Greek State Schools in Germany and the Impact of ‘New’ Migration

Abstract

This chapter reports on a qualitative study investigating a particular type of Greek-language education abroad, namely non-mixed or Greek state schools in Germany, and the impact ‘new’ migration has had on their operation. These schools (K-12) follow the Greek curricula and employ teachers seconded from the Greek Ministry of Education. They were originally set up in the 1970s as an educational setting which would help immigrant students in Germany to develop Greek language skills and a Greek ethnocultural identity, eventually facilitating transition in the case of repatriation. Their graduates have the additional benefit of gaining access to Greek universities with relatively low grades, and, as a result, such schools have been a popular option for Greek immigrant families for the last forty years. Following the decision of Greek authorities to start abolishing them in 2011, Greek non-mixed schools saw their students’ numbers wane. ‘New’ migration to Germany (post 2010), however, has led to an important rise in enrolments and a change in the student population profile. According to the findings of a small-scale exploratory study presented in this chapter, teachers in these schools perceive new arrivals as young people traumatised by the migration experience and in need of a familiar physical and symbolic setting. As a result, non-mixed schools are once again considered as important institutions in the current circumstances on the grounds that they offer their students a number of advantages.

1 Introduction

Since 2010, more than 500,000 Greek citizens –and a large number of foreign subjects residing in Greece– have left the country as a result of the impact of the global financial crisis (Pratsinakis, 2019; Chap. 2 in Pratsinakis, this volume).¹ This crisis-driven migration or ‘new’ migration² bears certain features which distinguish it from previous forms of migration. First, contemporary migration is a rather individual enterprise contrary to migration from Greece between the 1950s and 1970s which was based on intra-state agreements (Damanakis, 2014; Siouti, 2019). Second, pre-2010 migrants were mainly low-skilled, uneducated men and women in search of employment.³ By contrast, the recent, crisis-driven migration also involves well-educated and highly-qualified individuals who migrate not out of necessity –e.g. many were employed at the time of their departure– but in order to secure professional advancement and fulfil their potential (Aravossitas & Sugiman, 2019; Labrianidis & Pratsinakis, 2016; Pratsinakis, 2019). In fact, they constitute the majority of those who left Greece post-2010.⁴ However, as Labrianidis and Pratsinakis (2016) claim, although people with low or middle-education backgrounds are a minority, they tend to appear in large percentage in certain European countries such as Germany (43% of the total inflow of Greek migrants in this country) and the Netherlands. The authors attribute this to the tendency of these migrants to seek employment through social networks (family and acquaintances) who are already settled in these countries. Finally, a feature which bears particular importance for our research is that ‘new’ migration takes the form of family movement to a much larger extent than previous migration waves did when family migration happened almost exclusively as part of a two-stage process with family members joining the primary (mostly male) migrant at a later phase (Pratsinakis, 2019).

In a thorough overview of related research, Panagiotopoulou and Rosen (2019a) compellingly argue for a new perspective in the field of migration studies, whereby migration is approached as a family project.⁵ This reconceptualisation of the role of the family in contemporary migration brings to the fore the centrality of children’s education for pre- and post-migration decision-making at the family level. Related topics of interest are whether the children’s educational future played a part in the family’s decision to migrate, and the degree to which educational provisions in the host country are perceived as meeting the parents’ expectations and contribute to the family’s integration.

The exploratory study reported here follows this line of inquiry, as it focuses on the importance of Greek-language educational institutions already in place in the various countries of destination for families who have moved abroad in the past few years as a result of the economic crisis. In particular, it seeks to explore how changes in the school population have influenced teachers’ perceptions of the role of such schools. My research focuses on a particular type of Greek-language education abroad (non-mixed schools in Germany) and the impact ‘new’ migration has had on their functioning. The first phase of the study was informed by current sociolinguistic thinking on identity construction in multilingual and multicultural settings such as community schools⁶ and took place in November 2016 in two such schools in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. It investigated teachers’ views and beliefs on the importance of these schools and their own role as educators (Chatzidaki, 2019). A follow-up study took place in January 2019 in one of the two schools. This chapter discusses, in a comparative manner, findings from the two studies in regard to how teachers conceptualise the role of these schools in the ‘new’ migration era and aspires to offer some new insights on the importance of Greek-language education abroad for recently migrated families.

