This paper reports an interpretive policy analysis (Yanow, 2000) of the conflict over a specific education policy reform in Hamburg, Germany between 2008 and 2010. Although gender was not an explicit reference point either in the proposed reform or in the public controversy over it, pro-reform advocacy invoked the interests of migrant girls in a number of symbolic or implicit ways. As the paper details, there was a central contradiction in this symbolic gendering, at times invoking the interests of migrant girls in reforming Hamburg’s schools in the name of social justice, at other times framing the need for reform on their behalf using a neoliberal logic of human capital development. The paper argues that this contradictory approach to pro-reform advocacy ultimately undermined the policy itself and its stated aims. In carrying out the broader study from which this paper is drawn, I identified four distinct interpretive communities (viz., Hamburg’s education ministry, two pro-reform coalitions, one anti-reform coalition and news media sources) and collected and analyzed a total of 401 policy-related documents between 2008 and 2011.
