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.
The goal of this research is to find out why the immigrant students have to face more challenges in the level of education they achieve, the high level poverty that they face in their daily lives and all the confusing networks they have around them which they have no clue of how to utilize it. Also, the research focusses on the fewer resources immigrant students have while achieving their goals. The research question is important as it does affect all immigrant students and their respective families and not limited just to the immigrant. I am sure many families move to a different country to achieve better education and to make a brighter future for themselves and their loved ones. These families come with so much hope and faith, but in return they are bombarded with so much confusing information that it’s very easy for them to get lost and give up. At last, children are the future and if from being they don’t have the correct resources then how will they achieve their goals.
Immigration played a large part in public education. With so many children immigrating to America for an education, schools were being packed with students. However, many of these students were not going to school and instead were working in
There are many people that emigrate from and immigrate in Athens. All of them have different reasons, push and pull factors, some of that I will explain in my essay.
Barker, Cyril J. "Who Are the Black Greeks and Why?" New York Amsterdam News. 18 Feb 2010- 24 Feb 2010: 17+. Print.
Society tries to exclude those they find unwanted or undesirable. With the Athenian Polis, it was about controlling citizenship. They were free to work, study, and trade within Athens, but were left out from the rich politician lifestyle. In modern immigrants, the focus is on Mexicans of the United States or North Africans in France, but as Dwyer noted it is far more diverse and complex than that. The number of illegal immigrants is unknown, with around 35 million in the United States to a third of Europe’s
Orfanos, Spyros, ed. Reading Greek America: Studies in the Experience of Greeks in the United States. New York: Pella Publishing Company, 2002.
Firstly to justify why countries limit their immigrations, there should be knowledge of the different types of immigrants as there are different reasons to leave from one country and move into another. In the last 30 years, the number of international immigrants has been estimated 191 million worldwide, two times as before. As ...
The concept diaspora was derived from Greek and means the migration, movement, or scattering of people from their homeland that share the some links or common cultural elements to a home whether real or imagined. The reason why the term ‘diaspora’ is important to understand and is useful because it refers not only because its linked and refers to globalization, linking and connecting place, social consequences of migration, but also, to a form of consciousness and an awareness of home at a more personal level. The feelings, relationships and identities that is often very deeply meaningful to migrants. (Raghuram and Erel, 2014, p. 153 -
...fails to make it, the fault is his or her own. Within the Euroamerican schools, class struggle is regulated; society is neatly stratified. By the end of the decade, an all out war had been declared against bilingual education and educational quality.
Mexican immigration in the early 1900's was a huge issue that impacted the United States. States in areas such as urban population, employment and many other areas. The mass number of Mexican immigrants that migrated to the United States from Mexico were at nearly half million. between the years of 1920 and 1929. Mexicans left their native land and moved to the United States not only to achieve financial prosperity, but to get out of the chaotic environment that Mexico was in at the time due to the Mexican revolution which began in 1910.
Over the years it seems as though our country has become more populated and unsafe from the illegal immigrants and smuggled goods, such as drugs and weapons, which make it into the United States. Although there are many illegal immigrants and contraband that are able to make it into the U.S undetected, there are a significant amount of people and contraband that are caught by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The CBP is a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and was formed in 2003. “It is one of the world’s largest law enforcement organizations and is charged with keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S” (CBP). One of the departments of the CBP is border security, which is a team of individuals that work together to protect our country from “illegal immigrants, narcotics smuggling, and illegal importation” (CBP). Border patrol was established in 1924 and has changed dramatically over the decades. The one aspect that has not changed is “the overall mission to detect and prevent the illegal entry of aliens into the U.S” (CBP). The border patrol is responsible for patrolling the 6,000 miles of Mexican and Canadian land borders and 2,000 miles of coastal waters. According to CBP, “In 2013 420,789 nationwide illegal aliens were apprehended and 2.9 million pounds of drugs were seized.” As one could tell, there is a significant amount of illegal immigrants and smuggled goods coming into the U.S. However, the number of illegal immigrants that have been seized is lower than it has been in the past, but I still believe that having a strong border security is necessary in continuing to keep immigrants from trying to come into the U.S illegally and transporting illegal goods. “The primary goal of bo...
Should immigration into the United States be limited? Immigrants are a large and growing factor in the stubborn level of poverty seen in the United States over the past two decades because newcomers to the country are more likely to be poor and to remain so long than in the past, according to a new study. The report, released today by the Center for Immigration Studies, says the number of impoverished people in the nation's immigrant-headed households nearly tripled from 2.7 million in 1979 to 7.7 million in 1997. During that same period, the number of poor households headed by immigrants increased by 123 percent while the number of immigrant households increased by 68 percent, according to the study. The share of immigrants living in poverty rose from 15.5 percent to 21.8 percent, the report notes, a change that some analysts say holds troubling implications for the nation's future.
Integrating multiculturalism into school education becomes essential in order to achieve equity and relevance of education. Michael Cole (1996) explains the importance of understanding the influence of culture in the development of children. This is due to the fact that culture
...grees with everything I experienced in school which reflected on my performance and participation in school. I don’t think school gives enough attention to multiculturalism education and I believe it is very important to start doing something about it.
Educational achievement is one of the most important factors of a students’ academic journey. Education as a form of secondary socialisation teaches students, the basic norms and values of society and assists in developing their individual identity. In many cases there are contributing issues that not only hinder, but can dramatically affect a child’s educational achievement and development; but also impacts negatively on their childhood experience. These contributing factors consist of a person’s class, their gender and/or their race and ethnicity; which no child has the ability to change at such a young and impressionable age. The issue of race, ethnicity and gender are essentially a part of a person’s genetic design, which is biologically determined and cannot be changed easily. When a child is born they have no control over the social environment they are born into, it is only in later life that they may have the opportunity to develop and gain a greater chance of social mobility within society. The problematic attributes of gender, social class and race/ethnicity, regarding educational achievement and attainments, are a combination of environmental (social constructivism) and biological design (essentialism). This essay will critique how a child can be labelled and/or stereotyped depending on their individual identity construction, including their social class, gender and/or race and ethnicity, which may lead to problematic issues within their personal educational achievement.