In the following Sect. 4.2, I discuss the particular type of educational institution which I studied and the way it has evolved in the past fifty years. Then, (Sect. 4.3) I discuss the rather scarce literature on educational choices made by Greek immigrant families especially in the context of ‘new’ migration. Findings from the two studies are presented and discussed in chronological order in Sects. 4.4 and 4.5 respectively, while the chapter ends with a brief Sect. 4.6 on conclusions and perspectives for future research.

2 Non-mixed Greek Schools in Germany

The issue of Greek-language education for diaspora Greeks is quite complex; there are various forms of institutions providing courses of language and culture to students who wish to learn Greek (irrespective of their origin) in more than 60 countries all over the world (Damanakis, 2007). While the most common type of Greek-language education is the ‘Saturday’ or ‘afternoon’ classes which operate for a few hours per week, there are also other forms of Greek-language education institutions (cf. Chatzidaki, 2015; Damanakis, 2007).

The study presented here focuses on a particular type of Greek-language school similar to Greek mainstream schools in all respects but the student population. Such schools are called ‘non-mixed’ Greek Schools.⁷ They can be found both in Europe (e.g. in United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy and Romania) and in other parts of the world (such as Israel, Egypt, Ethiopia, People’s Republic of Congo, Sudan, etc.).

However, Germany is the only country where this type of Greek-language education has been quite widespread (Damanakis, 2007; Stylou, 2019). Such schools (K-12) were founded in many German Laender (States) in the 1960s to cater for the needs of Greek ‘guestworkers’ who planned to repatriate after a few years of stay. The purpose of these schools was to facilitate transition for children whose families eventually returned to Greece. Greek schools followed the Greek curricula for preschool, primary and secondary education, while German was taught as a foreign language for a few hours a week. The teaching staff comprised primary and secondary education teachers seconded from Greece for up to three years. Finally, their operation was coordinated and supervised by the Greek Ministry of Education and the local Educational Coordinators.

For decades, these schools were very popular with Greek parents in Germany as they offered their graduates relatively easy access to Greek Higher Education Institutes: three to four percent of places offered each year by each Department are reserved for graduates of Greek schools abroad.⁸ However, in the course of time, many second-generation Greek parents opted for mainstream German education while they tried to maintain the community language by sending their children to afternoon Greek courses. In the early 2000s, the number of students attending non-mixed Greek schools was very low, compared to the total number of students of Greek origin in Germany (Damanakis, 2007).

Moreover, the operation of these schools presented a disproportionately high cost for the Greek state, which became unjustifiable for a country facing a state-debt economic crisis following the 2007 global financial crisis. As a result, but also on pedagogical grounds,⁹ the authorities decided to abolish these schools and replace them with bilingual schools jointly run by the Greek and German authorities and open to non-Greek students as well. In 2011, the Greek Parliament voted Law 4027/2011 on Greek-language education abroad which stipulated the gradual abolition of non-mixed schools in Germany. In the following years, and despite parental protests (Chatzidaki, 2019; Damanakis, 2007), a considerable number of primary and secondary Greek schools in various German states closed down or were transformed into bilingual schools (cf. Stylou, 2019). In 2014, the Greek State reaffirmed its decision to abolish all such schools starting from school year 2016–17.¹⁰ However, as we shall see, new developments may have halted this process and contributed to a reappraisal of the role of such schools at least in the eyes of the teachers.

3 ‘New’ Migration and Education: Expectations and Choices

As was to be expected, the relationship between ‘new’ migration and forms of Greek-language education has only recently attracted the researchers’ interest. Despite the emergence of some small-scale, qualitative studies (Chatzidaki, 2019; Kirsch, 2019; Panagiotopoulou & Rosen, 2015; Panagiotopoulou & Rosen, 2019b; Panagiotopoulou et al., 2017 etc.), it remains a rather under-researched subject considering the diversity of host countries and educational institutions involved.

