Immigrant education and the makings of a never citizen: The case of Greece

• Author / Creator

  Macris, Vicki

• This thesis delineates a qualitative research approach that investigates immigrant students’ learning and social experiences in Greek state schools. The purpose of this research was to gain deeper insights into the life and learning experiences of immigrant students and to explore the ways in which school level policies meet, or do not meet the schooling needs of immigrant students and improve immigrant education. Moreover, the research seeks to establish if, in fact, such policies are implemented, supported, and enacted. Immigrant students undoubtedly experience marginalization, exclusion, isolation and invisibility in dominant culture-normed schooling environments, while a look at educational practices in public schools reveals that immigrant-receiving societies continue to reflect the values and knowledge of the dominant society or culture (Vedder, Horenczyk, & Liebkind, 2006). The study seeks to find whether or not immigrants, minorities, or marginalized people are given the opportunities required to live a better life in their host country and to receive, at minimum, an education that is equivalent to the education most native students receive. It has increasingly become a social necessity, if not a matter of urgent moral concern in Greek society, to address the educational needs of marginalized immigrant youth who seem to be continuously isolated from public policy, as well as educational policy discourse in Greece. As such, improving the educational experience of immigrant students should be a top policy priority for immigrant receiving countries, especially those experiencing particularly high levels of immigration-related populations. Prioritizing the education of immigrant students may likely yield potential benefits not only to the population of immigrant students who are the focal group under investigation in this study, but to all marginalized and disenfranchised students and youth in Greek society. Improving immigrant students’ opportunities for self-invention and self-efficacy in schools goes far beyond benefiting immigrant students, alone; rather, focusing on immigrant students as a marginalized group might serve as a catalyst to inform and conscientize researchers, educators, policy makers to all marginalized youth, who continue to struggle in one of the most exclusionary systems of public education imaginable.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Immigrant students
  • citizenship
  • citizenship education
  • deliberative democracy
  • interpretive inquiry
  • invisible immigrant
  • critical hermeneutics
  • educational policy
  • reform
  • Greece
  • country of origin
  • Greek Orthodox Church
  • Orthodoxy
  • economy
  • neo-fascism
  • religion
  • liberal democracy
  • nation
  • state
  • nation-state
  • ethnicity
  • interpretive
  • event
  • cultural reproduction
  • translation

• Graduation date

  Fall 2014

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R33X83T80

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.