This paper examines educational exclusions of children and young people in the face of transnational dynamics of (forced) migration and New Educational Governance. The latter is understood as a globally dominant reform model that has – based on the two pillars of deregulation and privatization of (formerly) state responsibility for education and, at the same time, stronger central control via quantitative (output) indicators – profoundly changed educational policies and systems in normative and structuralorganizational terms. The paper attempts to link research at the local level with broader questions arising in the increasingly globalized field of education policy. Drawing on the findings of five qualitative empirical studies in Greece, Turkey and Germany, this paper explores how the developments of New Educational Governance have given rise to new borders, producing ambivalent practices of ‘exclusionary inclusion’ while de-thematizing and externalizing the complex educational realities and needs in times of (forced) migration