The relationship between ‘new’ migration and parents‘educational choices has been approached both from a quantitative and a qualitative perspective and has been investigated by sociolinguists and migration specialists alike. An example of the latter is provided by Pratsinakis (2019); drawing on data from the EUMIGRE survey,¹¹ he discusses family-related migration among Greeks who settled in London and the Netherlands as a result of the crisis. Among the participants who migrated with their partners or with their families, 60% chose the answer ‘the future of my children’ as one of the reasons for taking the decision to migrate (the single most oft-cited reason). The centrality of their children’s education was observed both among less-skilled migrants –who were almost one third of the sample– and more highly-educated professionals (80% and 69% respectively opted for this answer). Ιn a similar vein, research in Greek PhD holders who have settled abroad in the past few years (Chap. 3 in Labrianidis & Karampekios, this volume) suggests that for a large part among them, ensuring academic and professional opportunities for their children was an important factor in their decision to stay abroad or return to Greece.

From a sociolinguistic perspective, Gogonas (2019) discusses recent Greek migration to Luxembourg focusing on the investigation of parents’ motives for migration and degree of intercultural adaptation. The paper discusses two families who migrated in this country in 2013 and who exhibited opposing views and behaviour with regard to their migration experience. The first couple was unsatisfied with their current conditions and perceived a large social distance between them and the natives, while the other enjoyed the cosmopolitan and multicultural character of life in Luxembourg. The former were attached to the Greek language and culture and wanted to raise their children as ‘Greeks’ while the latter were thrilled with the opportunities that multilingualism in three international languages offered their children. The study findings testify to the diverse patterns of integration manifested among ‘new’ migrant families even in the same country of destination and to the ways these differences were illustrated in educational choices.¹²

Another qualitative study (Panagiotopoulou & Rosen, 2015), among recently migrated families in Canada this time, shows that for many parents, especially highly qualified professionals, ensuring good academic prospects for their children was one of their main motivations for migrating. As a result, they made a conscious choice to enrol their children into the mainstream Canadian system which they believed could meet their expectations much better than any form of Greek-language education in the country.

The relationship between the educational choices of the families and their socioeconomic status and general ethno-cultural orientation was more pronounced in the case of Germany, where families may opt for full-fledged Greek schools for their children as seen in the previous section. Based on evidence from the mid-2000s, Damanakis (2007) argues that there were important differences among the settled Greek immigrants in Germany regarding their educational choices. On the one hand, most parents were well-integrated and sent their children to mainstream German schools where they often excelled and managed to enter tertiary education institutions at rates comparable to German students or even higher (Heath et al., 2008). These children could attend community schools for a few hours per week and manifested a strong attachment to their country of origin while being successfully integrated in German society. On the other hand, other first- and second-generation parents –usually of a lower socio-economic background– seemed to adopt an ethnocentric approach to their children’s education and upbringing. They tended to socialise predominantly with Greek people and opt for Greek schools for their offspring (Damanakis, 2007). The importance of the Socioeconomic Status (SES) factor is illustrated in official data as well; according to figures from 2006/07, most children attending Greek schools in North Rhine-Westphalia came from low SES families (Damanakis et al., 2011).

The same trend surfaces when one discusses ‘new’ migration to Germany. First of all, it seems that full-fledged Greek-language education still presents an important alternative to many migrant families (Damanakis, 2014). According to data provided by the local Greek educational authorities in 2014 and presented by Damanakis (2014, pp. 160–165), the number of newly arrived students who were enrolled in Greek primary and secondary schools in Germany between 2011 and 2014 increased considerably (almost 2500 new enrolments between 2011–12 and 2013–14 alone).¹³ Moreover, there is some evidence which suggests that these students usually came from families with a low SES, while qualified professionals enrolled their children in mainstream schools; according to findings from Damanakis’ (2014) study in the Greek primary school in Duesseldorf, only one third of the ‘new’ immigrant parents whose children attended this school at the time were well-educated professionals (holders of a University degree at least). In contrast, more than two thirds of the new arrivals in the city were well-educated professionals, something which points to a link between SES and preference for the ‘Greek’ school as an educational choice.

