Final Report Summary - EDUMIGROM (Ethnic Differences in Education and Diverging Prospects for Urban Youth in an Enlarged Europe) Executive summary:The EDUMIGROM research project aimed to study how ethnic differences in education contribute to the diverging prospects for minority ethnic youth and their peers in multiethnic urban settings. It took departure from recognising that, despite great variations in economic development and welfare arrangements, recent developments seem to lead to similarly constructed disadvantages of certain groups of second-generation immigrants in the western half of the continent and Roma in Central Europe. Formally enjoying social membership with full rights in the respective states, people affiliated with these groups tend to experience new and intensive forms of involuntary separation, marginalisation, social exclusion, and second-class citizenship. By including selected communities and schools in Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, the project explored how existing educational systems, policies, practices, and experiences in markedly different welfare regimes contribute to these processes of 'minoritisation'.Project context and objectives:Across Europe, the past decade has brought about disturbing experiences of the growing importance of ethnicity in producing and reproducing the disadvantaged positions and relative deprivation of people from other than white European backgrounds. It came to light through culturally framed political conflicts - underscored by frequent local clashes - that large groups of people from 'immigrant backgrounds' face dramatic marginalisation in the communities where they live and where many of them were born to; vocal groups of Europe's large Muslim community have made repeated public appeals against the intensifying Islamophobia that rules out earlier attempts at peaceful and trustful cohabitation according to multiculturalist principles and politics; news about the harsh oppression and institutionalised social exclusion of Roma call attention to deep racialised fault-lines in the post-socialist social structures in Central and Eastern Europe; cross-country comparative studies on income and living conditions have found that ethnic minority communities - both East and West - suffer impoverishment and exclusion at substantially higher risks than their compatriots from the majority, furthermore, the long years of economic crisis have turned the impediments of many migrant households into a terminal condition of destitution with no hope for improvement; labour statistics signal rates of unemployment among these same groups that are significantly and constantly above the corresponding indicators for people from the majority, moreover, those from minority backgrounds usually have to face long months and years on the dole with the threat of ultimate marginalisation; finally, the subsequent PISA surveys turned public attention to the origins of the ills of ethno-social differentiation by indicating in measurable terms the striking disadvantages of ethnic minority adolescents in those core skills of reading, comprehension, and basic mathematics that are essential for entering the world of labour with a hope for regular and safe employment and that are also fundamental for meaningful social and political participation.Against this broad context, the research collective set the following objectives:- To develop an integrated investigation into the factors that forge ethnic differences in education and their consequences for the lives of young people in ethnically diverse communities throughout Europe. To this end, a comprehensive conceptual framework had to be elaborated to explain commonalities and potentially different causes and outcomes of the processes of 'minoritisation' and social exclusion of second-generation migrant and Roma youth. Up until now, these cases have been analysed for distinct ethnic groups separately, therefore a set of key concepts grasping similarities and differences in the situational character of being ethnically 'othered' and responding to the implied challenges had to be developed to demonstrate commonalities as well as socio-historically informed differences in ethnicised practices in education and reveal their contribution to marginalisation and social exclusion of urban ethnic youth.- To study in cross-national perspective how everyday interactions in multiethnic urban communities generate distinctive school practices. These were understood in terms of their own complexities as well as part of more encompassing political and distributive structures. Local interethnic confrontations and clashes over and within schools were to be examined in the broader context of variations in interacting ethnic relations, educational policies, and welfare regimes across Europe. It was particularly aimed to understand the processes of status deprivation through ethnicising structural differences and the associated hierarchical implications of cultural diversity. Through a multiculturalist lens, recognition was to be seen in this context as the means to affect powerful inclusion strategies within and beyond education.- To examine how the discourses, patterns, and performances of identity formation among young people are constituted through school practices. It was particularly aimed to gain ample information on models of identity formation among inclusive as opposed to ethnically segregating regimes through insights into everyday socialising practices as parts of the schooling process. The research aimed to reveal how and when ethnic categories become relevant, and these were to be explored with reference to alternative identifications such as gender, class, religion, family background, and peer subculture. Further, special attention was to be paid to variations in reactive identity strategies and their consequences for lifestyles, motivations, and prospects for ethnic minority youth.- To study and compare how educational practices and identity formation contribute to claims on citizenship. The project intended to uncover how educational practices marking and crossing ethnic lines generate incentives to understand and claim citizenship among youth, and how schools themselves become subject of citizenship claims in interethnic contexts. Such claims were considered to be the key to understanding changes in agency, empowerment, and social participation of ethnic minority youth at the stage of completing their compulsory education.