Project description
Immigrant parents and the public institutions responsible for civic education
Immigration to Europe has increased over the last ten years. School education, particularly in the public school context, is key to helping new populations integrate into European society. With a focus on the participation of immigrant parents at schools, the EU-funded PARENT_CITIZENS project will uncover the institutional development of parent councils and the participatory interactions of immigrant parents in France, Italy and Spain – countries with the highest number of immigrants. The project will use a mixed-method framework to build a conceptual understanding through qualitative methods which will lead to a representative survey of parent members.
Objective
In the wake of economic, climate, and violent crises throughout the Mediterranean region, Europe has recorded more asylum seekers and immigrants during the past decade than ever before. As these new populations seek to integrate into European society, the following questions arise: are there sufficient institutional sites and resources to civically incorporate these incoming individuals and families? More importantly, what are the appropriate and practically effective institutions to build shared values of tolerance, respect, and citizenship? The purpose of this interdisciplinary project is to investigate the public institution most directly responsible for civic education, public schools, in three of the highest immigrant destination countries in Europe: Italy, Spain, and France. Yet while most European wide civic education initiatives focus on school children, the focus of this study is parent participation on parent councils (assemblee genitori, asociación de padres, conseil des parents d'élèves) at schools. In many nation states throughout Europe, parents have the right and expectation to participate at schools through legally codified parent councils, yet they remain little understood as a vehicle for productive civic integration. This absence in the scholarly literature and European institutional initiatives is surprising given the established finding that schools are the primary public institution where immigrants interface with others and participate civically. In sum, parent councils at public schools are uniquely situated as a civic educational institution and remain nearly absent from citizenship education initiatives in Europe. In an effort to illuminate the viability of parent councils for civic integration, this study utilizes a mixed-method framework to build a conceptual understanding through qualitative methods in the first phases of research which inform a representative survey of parent members in the final phase of the study.
Fields of science
Not validated
Not validated
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
30123 Venezia
Italy