Based on such findings, Damanakis (2014, p. 165) claimed that for an important number of ‘new’ immigrant families –especially of a lower socioeconomic status– such schools serve the role of ‘receiving institutions’ for their children. As a result, he argued that ‘new’ migration seemed to have brought about a renewed salience and legitimacy for the Greek schools in Germany. This claim was behind my motivation to study ‘new’ migration in Germany and its impact on this particular educational setting from a qualitative perspective. In the first study I carried out, the research questions were mostly linked to issues of bilingualism and the differences in student identity as perceived by the teachers. In the follow-up study, I focused on issues which arose as ‘themes’ from the first study regarding the new role of such schools. As will become evident in the discussion, a shift in the percentage of ‘new’ immigrant students in the school population seems to have influenced the prominence of some of these themes.

4 The First Study

4.1 Research Sites, Participants and Data Collection

The first study of teachers’ perceptions of the role of Greek schools in Germany, especially high schools, and of their students’ profile and needs took place in 2016, centring on issues of bilingualism and the differences in student identity as perceived by the teachers. It was designed as a small-scale, exploratory study which would yield some initial information on the situation under investigation.

My first visit to the sites in question was carried out in mid-November 2016.¹⁴ Before the visit, I contacted the principals of the two schools, explained the aim of the research and asked for their collaboration in identifying teachers who would be willing to participate. In both cases, the school principals were interviewed informally but were not included in the sample.

The sites chosen for the research were the Greek high schools (grades 7–12) in Cologne and Duesseldorf, two neighbouring cities in North Rhine-Westphalia. After Law 4027 passed from the Parliament in late 2011 and it was announced that the schools were going to close, both schools saw their enrolments drop considerably. For instance, in the school year 2012/2013, there were only 15 students in the Greek high school in Cologne. However, the number of students rose dramatically in the following years as a result of the ‘new’ migration: in the school year 2015/16 there were 53 students, while in November 2016 the school hosted about 70 students, more than half of whom were ‘new’ immigrants, according to the school principal and the teachers.

Contrary to Cologne, Düsseldorf hosted a Greek kindergarten and a primary school, which provided the high school with a steady flow of students. Nonetheless, ‘new’ migration has contributed to an increase in student numbers here as well. The number of students was 108 in 2012/13, 260 in 2015/16, and increased to over 300 at the beginning of the school year 2016/2017. According to estimates given by the principal and the teachers, ‘new’ immigrants accounted for more than one third of the student population, perhaps even half of it.¹⁵ The figures of both schools matched the information provided by the Greek educational authorities up to 2013/14 (Damanakis, 2014).

Seven teachers participated in the first study, three in Cologne and four in Duesseldorf. All but one were seconded from Greece (the other one had been employed at the school for more than thirty years) and at the time of the study had spent at least three years in Germany working in Greek high schools, in these or other cities.

The interviews were conducted on the school premises during the teachers’ breaks. In each case, I explained to the informants which was the purpose of the research and how the research findings would be used, asked for their permission to record the interview and informed them that I would take all measures to ensure their anonymity. The research instrument was a semi-structured interview which aimed to collect information on their background and migration experiences, as well as the informants’ views about (a) their students’ socio-educational background and linguistic profile, (b) teachers’ and students’ use of language at school, and (c) their views on the school’s mission.¹⁶ Finally, the interview data were analysed using Richard Boyatzis’ (1998) version of thematic analysis.

4.2 Findings

First of all, the teachers’ accounts offered a glimpse of the complex backgrounds and migration trajectories of their students as they were shaped in the past five years prior to the researcher’s visit.

When asked to describe their students in general terms, all teachers made a distinction between students who grew up in Germany as members of the second or third immigrant generation and students who arrived between 2013 and 2016 with their families. The main difference between them was that the first group of students was supposed to be fluent in both languages contrary to ‘new’ immigrants who seldom have some German language skills upon arrival.