- To formulate evidence-based policy recommendations toward the inclusion of often marginalised ethnic youth in and through education. In this context, the research collective put particular emphasis on revisiting the principles of diversity and multicultural citizenship in shaping macro-level policies in education, and also on assessing the (non)inclusion effects of local educational practices, and on feeding this knowledge into decision making over local schooling, and the training and in-service training of teachers, managers and other personnel in education.In order to bring these objectives into fruition, the project was built up of three phases that mobilised a complexity of quantitative and qualitative methods.Project results:Schools as sites of knowledge distribution: departures in performance and advancementEthnic inequalities in students' achievementsIn the course of the past decade, mounting evidence has been accumulated by large-scale surveys about the disadvantages in educational performance and advancement that young people from ethnic minority backgrounds face across Europe. While by now, the facts are generally acknowledged, the causes behind them are widely debated. Some argue that the recorded disparities by ethnicity are nothing else but new manifestations of the age-old divisions by social class; others identify insensitivity of European schools as the source of enforcing an Eurocentric cultural domination that marginalises ethnic minority students by its very nature; yet another group of scholars and policy-makers apply a human rights perspective and reveal the manifold manifestations of discrimination as the major source of the hindrances that ethnic minority students are confronted with in education.Diverging pathways of advancementObviously, there are no one-to-one relations between the attained performances that grading measures and students' actual advancement. There are a number of important considerations put on the table of deliberations before families make the ultimate choice about where their children should go next, what the most appropriate type of school would be to select, and how to make sure that the choice fits longer-term plans. By facing the compound of their own and their parents' plans and aspirations, the perceived expectations of kin and the neighbourhood, the attractions of their friends, the orientations of their teachers, and, above all, the given limitations dictated by their conditions at school and in the community, all the pros and cons are to be assessed. Ultimately these difficult considerations have to be translated into a definite choice: should one try in a strong faraway highschool with hoping for a precious diploma but with the foreseeable burden of day-and-night working and utter solitude? Or, should one attend the neighbourhood's technical highschool providing a graduate certificate that qualifies at best for college attendance but that secures an additional three-four years of youthful enjoyment? Or, should one choose a track or school in the close proximity that offers a vocation without an academic certificate but entails the promise of a relatively early entrance to gainful employment? Or else, should one suspend school attendance as such - or at least, to do so for a while - with a hazy outlook but temporary relief from academic obligations (though with obvious implied risks for the future) and with the dubious freedom to take up any kinds of work on offer?Schools as sites of socialisation: interethnic relations and the shapinf of adolescent identityBy looking at everyday life at school and inquiring students about the values and expectations that drive them in shaping relations with their peers, the EDUMIGROM project provided new insights into how interethnic relations are affected partly by the structural conditions that work as 'givens' for mixing versus separation, partly by those experiences of practices and routines of distinction that contribute to the early cognisance of 'being inescapably different' and that thus invoke self-protective responses that often point toward ethnic insularism. This picture was complemented by listening to the voices of teachers as respected adult authorities in the school environment whose attitudes, notions, and relating have outstanding impact on moulding the opinions, values, and aspirations of their teenage students from minority backgrounds.Interethnic peer relationsConsidering that, besides family, school is perhaps the most important scene of socialisation of adolescent youth, the studying of peer relations and friendships as formative in terms of basic social values, identity formation, and general attitudes took a central stage in the EDUMIGROM project. Forms of togetherness were mapped by classroom observations and ethnographic work in youth communities, while personal experiences were brought up through interviews and focus group discussions.The research found that young people's ethnic background and the historically shaped traditions of majority/minority relations in their country have a strong impact on the intensity and quality of interethnic relations. Deeply ingrained in their relating by the prevailing ethno-social fault-lines in society-at-large, it is majority students in particular in the Central European countries who expressed the greatest reservations towards engaging in meaningful contacts with their Roma peers: they stood out (negatively) with respect to the frequency of interethnic activities as well as they expressed the highest level of refusal of interethnic friendship or partnership when they were asked about their considerations influencing such choices. This was not the case for students in the western communities where - despite prevalent inequalities, prejudices, and trends of 'minoritisation' - multiculturalism is a widely accepted governing value of interethnic cohabitation and where the prevailing democratic patterns seemed to be reflected in a more receptive relating to ethnic 'otherness' from both ends. However, friendships and forms of togetherness were deeply affected by social class relations that often proved more important than the actual cultural backgrounds of the interacting ethnic groups.In the communities in countries with a post-colonial history it appeared that the importance of neighbourhood affiliation clearly oversteps that of ethnic belonging. Both in France and the United Kingdom students readily referred to their neighbourhoods when distinguishing themselves, which was most frequently symbolised by their dress style and preference for certain music. Major factors behind the formation of peer-group relations were somewhat different in the multiethnic urban communities inhabited mostly by the descendants of labour migrants (Germany, Sweden, and Denmark). Residential segregation of migrants is a dominant pattern in these localities and ethnic separation is further reinforced by the schools where one hardly finds students from a majority background. As a result, the chance for meaningful and enduring interethnic friendships is rather limited. In Sweden, it is not ethnic background as such, but rather the experience of 'not being Swede' that stands as an important foundation for closer relations in the community, regardless of the country of origin. When asked, none of the adolescents from minority backgrounds said they had any 'Swedes' in their circle of friends or acquaintances. However, it was underscored that the immediate community provided enduring and efficient protection against discrimination. Young people identified strongly and positively with the neighbourhood they lived in: they felt good and comfortable about having relations with people sharing the same experiences. Neighbourhood was described not only as a residential area, but as a social world that was often similar to the one migrants (or their families) used to live in back in their country of origin.Not all ethnic minority students felt, however, confident or expressed pride regarding their residence in an ethnic neighbourhood. In the Danish case a group of adolescent, mainly girls with mixed ethnic identities, eloquently argued for distancing themselves from troublesome immigrants and the neighbourhood they lived in. Still, a tendency for social groupings to follow ethnicity, or distinguishing their companions in terms of 'majority as opposed to minority belonging' was more than evident in their cases, as well.In contrast to experiences of migrants in the western communities, the vast majority of whom positively identified and felt comfortable about living in a predominantly ethnic minority environment, Roma in the Central European countries, with a few exceptions, perceived their position in terms of exclusionary ethnic