, four years later, the thoughts and ideas that were prompted by the project continue; in particular, the questions that BO raised regarding conception, implementation, methodology and impact remain pertinent.

BO tackles the organizational structure of HEIs by questioning their operation in relation to access to the institutions and practices of everyday life.

This chapter thus deals with (a) bureaucratic structures in HEIs, (b) the everyday life of students and (c) the potential for transformation in HEIs. Although the chapter focuses on a single project, BO, the reflections drawn from it will serve as a broader analytical framework within which I address the global entanglements of HEIs and their local articulation through a micro-level analysis of this German project.

I argue that spaces for discussion at HEIs about social inequalities and experiences of racism in students’ daily lives are necessary to tackle exclusion in HEIs. These spaces need to be guided and supported, so that students are not left on their own when they denounce problematic institutional structures and practices of everyday life.