Several participants mentioned the complexity of the students’ trajectories in terms of their schooling experience; besides the recently-arrived students from Greece who enrolled in these schools as a first choice, one finds children who were sent by their parents to a German school upon arrival and were, later, transferred to the Greek school for various reasons (either because the child could not adapt or as an ‘academic career’ move –to ensure the right to take the University entrance exams as a graduate of a non-mixed school). In addition to this group of students, one finds second-generation immigrants born in Germany whose families had settled in Greece a few years back and then returned to Germany as a result of the economic crisis. In many cases, these children have attended both the Greek and the German educational systems.

With regard to the students’ socio-economic background, one teacher in Duesseldorf and the three teachers in Cologne described it as ‘generally low.’ The others claimed that the parents’ financial and intellectual standing varied and that many parents were highly qualified and educated professionals.¹⁷

Finally, it is noteworthy that several of the students were not of Greek origin although they had previous experience of the Greek educational system; teachers mentioned students of Albanian, Bulgarian, Polish, etc. background, whose families lived as immigrants in Greece and had recently migrated to Germany.¹⁸ Having grown up in Greece, these students were fluent Greek speakers and possessed Greek school certificates.

As previously mentioned, I aimed to explore teachers’ beliefs on the role played by the Greek schools as ‘receiving institutions’ for families migrating to Germany as a result of the economic crisis. In this regard, three major themes emerged from our data, the first two reflecting the schools’ institutional objectives:¹⁹ Greek schools in Germany were important and should be maintained because they:

• (a) offered their students study and career opportunities either in Greece or in Germany

• (b) helped develop and maintain a Greek identity among their students

• (a) constituted a ‘safe haven’ for students traumatised by the migration experience.

Five of the seven teachers mentioned that Greek schools presented their students with two important career options. On the one hand, they offered them the possibility to gain access to a tertiary education institute either in Greece or in Germany. On the other hand, if they did not wish to study, they could secure a place in a wide variety of vocational training institutes to achieve professional qualifications. For young people whose families migrated to secure a livelihood, both these options should be particularly appealing.

Regarding the second theme, all teachers mentioned the formation and maintenance of a Greek identity among students as one of the most important aims of the school (if not the most important one). The fact that the school taught all subjects through the Greek language and that it operated according to a monolingual, monocultural ethos, was seen by some teachers as the only way to ensure the maintenance of a ‘Greek’ identity and culture in a foreign country.²⁰

The third theme is the one that, in my view, reflected more strongly the new circumstances surrounding the schools’ operation. Nearly all teachers portrayed newcomers as young people who faced important adaptation problems because of their families’ decision to migrate. This move disrupted the teenagers’ social lives and academic trajectories, leading to all sorts of negative feelings. The following extract is quite telling:²¹

Another aim of the school, at least how I experienced it, is that it helps children integrate… they feel much better when they come to the Greek school because they have been violently cut off from their home country and their friends and by coming here they find themselves in an environment that is friendlier, warmer and quite familiar, contrary to the German schools… there is this possibility to communicate, to communicate directly and, in fact, while at first they go through this period of mourning so to speak, little by little they integrate quite well (Interview with Danae,²² Cologne).

The argument put forward in such accounts seemed to be that Greek schools constituted a ‘safe haven’ for newly arrived teenagers who were traumatised by the forced move to a new country and the adjustment difficulties faced by all family members. The SES factor seemed to play an important role in this respect:

I used to reject the Greek schools, I thought they were a waste of money. But now I think they have an important mission and children understand that on so many levels, the children who come to the Greek schools are the disenfranchised children... the others go to mainstream schools (Interview with Yerasimos, Cologne).

In such bleak circumstances, these schools provide a familiar socio-educational environment where students can continue their studies without the extra psychological pressure they would face in mainstream schools:

What I mean is that they come to school not just to attend lessons, to do their homework and all that, but mainly to meet with their friends, to speak Greek and to alleviate this feeling of ‘unfamiliar,’ so to speak, of ‘being a foreigner,’ because at school they are … in their homeland… the school is a small Greece (Interview with Anna, Duesseldorf).

Well, it’s certain that those who arrive now, the ‘new’ immigrants, who are plenty, they couldn’t go anywhere [to study]… they would be ruined for sure if they [the Greek schools] didn’t exist… they can’t go to German or bilingual schools, they simply can’t! (Interview with Thalia, Duesseldorf).

