Education and immigration

It has now been twenty years since Greece became a receiver of immigrants for the first time in the country’s modern history. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since the years when children who spoke no Greek at all began to attend Greek schools. Many of those children have since graduated from secondary education, some with distinction, and entered the labour market or further/higher education. So the time has perhaps come to essay an initial assessment of what happened, and see how ready or otherwise Greek society and state education were for this sea-change. What did we do right, what did we do wrong, and what lessons can be learnt to smooth the integration process for the immigrants of the future?

The “Us and Them – Us as Them” cycle is about immigration, a burning issue throughout Europe. The cycle’s wide-ranging discussions will focus on both the Greek and international dimension of immigration.