Abstract
In this paper, we focus on some critical points pertaining to the conditions which characterize educational systems in some Southern European countries which have only recently become a destination for immigration. How can these systems respond to new multilingual and multicultural realities? Are they creating equal opportunities for all pupils? These questions will be addressed by presenting a selection of the results of a project which was carried out in primary schools in six Southern European countries. The multi-/plurilingualism which characterizes the language use of pupils with an immigrant background within the family domain will be discussed and compared to the language use promoted within school environments. Finally, the situation we observed will be compared to the perceptions and attitudes of parents/guardians towards intercultural and plurilingual education.
This chapter is the result of a collaboration between both authors and the different sections were drafted as follows: S. Caruana wrote sections “Introduction” and “The MERIDIUM Project: Structure and Aims”; S. Scaglione wrote section “Results”. Section “Conclusions” was written jointly.
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Notes
- 1.
In the rest of this chapter, for simplicity’s sake, we will refer to this category as ‘parents’.
- 2.
LifeLong Learning Program (LLLP), key-action 2 (Languages), project number 143513-LLP-1-2008-1-IT-KA2-KA2NW.
- 3.
- 4.
Children with an indirect migratory experience are those who have not emigrated themselves, but whose parents have experienced (or are currently experiencing) outbound migration.
- 5.
For further details, see Tusini (2013).
- 6.
For a complete report, see Caruana et al. (2013).
- 7.
Children with a ‘totally foreign background’ are those whose parents were not born in the country of residence and do not have citizenship of that country. Children with ‘partially foreign background’ are those who have just one parent who was born in the country and is a citizen of it.
- 8.
In classifying our data, we faced some problems concerning the sub-samples gathered in Spain and in Portugal, where some pupils have, respectively, Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking immigrant backgrounds. In fact, it may be the case that a pupil living, for example, in Spain declares that they use Spanish and ‘Argentinian’: on the one hand, Argentinian Spanish can be considered just a variety of Spanish, but, on the other, it must be taken into account that the child likely perceives a significant difference between these varieties, and feels as though s/he were using two different languages. For this reason, these cases have been labelled as ‘bilingual use of autochthonous languages’.
- 9.
It must be noted that this percentage also includes results provided by Maltese children, who are generally bilingual: in fact, they report a higher use of two languages when compared to children from the other countries (37.2 per cent vs. 12.1 per cent in Spain, 12.3 per cent in Slovenia, 13.7 per cent in Romania, 14.0 per cent in Portugal, 28.7 per cent in Italy).
- 10.
The term, coined by C. Williams (1996), is intended here, following García (2009), to refer to the act performed by individuals of accessing different linguistic features or various modes of what are described as autonomous languages, in order to maximize communicative potential. For a detailed discussion of the translanguaging theoretical framework, see García and Wei (2014).
- 11.
It must be taken into account that the schools surveyed in Slovenia are all located in Istria, which is an officially bilingual region. For further details, see Čok and Zadel (2013).
- 12.
For further details on this issue, see Coposescu et al. (2013).
- 13.
For further details on this issue, see Tomás (2013).
- 14.
One must take into account that at the time when the survey was carried out, the social and political climate concerning immigration issues in Italy and in Spain was very heated: as shown in Tables 1 and 2, from 2000 to 2010, inbound migration in these countries had been intensive, unlike what happened, for instance, in Portugal (where the annual rate of change of the migrant stock was 3.0 per cent in 2000–2010 vs. 13.2 per cent in Spain and 8.2 per cent in Italy). Moreover, while in Portugal well over 50 per cent of immigrants come from the so-called Países Africanos de Língua Portuguesa (PALP’s; for details, see Tomás 2013, and Delgado et al. 2014), in Italy and Spain there is much more widespread linguistic diversity among immigrants (for details, see, respectively, Scaglione 2013, and González Martín et al. 2013).
- 15.
Compiled by the British Council and by the Migration Policy Group: http://www.mipex.eu/.
- 16.
The policy areas which were taken into account in MIPEX III (2010) with reference to migrants were long-term residence, family reunion, labour market mobility, anti-discrimination measures, political participation, access to nationality and education. This latter area was assessed with reference to four dimensions: the access of migrant pupils to education; the targeting of specific needs concerning students with migrant backgrounds; the capacity of turning cultural and linguistic diversity brought by migrant students into new opportunities for the students themselves, as well as for society at large; and the implementation of intercultural education for all the students.
- 17.
The normative theory of intergroup relations originates from Tajfel’s (1970) research on intergroup discrimination and rests on the finding that this phenomenon is not necessarily triggered by a perceived threat or a situation of competition nor by a previous existing hostility among groups. Rather, the phenomenon often derives from a set of social norms and expectations concerning outgroup behaviour which characterize a specific community and are internalized by its members. Over the years, this theory has been considerably refined by H. Tajfel himself, as well as by J.C. Turner, and gave rise to the Social Identity Theory (Tajfel and Turner 1986).
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Scaglione, S., Caruana, S. (2018). Migration and Plurilingualism in Southern European Homes and Schools. In: Van Avermaet, P., Slembrouck, S., Van Gorp, K., Sierens, S., Maryns, K. (eds) The Multilingual Edge of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54856-6_7
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