Although certain success stories are mentioned in passing, most teachers tend to foreground their students’ difficulties instead of their agency. My final conclusion read as follows:

The overall picture emerging from the teachers’ accounts is that ‘Greek’ schools are irreplaceable institutions not only because they safeguard a certain sense of Greek identity abroad but also –even more so– because they are the only educational institution which truly takes into account the needs of ‘new’ immigrant students. This discourse, repeated in many forms and with different degrees of emphasis, provides an argumentation for the maintenance of such schools at a time when the Greek authorities have taken the decision to abolish them (Chatzidaki, 2019, p. 171).

As ‘new’ Greek migration to Germany has continued, I decided to carry out a follow-up study, as presented below.

5 The Second Study

Two years following the first study, the second study took place with the aim to explore possible changes in the views held by teachers in the same schools. The section presents findings from this study in a comparative light.

5.1 Research Sites, Participants and Data Collection

The second study was also an individual enterprise.²³ Due to time limitations, I decided to conduct a follow-up study only at the Greek high school in Cologne. The school was the smallest of all Greek high schools in that State;²⁴ in the 2018–19 school year, it hosted nearly 70 students, 50 of whom were in the last three grades.²⁵ An additional feature which was very important to my research was the drastic change in the composition of the student population since 2016; according to the principal, 95 per cent of the students in January 2019 came from ‘new’ immigrant families. He explicitly mentioned that only a handful of students belonged to the second-generation group and, in fact, two of them were born in Germany, followed their families in Greece a few years back and returned to Germany as a result of the crisis. So, in comparison with the situation in the school year 2016–2017, in early 2019 the school hosted nearly exclusively ‘new’ immigrant students.

This finding led me to alter the interview schedule to a certain extent, as the questions referring to the teachers’ views on bilingualism appeared to be no longer pertinent. If most of their students were native Greek speakers with limited proficiency in German, there seemed to be no point in investigating whether they were perceived as bilingual and whether the school promoted their plural repertoires in any meaningful way. On the other hand, I decided to place more emphasis on how teachers viewed their students and their own role as educators in this particular setting.

The follow-up study took place for a whole week in late January 2019 and included interviews with staff and students as well as class observations, following informed consent. Prior to my visit I contacted the new principal and made the relevant arrangements. These included sending informed consent forms to be signed by the students’ parents as I planned to attend lessons and even interview some students.²⁶ Due to space limitations, this chapter does not include any results from the students’ interviews, but focuses on interviews with the teachers. Besides the principal, four staff members were interviewed; they taught a variety of subjects and had started teaching in the school in the past two years. They shall be referred to here by the pseydonyms ‘Thanos,’ ‘Alexandra,’ ‘Katia’ and ‘Zoe.’

It has to be said that although the interviews were organised according to the semi-directed format, on many occasions the interviewees volunteered information on their motivations to work abroad and their expectations or disillusionment, offered unsolicited comments on aspects of life in Greece or Germany and used narratives to make a point.²⁷ As a result, all of our informants manifested agency in the production of their accounts as they foregrounded the themes that were salient in their view.

5.2 Findings

The four teachers’ accounts exhibited many similarities with the ones collected in the first study regarding the students’ profile, with one important difference: this time there was no reference to the second-generation group, which occupied quite a large proportion of the student population in November 2016. When asked to give a general description of their students and their families, both the principal and the teachers referred to their generally low socioeconomic and educational background. Moreover, all teachers mentioned the large numbers of students whose parents were not Greek but foreign nationals who used to live in Greece as immigrants and left the country after the crisis in search of employment. Through their accounts, one can also catch a glimpse of the students‘complex migration trajectories (a finding also present in the first study):

Almost half the children are … not of Greek origin, they went to the Greek school, they grew up in Greece but they are from Syria, Romania, Albania, from all over the world. Some had been in Italian schools, we have such a student… another student speaks French, she is Greek but, I don’t know how, she was in Belgium before, I think... in a French school… (Interview with Katia).