divides that evidently existed and was forced on them by the majority society. It became obvious from the in-depth interviews that the lack of interethnic relationships is less an issue of residential segregation than a matter of ethnic distancing on the side of those from the majority.The differing experiences were tellingly reflected in the weight that adolescents in the various countries attached to the perceived importance of ethnicity in their everyday relations. In post-colonial countries neither majority nor minority students considered ethnicity as an important factor in forming friendships; in countries of economic migration there was a small gap in the responses between majority and minority students (minorities considering it relatively insignificant but somewhat more important compared to their majority peers); and in the post-socialist communities both minority and majority students valued the presumed ethnicity of the potential friends and partners as an important factor. The personal testimonies highlighted the effects of sharp ethnic separation in these latter cases: Roma students were often denied having any meaningful relations with peers from the majority and experienced frequent betrayals and outward rejections by their 'white' fellows at school. Most of them were also aware of and talked about severe stigmatisation driven by deep-seated negative stereotypes of their ethnic majority peers (and also adults).Ethnic composition of the school and its smaller units: the class or the study group proved to be another important factor influencing the extent and quality of interethnic relationships and, more generally, tolerance towards classmates with different ethnic background. This is a core issue since students have their first in-depth experiences about the 'other' at school. Hence, schools may - willingly or unintentionally - greatly influence interethnic relationships and the formation of sensing the self, including one's ethnic identity. Our cross-country study demonstrated that school structures and policies based on ethnic mixing versus separation create conditions that are importantly impacting experiences of cooperation across ethnic boundaries and that have great significance in the formation of friendships based on mutual cultural understanding and shared activities.A powerful finding of the research was the difference between the three country groups representing various traditions of interethnic relations in how ethnic composition of the school and the class environments affect interethnic activities and preferences in making friends. While peer-group relations of students attending segregated schools and classes in the Central European communities differed to a great extent from those of students in ethnically mixed or majority school environments, differences along the same divide were not identifiable in the two post-colonial countries and were only minor in Germany, Denmark and Sweden. It is important to note that the worst environments in terms of interethnic contacts seemed to be those where separation of students along ethnic lines was practiced within the walls of the school: that is, where students of various ethnic backgrounds were separated into parallel streams and classes. Students attending schools with a dominantly ethnic majority student body demonstrated the smallest degree of openness towards diversity.Our research findings support the assumption that an ethnically mixed school environment significantly enhances acceptance of the 'other' - be it defined in social or ethnic terms. At the same time, an ethnically homogeneous environment deprives adolescents from experiencing the 'other'. Besides impoverishing the content and quality of peer-relations this way, the arising fears from the unknown further supply the need for keeping distance from those who are conceived as 'strangers'.Ethnic minority students in their teachers' eyesThe positions taken by the teachers on the issues of ethnic diversity at school showed a certain convergence across countries. In spite of the national particularities of different welfare regimes, immigration histories, and formal conditions, or of the ethnic compositions in the different countries, the research found the same problem sources addressed by the teachers who were interviewed in the selected schools. Such a convergence followed from a widely shared attitude: for the most part, teachers considered it a 'problem' to teach and educate students from other than majority background, or more accurately, from backgrounds that fit the prevailing social and cultural norms. This problem-oriented attitude was reflected in the list of complains that came up with the highest frequency: ambivalences around ethnic separation in schools; the affects of 'white flight'; lowering standards and issues of the evolving 'island culture'; difficulties in working with ethnic minority parents; teachers' undue political responsibility in modelling and shaping interethnic relations at large.The research found that, in spite of the fact that different policies for the integration of minority youths have been followed in the studied countries, there was an overwhelming perception among many teachers that these integration efforts were illusionary, and that educational separation along the lines of the majority/minority population groups was a fact of school life. The extent to which teachers saw within-school ethnic separation a by-product of streaming varied among the communities. However, in most cases, it was simply taken for granted or perceived as an unavoidable outcome. Our interviewees rarely considered the opportunity that teachers and school management could be active agents in the process of integration. It was the case especially in the studied Central European communities that the norm of integration remained an abstract idea and strong segregating mechanisms evolved to prevent any change. In the western countries, the teachers either stressed that special classes were only built on purpose in order to foster educational integration (like in the shape of preparatory classes), or they refused to apply segregating practices, and thus implicitly - or maybe just officially - confirmed the aim of integrating minority students through education - even when the situation in their schools belied this notion. After all, cases of factual ethnic separation within the walls of the school were frequently identified across the countries, although these appeared to have been caused by mechanisms of choice (as opting for occupational streams in French secondary schools), or due to a distinct educational agenda that was chosen to be followed (like in the voluntarily separated Muslim schools in Denmark or Germany).The flight of better-off families was something that teachers feared - and had to cope with - in all schools with a considerable share of ethnic minority students from less privileged family backgrounds. The difficulty of teaching many students from weak socio-economic backgrounds was reflected upon throughout the interviews, and the fact that resourceful parents tended to remove their children from a school with too many ethnic minority students was likewise described to be a problem in all cases. A common opinion among the teachers was that teaching in a school with many students from poor families makes their work extremely hard and calls for special measures, including the rendering of additional financial resources. This experience of the study underlines that teachers feel they get too little support in terms of finances to cope with what they feel to be an