ABSTRACT
This analysis follows the educational trajectories of individual students with a migration background in Germany who reflect upon their intimate social relations with their kin, friends, and peers. It argues that at this stage of life affective constellations within kinship relations need to be considered against the backdrop of other forms of affective relatedness. To what extent these compete, and whether and when they complement each other, is an empirical question that depends on different dimensions of students’ mobilities, choices, and aspirations. It goes without saying that affective relations of and among students take place within different social sites, that is, in material settings of university campuses, their homes, and the many places in-between. As students are embedded in multiple social domains, combining studying, working, engaging in private relationships, and socializing in different social spaces, their education sentimentale, understood here as a process of affective self-formation in the course of educational trajectory, comes about through a biographical navigation that is rather dramatic in nature.