The erratic pattern of enrolments and school attendance was also mentioned in the first study (cf. Chatzidaki, 2019). Some parents reportedly left Greece before the school year was over, which means that the child could not obtain a certificate and had to repeat the class; or, they decided to withdraw their child from the Greek school and enrol him/her at a German school also before the end of the academic year:

And we’ve got cases of parents who bring their children to the school and three or five or seven months later they return to Greece with them because they couldn’t find a job or did not like it here (Interview with the principal).

This results in the child having to repeat two or more grades, as the German educational system usually places recently arrived children in a grade lower than that corresponding to their age. These incidents are usually mentioned by teachers in an attempt to illustrate the parents’ despair and confusion as to their stay in Germany.

However, the defining characteristic of these students according to their teachers was that they found themselves in an extremely difficult situation at a very sensitive age. This seems to be the factor that shaped the way teachers saw their students and their own role in these schools.

The three themes regarding the importance of Greek schools in Germany were present this time as well; however, not all of them appeared with the same degree of intensity as in 2016. First of all, the role of the Greek schools as bastions of ethnic identity maintenance was mentioned only by two of the four teachers (as opposed to all of the seven informants in 2016) and not with the same prominence.²⁸ Second, all teachers referred to the professional and educational benefits of attending such a school which suggests that this aspect of the school’s mission remained uncontested. Finally, the third theme, namely the importance of Greek schools as a ‘safe haven,’ was not only present but quite prominent. Not only did the principal and all teachers refer to these issues, but two of them engaged in lengthy and quite emotional accounts of the challenges their students faced and their impact on the latter’s behaviour. I would like to argue that this is linked to the change in the student population which occurred in-between the two studies, namely the overwhelming presence of new migrants at the school, and their families’ socioeconomic status. According to the teachers, the majority of their students had to face the sudden loss of their familiar surroundings, lifestyle and friends:

And that’s when I realised how much this change has hurt these children. Cause they followed their parents with a suitcase, they were the live suitcases… Of course parents may have the best intentions and may think it’s for the best but the child experiences it as a loss, as a small death of his world (Interview with Thanos).

In addition to that, migration to Germany was sometimes the result of a rushed decision with stressful outcomes; their parents may have been unemployed for months and may have lived off social benefits or may have faced exploitation at work; the family may have moved in with relatives to save money or simply because they were not certain as to whether they would stay or return to Greece, etc. Several interview excerpts illustrated such integration challenges:

I wish there was psychological support in high schools for those children who arrive suddenly, cut off from their roots. I mean, there are so many children who tell me ‘I’ve just arrived and I‘m waiting for the Easter holidays to go back. If I leave, I am not coming back here.’ They even say that they will do it in secret, things like that, or‚‘I don’t like it here at all,’ they are so negative about it…‚‘I don’t want to do anything, I’m not interested in the language, I’m not interested in this country, I’m not interested in anything!’ … Negative feelings, bitterness… or phrases like ‘I ll go back to my village and won’t go as far as the next village ever again,’‘I don’t want to do anything’ … this shows negative feelings, bad feelings, depression… (Interview with Alexandra).

The way these students experienced this important change in their lives seems to be linked to their parents’ own attitudes. According to the teachers’ reports, certain parents blamed the German authorities for the severe austerity measures imposed on Greeks which forced them to migrate (see also Chatzidaki, 2019). In this climate, it is to be expected that some families would manifest a strong opposition to integration, particularly if they perceived their stay in Germany as temporary. In this regard, a comment made by Zoe, is quite revealing:

People who come to Germany as immigrants don’t try to integrate, they have this fear, based on the experiences of the past, that ‘we will get stuck here as immigrants’ and ‘Germans are our enemies’ and […] ‘They give us jobs, sure, but we are not interested in getting an education according to their system’. […] ‘If we could just stay out of it, create a ‘mini-Greece’ and keep away from them…’ I’ve met parents who think like that… (Interview with Zoe).