additional hardship. In addition to the ample material conditions, the lack of political support was widely criticised as well.The school staff, whether head teachers, teachers, or teaching assistants, described more or less the same problematic habitual behavioural patterns of students to be the characteristics of the 'minority ethnic' schools or classes: a low capacity for concentration during class, loudness, hyper-active behaviours, immediate expressions of personal views and feelings, that is, a general lack of discipline. As these disturbances mount, the teachers adapt their expectations. It was found that most of them tend to tolerate minor transgressions that would be sanctioned in 'normal' school situations (e.g. shouting in classes, interrupting teachers and fellow students, bad language), but react harshly to more serious activities (like physical assaults, thefts, drug abuse). What the teachers described - yet again with great concordance across countries - as a lowering of their standards was not restricted to the students' social behaviour. They also admitted having reduced the teaching content in order to cope with the particular situation in this setting. Curriculum content was cut to the utmost minimum, just to make sure that the students succeed in proceeding to the next grade. Concurrently, most of the teachers who worked in such an educational environments showed great frustration over this problem. According to their personal testimonies, usually too much effort is invested into the students' socially disadvantaged situations, leaving too little time and space for increasing their knowledge in the taught subjects, or for improving their skills further.A result of this adjustment is the development of an'island culture' that was found in many of these schools: ethnic minority students feel safe and comfortable because they are not marginalised there; teachers tend to expect less from them so that even weak students may experience a certain level of success which they might not have elsewhere - at least that seems to be a fear among students. These troubled developments were articulated in most pronounced forms in the French, German, and Swedish cases. Teachers' accounts revealed that even high-achievers among the students are hesitant to leave the confines of their socially detached context. They fear a confrontation with the majority society because they expect (more) discrimination but they also expect to be unable to meet the requirements. It was also a widely shared experience among teachers that, at the same time, peer pressure within the 'island culture' contributes to limiting social mobility aspirations: those striving for a break-through through investment into learning are viewed rather negatively by their classmates, while the most undisciplined and oppositional students tend to have the upper hand as far as power relations among peers are concerned, and these relations gain an ethnic twist. This tendency is also gendered: although girls from the ethnic minority groups tend to perform better than their male peers, their upward mobility aspirations are (even) lower. Such differences in learning motivation and a lack of role models were described by many of the interviewed teachers to be significant in limiting students' aspirations and school success. In this context, they reflected on the positive experiences of ethnic mixing: if teachers from an ethnic minority background were part of the staff, they not only helped to unstrain interethnic tensions, but provided cherished role models for ethnic minority students for a successful breaking out, and thereby offered an alternative option to the destructive tendencies of the 'island culture'.Beside the work within the walls of the school, it is cooperation between teachers and families that could, in principle, provide support for ethnic minority students to catch up and also to make steps toward a future based on successful inclusion. However, the research found severe problems in this segment of school life. Teachers in schools with a high representation of minority students shared the view that the parents of the 'problematic' students are insufficiently involved in their children's educational careers. The reasons for this were seen on many different levels, and reactions from the schools differed as well. While some teachers attributed the virtual absence of their students' parents from school life to a lack of abilities in the first place, others perceived it as a sign of a lacking consciousness of the importance of parental engagement that generally characterises socio-economically weak families. A common opinion among teachers seemed to be that poorly-skilled parents tend to have either no or very unrealistic expectations concerning their children's school careers, and that they would really not know what is required by the school. Since many of the concerned parents themselves either not enjoyed much schooling, or - in the case of immigrants - went to school in countries where traditional concepts of authority may see the teacher (and only the teacher) in charge of all school matters, criticisms over parents' habitus, their knowledge, and their culturally informed role concepts were conflated in these problem assessments as factors influencing the availability of poor parental support. For many teachers, the notion of ethnic minorities' 'cultural otherness' thus comprised a number of negative judgements, even derogative aspects. The key narrative around cultural diversity was that of the 'different worlds' among which the children move. In all the countries teachers expressed with this phrase their view that the school symbolises something very different from minority students' home environments, yet there seemed to be a certain East-West divide in terms of what moral judgment was implied in the concept of 'cultural difference'. While some of the teachers stressed that minority families' economic hardships and poor educational background were the major causes behind parents' low participation in school activities, others referred to a 'culture of poverty' in the background, yet others saw habitual factors - like a different pedagogical agenda, or expectations about the role of school versus that of parents - as the main source of the problem. It was simply expected without exceptions and reservations that parents should support their children by assisting them with homework, attending the parents' evenings, and meeting the teacher at least once in a term to talk about the child's achievements and future. If they failed to do so, it tended to be treated as their own fault. Interviews with parents testified this troubled relationship with the school from their own end: it was a general complaint that teachers look down at them and are too ready to shift all responsibilities on the home. Additionally, they do not invest into relations of mutual trust, instead, call on them only if 'problems' are experienced.Experiences of unjust treatment, discrimination and 'othering'It was a general experience of the research that, although students are certainly aware of discrimination and many already have been targets to such conducts, the school is most typically sensed as a safe place. Most interviewed students from ethnic minority backgrounds thought that they were in more safety in their schools than they were in the broader society, and that their teachers were fairer than adults of the majority in general. Seventy-one per cent of the students responding the survey questionnaire mentioned that they experienced some kind of discrimination in their life, but