Immigration

2091 Words5 Pages

Introduction

Nowadays, it has been observed in several countries that immigrant students do not have an equivalent school performance with their native classmates (Pisa, 2003). This essay is concerning the different school performance of the immigrant and Pontic Greeks students in Greece. The first section of this essay is about the immigration to Greece, and it explores the reasons of the increasing immigration to Greece, the second explores the attitudes of Greeks towards immigration, whereas the next section highlights the racism and xenophobia in Greece’s society. Section four is about the ethnocentric school curriculum in this country, whereas, the next section is about, the differnces of the socioeconomic status and cultural capital towards these two groups of immigrants. Finally, the next two sections are about the intercultural education in Greece and its problems.

Immigration to Greece

Before we go into the procedure of analysis of our topic it is obvious that we should explore the fact of immigration to Greece. The first decades after World War II, a lot of Greeks left their country and they immigrated in many countries such as USA, Canada, Germany and Australia which were more economically developed, because the rates of unemployment and poverty in Greece were extremely high (Katsikas & Politou, 2005), however, Greece nowadays has become a country where many immigrants from different countries arrive, hoping that Greece will offer them the opportunities to have a better life (Triantafyllidoy & Veikou, 2002). The Mediterranean countries have become a magnet for many immigrants replacing the traditional immigration countries like Germany and France (Brenner & Fertig, 2006). Moreover, immigrants in Greece exce...

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...t media, social problems and Greece’s immigrations policy promote the racist attitudes towards immigrants (Hatziprokopiou, 2005).

It is obvious, that the reproduction of the racist beliefs and stereotypes have an effect on school performance. As we have mentioned before, a better reception is granted to Pontic Greeks due to their ‘Greekness’(Triantafyllidoy & Veikou, 2002), as a result, Pontic Greeks students do not have to face racist stereotypes in education, this issue, help us to understand that they have more chances to have a better school performance than the other immigrant students. Of course, Greece’s homogeneity and racist attitudes towards immigrants, are not the only reasons which have an effect on school performance, the next section is about another important reason which guides the differences in school performance, this is the school curriculum.

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