All teachers referred to the challenges faced by their students and stressed how this impacted on their own practices as educators. For many adolescents experiencing such circumstances, the achievement of high educational standards seemed an unattainable goal; as a result, teachers tended to focus more on providing psychological support to newcomers to help them overcome their difficulties:

’Cause now, you have to support one kid psychologically, tell another ‘You should learn German’, and help a third one to make friends… it’s a bit [/] we are doing a different job here than back in Greece. We are a bit of a psychologist, a bit of a Greek, a kind of oasis in the foreign country… kids feel very strongly about it. They want to hang out only with other Greeks (Interview with Katia).

I think it’s very important that teachers provide some psychological support. They may not learn [her subject], but if I’ve managed to help someone express himself, or not be shy or move on, I think I’ve accomplished more than if I just taught them [subject] (Interview with Alexandra).

However, it would be a mistake to consider the teachers’ practices merely as acts of leniency and charity. In addition, and based on interview material, the study documents that although teachers took into consideration their students’ difficulties, they also tried to help them acquire skills, that would empower them and help them integrate or study in Greece. Obviously, teachers acknowledged that there were certain students who were well adapted and consciously took advantage of the opportunities presented to them in Germany; however, these students seemed to be the minority.

All in all, the findings of the second study confirmed the initial ones. According to the participating teachers,²⁹ non-mixed schools fulfiled more than one mission in the new circumstances. First, they constituted institutions which ensured a sense of cultural maintenance especially for young people whose families wanted them to identify as ‘Greeks’ despite having been born and raised in Germany. Second, they continued to offer their graduates the opportunity to study in both countries or follow a vocational track and ultimately find a job in Germany. Finally, they represented supportive environments which helped newly arrived pupils endure the psychological pressures brought about by migration.

The parents’ socio-economic and educational background emerged as an important variable in this setting offering support to claims made by Damanakis on the same subject (Damanakis, 2007; Damanakis et al., 2011). The teachers’ interest in their students’ well-being was linked to the hardships experienced by low-SES families who took the decision to migrate out of necessity and had no intention to stay in Germany permanently. There is no evidence to suggest that such families did not hold high educational aspirations for their children (although some parents made rushed decisions which hindered their children’s academic progress). For many among them, however, attendance of a non-mixed school was a completely satisfactory option as it leaves open the possibility of gaining entrance in a Greek higher education institute.³⁰ As research in other ‘new’ migration settings suggests, when parents consider migration as an opportunity to raise their children in a more meritocratic society which will allow them to fulfil their potential and compete on a par with indigenous students, they tend to enrol them in the mainstream education system³¹ (cf. Gogonas, 2019; Panagiotopoulou & Rosen, 2015). Such families do not need the ‘security’ provided by the familiar environment of a Greek school abroad as they experience their migration in more positive terms and are able to support their children both psychologically and academically.

6 Suggestions for Further Study

The two studies presented here represent an exploratory step towards a deeper understanding of the impact ‘new’ migration had on the operation of the Greek schools in Germany. Moreover, they contribute to the literature on the links between migration and education, while they also ultimately aim to contribute to concrete educational policies.

Obviously, the issues should be investigated more thoroughly through both quantitative and qualitative studies, in other parts of Germany and in different schools; primary school children, for instance, may face fewer problems (as has been mentioned by some teachers in both studies). In high schools with a large presence of second - or third - generation students, group dynamics and individual adjustment may follow a different path than the one described here. Moreover, it would be interesting to extend our scope of investigation to countries where full-fledged Greek-language education is not an option and compare the educational choices made by parents of the same category.

A second point of interest relates to the question of ‘integration’ and what Greek teachers understand by that. In the 2016 study, this term was used in very different ways as some informants placed emphasis on the maintenance of a distinctly Greek ethnocultural identity, while others put forward more nuanced versions of integration. In fact, certain teachers in both studies argued that the ‘new’ migrants’ future is in Germany and that such schools should help them acquire the language skills, but also the sociocultural knowledge required to adjust to their new life conditions. In their eyes, non-mixed schools should change in this direction, to empower ‘new’ migrant children and help them find a place in the host country. In the current conditions, Greek schools do not appear to play this role to a satisfactory level. These issues are currently largely underresearched. Further investigation is therefore required in order to reach a level where informed decisions about the future of these schools can be made in response to the students’ overall needs.