This paper examines barriers to cooperation between schools and asylum seeking and asylee families which pedagogues, principals and teachers notice in their everyday work and consider important for their pedagogic action. The theoretical part of the paper pertains to terminological and legal definitions of asylum seeking and asylee families, as well as cooperation between school and family, and gives a systematic overview of scientific evidence in the field of barriers to cooperation of school and family. The aim of the empirical part of the paper was to discover which barriers to cooperation between school and asylum seeking and asylee families, emerging from characteristics of the family, school and context do the school employees perceive and how they interpret the importance of those barriers for establishing high-quality relations between school and family. The research included 12 participants from 5 different schools and the results show that participants consider language to be the biggest barrier in their cooperation with asylum seeking and asylee families. Lack of parental motivation for cooperation and cultural barriers, along with language, were considered to be the most significant in the cluster of barriers emerging from family characteristics; attributes of teachers and inadequate readiness for cooperation with asylum seeing and asylee families were the most relevant barriers in the cluster pertaining to teachers and school, while fear, prejudice and negative impact of media were shown to be most relevant in the cluster of barriers emerging from wider societal circumstances.