they least frequently pointed to their teachers' engagement in such deeds. Most typically, it was peers who were reported behaving in a discriminative manner, followed in frequency by adult actors outside the schools. Along the line of gender, significant differences were found: boys more frequently reported being unequally treated at school than girls (26 versus 18 per cent), while girls experienced insults more often from their peers than boys did. According to the repeated accounts of teachers (that are also supported by the pedagogical literature), male ethnic minority students often behave in challenging ways in the classroom, engage in creating a certain counter-culture of resistance, and thus cause teachers to view them as 'problem' students.Perceived unfairness of teachers does leave its imprints on students' attitudes toward the school and more generally, towards studying. The research demonstrated that it is poorly performing students in the first place who give frequent accounts of discrimination, and the association between one's assessed achievement and perceiving of discrimination is particularly strong at the Central European sites. The explanation appears to be rather obvious: in countries where pedagogical traditions based on discipline, hierarchical relations, and frontal teaching prevail, teachers are more inclined to express their overall assessment about students' behaviour with the 'labels' of numeric grading than their colleagues working in more relaxed and - in general - more democratic environments where numeric assessments are routinely used with the sole purpose of measuring achievements of academic performance.Additionally, through the accounts of Roma students in Central European countries, the qualitative studies brought up a wide range of examples of regular and severe discrimination and openly prejudiced and even racist remarks of teachers, peers, and others in the close surroundings. Still, interviews with students' and parents' showed that Roma adolescents often did not interpret such behaviour as being discriminated against but as something that is a regular, and therefore 'natural, concomitant of daily life. While the British, French, Swedish and Danish school staff seemed to be very conscious about the role of the teachers in managing conflicts and injuries arising from troubled interethnic relationships, their Central European colleagues declared that this was not their duty. In all four Central European countries students gave account of cases of racially driven harassments (oral or physical) among students not being punished by teachers at all. The interviews with teachers suggested that they usually did not even voice these confrontations. When referring to racist or prejudiced incidents among students, most of them thought that the school was not about changing cultural habits and presumptions (though they thought it otherwise if the 'perpetrators' were Roma students). Sometimes, even worse, teachers themselves reproduced the anti-Gypsy attitudes and prejudice by routinely making humiliating comments with racialised contents.The situation in the western communities and schools proved rather different, while, of course, great variations were observed also among them. In France, young people reported having very few experiences of racism. Students abstained from portraying themselves as victims of 'othering' and were very circumspect in their answers to direct questions regarding their personal experiences of being discriminated against due to their ethnicity. Criminalisation is one of the worst and most oppressing forms of racist perception. Characterising people living in ethnic slums as 'deviants' were frequently found in the Central European communities, though similar manifestations of depreciating views were encountered also in certain western urban ghettos (in particular in Sweden). In the United Kingdom, it was found that Blackness was symbolically threatening due to its assumed association with a drug culture and the involved crime. As a consequence of such perceived danger, young people from Caribbean and other Black backgrounds were frequently humiliated by being avoided or shunned in public spaces. In Denmark and France criminality was more linked to certain neighbourhoods, and through this it was associated indirectly with minority or migrant backgrounds.A special form of discrimination is the lack of recognition of the right for difference. The most salient manifestation of this is when people are devalued for openly showing their religious or cultural identity. According to their testimonies, Muslim students and their parents often experienced unfair treatment and discrimination due to their faith and traditions: schools and teachers tended to refuse tolerating the displaying of religious symbols or the observance of Islam behavioural rules and habits. Several Muslim girls gave account of disputes at school because of wearing their headscarves. Parents in our German and Danish sites protested against the schools' putting a pressure on their children to break the rules of their ethno-religious community by forcing participation in extracurricular activities that are arranged in a culturally insensitive way of domination and against their own principles. Students in these communities criticised their teachers for not showing any intention to enter into open discussion about religious and cultural values important for Muslims in their everyday life, instead just wanting to make clear their own perspective.Identity models and strategies of identity formationBy exploring the dynamics how adolescents from ethnic minority backgrounds view themselves and define their positions through various models of identity development, the EDUMIGROM project aimed to gain insights into how the structural conditions of daily life, the frequent experiences of being distinguished as the 'Other', and the involved latent or manifest conflicts around 'minoritisation' affect young people's aspirations and their visions about the attainable adult positions, and how early cognisance of 'otherness' figures out in their strategies for identifying with certain groups while distinguishing themselves from others.A set of background circumstances characterising students' families (socio-economic and educational background, different family forms and ways of life, relation to religion and traditions, language use, embeddedness in the local community and the broader environment) were taken into account as having potential impact on the construction of ethnic identity. It was assumed that identity models mediated by the immediate environment, especially by the parents, can be analysed in terms of ethnicity; and vice versa, ethnic identity should be understood as being related to other social identities, derived from all sorts of circumstances. As against presupposing fixed and stable ethnic identities, inherited or acquired by birth, the research focused on the process of identity formation. Ethnic identity was not understood in and of itself as a prescribed 'given', instead, its relational aspects and its constructed nature were underscored, mainly by showing how personal experiences contribute to the formation of sensing the self. Speaking about adolescents, the essentially unfinished nature of identities acquired special significance, consequently many of the questions regarding identity formation aimed at eliciting responses regarding their future plans and aspirations. In dealing with minority existence, facing and reacting to tough experiences and offences, like stereotype-threats, stigmatising