This article explores how achievement motivation is framed by the larger context of the devaluation of educational capital that is currently underway in urban centers in Europe. The article elucidates the shared cultural meaning working-class German Turkish youths living in urban marginalized zones in Berlin, Germany create about the decreasing educational and professional opportunities available in their neighborhoods, and the different ways in which they adapt their goals for what to achieve in their lives according to the meaning they make about their circumstances. The article suggests a de-emphasis of ethnocultural group membership in understanding the educational orientations and goals of minoritized youths, and for increased attention to meaning-making processes at the intersection of minoritization, class status, and highly specific ecocultural context conditions. Attention to the new meanings emerging in the local context shifts our understanding of the educational goals and decision-making from paradoxical to rational, congruent, and adaptive.