Diagrammatic Othering: The Logics of Visualizing Migration in Civic Education Textbooks

Based on a study of civic education textbooks in postmigrant Germany, the chapter explores how diagrammatic representations intersect with practices of othering and hierarchization. While visualizations of migration in academic and media discourse have been increasingly studied, diagrams of migration in civics textbooks have not yet received sufficient attention. Yet, visualizations in school textbooks have a specific logic, as they integrate scientific, journalistic, and everyday knowledge and present it in a pedagogized form. Based on a theoretical framework inspired by discourse theory, diversity research, and Rauer’s notion of “isotypical difference,” this chapter develops the concept of diagrammatic othering. Three widely used types of visualization—map diagrams, data visualizations, and diagrams of historical periodization—are analyzed exemplarily in order to identify key mechanisms and powerful effects of diagrammatic othering in civic education textbooks. The chapter shows how a multimodal approach that is sensible to the interplay of written-linguistic, visual, numerical, and spatial modes of representations can contribute to a better understanding of the logics of knowledge circulation in educational media.