Home-school relationship in the context of reception of newly arrived emergent bilingual pupils. A comparative and exploratory study between Hamburg (Germany) and Franche-Comté (France).

This Franco-German exploratory and comparative study, rooted in the tradition of interdisciplinary qualitative empirical research (at the crossroads of sociology, language sciences and education sciences), aims at analysing and questioning the representations of the different actors concerning the reception of newly arrived allophone pupils and the home-school relationship in Germany (Gomolla 2009) and France (Asdih 2012, Lasne et al. 2021, Périer 2021), in two specific regions: Hamburg (Germany) and Franche-Comté (France), and in particular in pre-school/kindergarten and primary schools. We rely on various semi-structured interviews with families and educational actors in school in the German and French contexts. In this paper we seek to understand and compare the different relationships (home/school) according to the actors in the two research fields and question, among other things, the importance of the national field with its specific history in relation to welcoming policies and the promotion of the home-school relationship. The results will help to whether and how cooperation between school and newly arrived families can facilitate families’ transition to a new school culture.