The article discusses the adolescent opportunity structures of young immigrants in Germany with regard to enabling or preventing of individual developmental and educational processes. The challenges young immigrants have to face during their twofold transformation process are discussed and the resources and obstacles involved studied against the background of the empirical results of a bi-national study. A case study of a young, university-enrolled ‘Spätaussiedlerin’ from Russia is used to reconstruct how the migration conditions of the family in question and its socio-psychological coping capacities may influence the experiences of the young adolescent with the German society and the opportunities and risks in adolescent development processes that have to be dealt with.