attitudes, and discriminatory practices, constituted important elements of our inquiry.'Ghetto-life'Ghettos as residential areas forcefully separated along ethnic lines are characteristically populated by extended families, where parents are mostly uneducated and do menial jobs. Due to limited educational and employment opportunities and the marginalised status of the inhabitants, these 'socially excluded localities' show a high concentration of social problems, like poverty and unemployment. Life in the ghetto is characterised by permanence, yet a great deal of instability. The future appears unpredictable and impossible to control by will. It is precisely insecurity and the lack of anything solid to hold on to that, precluding the possibility of having ambitions or making plans for the future, which condition a general sense of immovability. Simply, there is no way out. Thus, ghettos have a particular propensity to reproducing low and excluded social status, including educational disadvantages. Due to its marginalised status, the ghetto society lacks in interest enforcing capacities and thus depends on outside agencies of help, the influence of which is usually insufficient. Destitution and experiences of refusal by the majority society result in a conflict-ridden life within the ghetto, marked by distrust and envy, rather than a sense of belonging together. If there are any feelings of being different, these, at best, function as a source of compensatory self-esteem, and are played out against fellow ghetto dwellers. As a result of the deterioration of community life, adherence to traditions or ethnic consciousness does not thrive in the ghetto. Thus, conventional ethnic markers, like language, customs or religion, have only very limited significance if at all. Instead of communal ties, feelings of not belonging anywhere dominate. The socio-ethnic division from the surrounding society becomes reinforced as the symbolic structures and representations - conveying experiences of dispossession and depreciation - are incorporated to form the core of identities. The coercive means of holding a collective together result in a kind of weak self-determination that fails to produce positive self-esteem. Still, in the face of outside threat, the ghetto community, in particular the extended family, may function as a protective shield. The lack of future prospects also enhances the importance of family values and expectations (like marital rules or those related to gender-specific career choices), so that eventually many among the ghetto youth decide to stay in the familiar environment and continue with the way of life seen in the family.Consequently, even though a product of negative conditions, some level of group cohesion and common values do exist in the ghetto. The supportive network of the family and the role models provided by the immediate environment help young people in coping with difficulties and orienting in life. Compensatory self-esteem, developed in reaction to hardship and humiliation but also incorporating elements of the accumulated knowledge, passed down by elder generations, concerning the ways of survival in the ghetto, comprises the germs of what could become, in more favourable circumstances, a sort of ethnic pride. The best examples for the state of affairs characterising ghettos are provided by the countries of post-socialist transformation: the Roma minority, representing the largest ethnic group in this region is probably the most disadvantaged and destitute minority group in our sample. At the same time, certain post-colonial minorities, like Algerians in France or Caribbean in the United Kingdom, also manifest the symptoms described above.'Ethnic (or religious) pride'By contrast, when separation from the majority society occurs on a voluntary basis, self-enclosure of the community correlates with ethnic or religious consciousness, and differences on such basis are filled with mostly positive contents. This is the case with well-settled immigrant minorities the members of which manage to achieve favourable social and housing conditions and respect, or at least tolerance, of the majority without giving up their collective identity. In fact, it is precisely owing to their ability to utilise communal resources that the residents of these typically metropolitan neighbourhoods can thrive. Like in the ghetto, extended families are also characteristic here, however - as opposed to the lack of family planning - high fertility is rather the result of accommodation to ethno-cultural or religious norms. The family represents not only the basic element of community life and a socially desirable model and a resource of cultural and social capital for the young generation, but also an important economic unit, as indicated by the high ratio of family-run businesses. While also producing for outside markets, the economic profile of these neighbourhoods, especially in terms of employment, is marked by self-reliance. The overall impact of economic demands and community expectations supports gender distinctions: small enterprises are managed by men, while the female members of the family usually work there as assistants. As a consequence, while education is usually valued highly by the parents wishing for a better future for their children, attitudes towards schooling differ in the case of boys and girls. As girls gain less support and opportunities for self-development, they are especially prone to adopt a broader perspective of the future, involving some degree of detachment of the original community.The particularly strong sense of solidarity and group cohesion characterising these minorities that manage to get on relatively well is manifested in a variety of forms including family enterprises, peer networks, religious congregations, or schools managed by the community. As for education, integration into the school system of the majority is also welcome as a way of advancement. It is important to note that in an accepting and tolerant society allowing for multiple attachments, communal solidarity remains high, while negative influences from outside tend to result in severing the ties to the group of origin. While acknowledging the essentially voluntary nature of the adoption of group identity and the positive contents it involves, the moment of coercion should not be dismissed here. At least in part, positive group identity is produced as a reaction to external pressures, represented by anti-immigration policies and majority attitudes. This kind of responsiveness also indicates that these communities possess significant means to protect themselves and are thus much less vulnerable than ghetto populations. Furthermore, membership in the community does not only depend on individual will but, to some extent, is coerced by certain self-disciplining mechanism of the community. Thus, expectations of the family and the larger community exercise pressure on individuals, and group membership becomes posited as the guarantee of making a decent life in the future. In this sense, beyond representing an attribute of personal identities, 'ethnic pride' should be interpreted as a collective response to a particular situation or group status that may be regarded either as a transitory state in terms of social integration or as a relatively permanent solution reflecting the ideal of a multicultural mosaic society.Typical candidates for this category are Muslim minorities in Western European cities, in case of the EDUMIGROM study, those in Germany, Denmark, or France. In such religiously based communities ethnicity and language also are important