The process of schooling of the refugee children in the Greek schools. The organization Open Cultural Center as a mediator and supporter A research carried out in Central Macedonia’s region, Northern Greece Presented within the European Joint Master’s Degree Program Migration and Intercultural Mediation (Master MIM) By ESPARZA MENGUAL Clara Under the direction of Nathalie Auger and the co-direction of Lourdes Tello (Coordinator of Open Cultural Center) SOME ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank deeply the organization Open Cultural Center for giving me the opportunity to be part of their amazing work in Barcelona and in Greece. I want to thank Didac and Lourdes for having risked everything and having started with this wonderful project in Northern Greece, as well as for dedicating their full time to the people who need it without getting anything back. I want to especially thank Lourdes for facilitating me the work since the first moment and for having trusted me even before knowing me. Thanks to Nathalie for her advices, professionalism and for encouraging me to continue and to improve every time. I want also to thank Lucia for being always available and helpful, for her honesty and sincere recommendations. I would like to thank also all the people who collaborated with this work: the schools and the professionals. I want to thank Andrea for his support and for having been my family when I was abroad, supporting me in the difficult situations. I want to give an especial appreciation to the people from the refugee community, who gave me too much love during the journey, who shared their stories with me and who gift me with very special moments every day, you are the ones from who I learnt the most. An especial thank to my family who always supported and helped me, even if they don’t understand why I do this; also to my friends, especially to Eulàlia for correcting my English and for being the change that the world needs. This work is especially dedicated to the person who taught me how to love in the diversity and to be reactive in front of the unfair situations. In this paper real names have been replaced by initials in order to preserve the anonymity of the people interviewed. No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body you only leave home when home won’t let you stay. no one leaves home unless home chases you fire under feet hot blood in your belly it’s not something you ever thought of doing until the blade burnt threats into your neck and even then you carried the anthem under your breath only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets sobbing as each mouthful of paper made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back. you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land no one burns their palms under trains beneath carriages no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled means something more than journey. no one crawls under fences no one wants to be beaten pitied - Home, WARSAN SHIRE INDEX INTRODUCTION p. 1-2 DEFINING CONCEPTS p. 3-9 Chapter 1: Political and Social Background: The right of access to education for the refugee children p. 11-21 FIRST PART. PRESENTATION OF THE FRAMEWORK AND THE RESEARCH Chapter 2: Description of the field p. 23-26 Chapter 3: Description of the actors p. 27-35 Chapter 4: Objectives and Methodology p. 37-39 SECOND PART. DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS OF THE RESULTS Chapter 5: Results p. 41-98 Chapter 6: Discussion of the Results and Proposals p. 99-110 CONCLUSION p. 111-112 ANNEXES ANNEX I. Interviews p. 1-79 ANNEX II. Participant Observation p. 81-91 ANNEX III. Documents and Graphics of interest BIBLIOGRAPHY INTRODUCTION New approaches about the management of the refugee’s crisis are necessary in order to understand their current situation in their current hosting countries since the arrival of refugees to Europe seems an episode in the history which has been forgotten. The refugee’s crisis knocked in our doors during 2016, when all the media were talking about the humanitarian emergency and the necessity of Europe to give responses to them. But is the refugee’s crisis a topic in crisis? The issue seems to have been delegated to specific countries, the ones that have the biggest number of refugees and one of these countries is, without any doubt, Greece. For a certain period of time, the word refugee was in all the debates, newspapers and informal conversations, and there was a big mobilization of people from every part of Europe who decided to go to help in the camps. The media, the politicians and even the citizens, included this issue in their agenda and there has been a general mobilization in all big cities of people claiming that we wanted them in our countries: Refugees Welcome. Nevertheless, this has been also the moment when ultra right and xenophobic parties have woke up and started claiming slogans and making speeches against the arrival of refugees. But after all this intense episode of change and reflections in Europe, what is going on now? We are part and consequence of the current situation of these people who have been tagged as refugees, and who are still in Europe. There is still a big necessity of implication from the governments and the citizenship. Finding a topic to do a research about the refugees’ community is, unfortunately, still very easy. Talking about refugees’ children, it is also very common, since they are 1 object of the most sensationalist media coverage; they have always been the face of the drama. Nevertheless, in this research what we want to study is a specific case of integration. Concretely, we aim to analyze and discuss here an example of integration through education, in order to claim the basic right to access to education as something that should be homogenous with no distinction of legal status, origin, religion or sex. To do this, we carried out a research in the area of Central Macedonia, Northern Greece, about the process of schooling and attendance to school of refugees’ children who have been relocated in the urban areas of Paionia. We chose to work a case of children who are already having the opportunity to start a new life and to integrate with the local community, hence we aim to study the importance that the role of the school has in their integration, as well as which are the tools that are being used and the ones that are missing. We will therefore use the example of the school as a micro cosmos in order to translate the results to the society in general because we believe that the education, as basic right for all the children, has an essential paper for the better growth and development of the humans, especially uncertain situations like this. In this work we aim to transfer to our audience the idea that there is still work to do regarding the integration of these new arrivals, so there is still a need of awareness and implication of the society. 2 DEFINING CONCEPTS Asylum: Asylum refers to the protection offered by a country to refugees. Asylum- seekers are those who have asked to be recognized as refugees, but whose claims have not yet been accepted or denied.1 Coeducation: This is a term that we found out studying other previous cases. In this sense, coeducation makes reference to a system of education which puts in the nucleus the family and the school. Both are complementary and necessary for the education of a child.2 In our research we will be talking about family and school at the same level, as complementary and necessary actors for the development of the education of a child. We will therefore study the role of the organizations as essential mediators for the communication between these two actors. We will then highlight the importance of the implication of these two actors in the development of the process of schooling of the children. Culture: We consider that it is important to clarify what we understand as culture in this paper, due to the fact that our work will be carried out in an intercultural environment. Especially in our research culture and language will be directly linked since those two concepts are going to be the main problematic for teachers at the time to work with the refugee’s children. 1 UNHCR and Council of Europe, Protecting Refugees, Introduction. Pages 2 – 3 2 GÓMEZ MARTÍN-CARO, Lucía. 2017, Le Droit à l’Éducation des enfants et adolescents réfugiés : Un nouvel échec pour l’Union Européenne en situation de crise ? D’après une étude réalisée dans les zones urbaines au nord de la Grèce. Présenté dans le cadre de Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degree Crossing the Mediterranean Towards Investment and Integration, à Montpellier, France. Page 13 3 Quoting Nathalie Auger, an expert on working with children in multicultural and multilingual environments “It has always been admitted that culture is part of the language and language is part of the culture”.3 We will therefore focus part of our study in the usage of the language into the classrooms by the teachers.