factors of identification but religious faith and belonging seems to override other types of community ties. The growing distrust and hostility affecting Muslims in the West heighten a sense of group cohesion and solidarity, while leaving ruptures within the community caused by modernising influences unseen. Although usually not based on religious foundations, some Roma families, typically living in ethnically mixed neighbourhoods, having training in certain respected vocations and a history of continuous employment in esteemed working class occupations, also represent this category.'Being excluded'The state of being excluded resembles, in many ways, that developed in ghettos. It also involves forced separation from the majority society and the creation of deteriorated urban neighbourhoods which, however, are distinguished from the surroundings on social grounds, while ethnicity does not play a significant role in the composition of the neighbourhood. The main identifying markers of such collectives are poverty, destitution, and low social status. Alongside social pressures, like the lack of education or the absence of employment opportunities, the origin of these typically urban slums has to do with administrative and policy measures leading to the uneven territorial distribution of resources, including the whole range of public services, and also education and employment opportunities. As a consequence, residential areas devoid of essential means for individual and collective development come into being and continue to exist owing to a downward spiral of social decline reproducing inequalities. The severe socio-economic disadvantages of families become reinforced by cultural projections expressing aversion on the part of the majority society, so that, as a consequence, marginalised collectives are driven virtually below the social hierarchy, which is reflected by the quasi-extra-legal status of inhabitants. Segregation is experienced in all walks of life, including education, although not on ethnic grounds but due to the stigmatisation of poverty and the associated ways of life, involving competitiveness and conflicts, the struggling for scare resources, rather than mutuality and cooperation.Given the lack of common cultural grounds and group cohesion, as well as due to the complex family formations and unruly patterns and practices of community life, individuals born into such circumstances develop weak and uncertain identities which are informed, to a large extent, by experiences of discrimination and marginalisation. The awareness of stigmatisation, exclusion, and discrimination is high among them, leading to a sense of shame or even self-hatred. While ethnicity is not thematised, inter-ethnic differences easily become stereotyped with reference to negative prejudices. Instead of multiple attachments, characterising people who manage to develop ethnic pride, the position of people 'in exclusion' and their relations to their environment are characterised by amassed experiences of expulsion and the lack of positive ties. The resulting identities are unstable, effectively situational and reactive in character, and negative in their effects. The chaotic background of the children predestines them for low educational performance and very limited perspectives regarding future education necessary for obtaining a better life. As a response, just like ghetto children, most of them entertain futile hopes of getting away, either to a distant place in the same country representing great expectation, or to the country of origin embodying nostalgic yearning, or maybe a third country standing for utopian desires.Examples to situations of 'being excluded' could be found, primarily, in the studied French, British and, to a lesser extent, the Danish and Swedish communities that had emerged in urban segments with high proportions of recently arrived immigrants. Some ethnically mixed neighbourhoods in deteriorated and economically collapsed Central European cities, where the common denominator of inhabitants is deep poverty and social exclusion, also fit this paradigm.'Assimilationism / cosmopolitanism'Neither traditionalism, nor poverty determines the lives of minority adolescents whose families managed to avoid, or break out from, ghettos or slums and establish a decent working-class or lower middle-class lifestyle on their own, without having to rely on the extended family network or the support of the original community. The parents are usually much better educated than minority adults in the other categories, yet their educational attainment still falls short of reaching a correspondingly high position or at least the average standard of living of the majority society. Closing remarks: Multiculturalism revisitedOn an overall balance, the EDUMIGROM research painted a rather gloomy picture about the lives, opportunities, and future perspectives of ethnic minority adolescents in Europe. Our findings revealed that the prevailing systems of schooling work toward producing and maintaining their disadvantages in access to quality education while tend to devalue their performance on cultural grounds and consequently divert their paths in advancement. Furthermore, minority students' daily life at school proved to be deeply imbued by extensive practices of 'othering' that lead to frequent endangerment of their identity development while concurrently render a powerful institutionalisation of curtailed notions and patterns of inclusionary citizenship. Whether looked at through the lens of institutional structures in education, or through the lessons drawn from their accumulated life experiences, young people from second-generation migrant and Roma backgrounds share a common fate of being marked with labels carrying dubious associations and implications for coming from 'other' settings than most people - the majorities - around them.Potential impact:EDUMIGROM research with the multiplicity and complexity of its approaches and methodologies as well as its interdisciplinary nature, provides knowledge, analytical tools, research method innovations, and comparative lessons that may contribute to developing evidence-based knowledge in a number of policy areas such as educational policy, youth policy, social inclusion and anti-discrimination.1. Impact on local communities, civil society, general publicCountry specific results have been widely disseminated and exploited to raise awareness on key issues investigated by the project such as manifestations, causes and consequences of ethno-social differentiation and segregation; factors influencing educational success or failure for youth studying in ethnically dense schools; the perception of causes and consequences of educational success or failure by the various actors of the educational process (students, parents, teachers and stakeholders); the role of education and school environment in the formation of identity and future aspirations; success and failures of policies for inclusion etc.2. Impact on the policy making communityThe EDUMIGROM collective has been dedicated to the task of disseminating results and research experiences extensively with policy making bodies and individual experts on local, country specific and European level alike. In consonance with this understanding EDUMIGROM as a consortium as well as individual researchers have been intensively involved in various activities targeting the policy making community. The first occasion to share knowledge was after the first phase of the EDUMIGROM project, when considerable comparative knowledge had been collected on the state of the art, on statistics and on country specific policies targeting education of ethnic minority youth. Later, when the project started to produce its own empirical data and analyses, EDUMIGROM findings provided policy relevant in-depth understanding of processes that are in the heart of education of minorities, i.e. mechanisms of differentiation and segregation, factors influencing attendance of schools and aspirations towards post-compulsory schooling, possible causes of frequent early drop-out and truancy, dynamics at and outside the school which facilitate the situation of ethnic minority students or contrarily, which hamper their performance and future aspirations. Some of the main outreach activities are outlined below that offer major impact on both country-specific and international policy development:Country specific policy communityThe EDUMIGROM collective has been successful in reaching and consulting governmental policy making bodies and some concrete examples follow:The leader of the German EDUMIGROM team, Sabine Mannitz has been appointed to contribute to the 2011 Peace Expertise with an article on immigration and integration in the EU. The annual Peace Expertise which is delivered by the leading Peace and Conflict Research Centres in Germany is a major instrument of political consulting and public policy education. It is presented in the Federal Press Conference in Berlin (Bundespressekonferenz, founded by the German Parliament to organise press conference with leading representatives from politics, economics, and culture), and in several committees of the German Parliament, and a minimum of two conferences are held each year to spread its analyses.European policy communityContacts with EDUMIGROM have been sought by the EU's Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), and possibilities of cooperation and data sharing are being discussed in connection with a Roma survey taking place in spring / summer of 2011 in 11 Member States. The survey will try to measure discrimination and inequalities in different areas of life of the Roma population, including education.3. Impact on the academic audience, scientific communityThe EDUMIGROM collective has put together a rich assemblage of new quantitative and qualitative data reflecting upon a wide range of issues in a comparable way. The best possible access to data, organised information and analytical results have been provided for academic purposes both within the participating countries and on an international level. Final results born in different phases of the project will continue to be widely disseminated and exploited to inform further research and assist policy development both within the participating countries and on a European level. One ongoing mechanism for this is the maintenance of the project website, which has so far proved to be a very useful tool in reaching a wide audience: for instance, in the one-month follow-up period after the closing International Conference, the EDUMIGROM site received over 1 100 visits, out of which 687 were new visitors. Most traffic came from sites referring to EDUMIGROM, as well as via general search engines. The most sought after content was the project's working papers and policy briefs, as well as the general concepts and methodology that the initiative was based on. The largest number of visits came from Hungary, Denmark, the United Kingdom, France and the United States of America. A number of visitors from all other EDUMIGROM target countries also perused the site. The EDUMIGROM collective plans to continue utilising this tool to reach counterparts from both the scientific and policy community.Academic publicationThe project has produced a great number of classical academic articles published in refereed academic journals both in the domestic and in the international arena. As the project involved senior as well as early-career scholars, teams paid special attention to encouraging the publication activities of both junior and senior colleagues. EDUMIGROM has published 21 scholarly publications: 5 comparative papers, 2 occasional papers, 8 community studies, 6 survey studies and 14 background papers. Researchers of the consortium have produced altogether over 40 academic publications on EDUMIGROM research, out of which 32 were published in the lifetime of the project and some 13 publications are being produced after the lifetime of the project with almost an equal distribution between international English language academic periodicals and local academic journals. There have been due contributions by all country teams. Academic eventsBesides widespread publication activities researchers of the consortium extensively participated and disseminated EDUMIGROM knowledge at various academic events (conferences, symposia, other fora). The detailed participation list in academic events in extensive and reported in a different format. During the lifetime of the project, colleagues have taken part in over 100 events within their scientific communities, in almost every country in Europe and in the United States. EDUMIGROM foreground will further be disseminated at a minimum of 18 further public events in 2011 and 2012. As examples of group / collective participation, EDUMIGROM has organised several project-specific individual panels at high prestige international conferences with three to five presentations on the country specific and comparative results of the research.Teaching, educationKnowledge collected during this comparative, interdisciplinary and multi-method research has been widely used in tertiary education. Most of the researcher of the consortium held courses in their home universities incorporating EDUMIGROM's findings and methods into their curriculum. Courses, workshops and seminars for students in tertiary education (undergraduate, graduate as well as post-graduate levels) were held at Central European University, Budapest (Hungary; language of studies: English); in the University of Copenhagen (Denmark); in the University of Poitiers (France), in the University Victor Segalen, Bordeaux 2 (France); in the Ecole des Hautes Etude en Sciences Sociales, Paris (France); in the Universtiy of Pécs (Hungary); Babes Bolyai University, Cluj (Romania); University of Constantine Philospher, Nitra (Slovakia); University of Leeds (UK). Naturally, the implementation of research results into education will expand after the official lifetime of the project.EU research networks, synergies with other comparative research and policy initiativesResearch teams and action groups working within other European frameworks have been approached to initiate joint academic and public events on issues of common interest. Some targeted networks are the following: 'Tolerance, Pluralism and Social Cohesion: responding to the challenges of the 21st century Europe' (ACCEPT PLURALISM, FP7 project) where CEU CPS is a consortium partner, the TIES initiative (The Integration of the European Second Generation) whose lead researcher have contributed to the closing conference of EDUMIGROM with papers on findings of their project. Other projects were approached as well and frameworks of cooperation will be further explored: the 'Integration and diversity in education in Europe' (IDEE) initiative (FP7 project), 'Youth - actors of social change (UP2YOUTH, FP7 project), 'Young people from public care: Raising participation in further and higher education in Europe' (YIPEE, FP7 project). Project website: http://www.edumigrom.eu Related documents Final Report - EDUMIGROM (Ethnic Differences in Education and Diverging Prospects for Urban Youth in an Enlarged Europe)
