SIXTH INTERNATIONAL METROPOLIS CONFERENCE

WORKSHOP 18: Sharing common educational institutions: A necessary condition for integration?

Tuesday, November 27, 2001
14:00 - 17:30

ORGANIZERS

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Among the issues relating to the mainstreaming of immigrants in schools, the debate concerning the integration of immigrant children in common or ethnospecific schools is sparking renewed interest. Firstly, the concentration of immigrant populations in certain public schools has been steadily increasing in several immigrant-receiving countries, often despite policies and programs aimed at a more balanced distribution of this population. Secondly, ethnospecific school projects designed to better answer the specific educational or cultural needs of immigrants are gaining in popularity, but also raise concern in some contexts. Rather than focussing on their normative assumptions, this workshop wishes to examine these two models of schooling in the light of various research results. Namely, these results will allow us to compare their strengths and weaknesses in reaching the various objectives assigned to schools with respect to the integration of immigrants. The limits of voluntarist perspectives in this field, whether concerned with fighting ethnic concentration, with promoting identity or with using schooling to promote specific identities will also be addressed. The workshop brings together five researchers, one policy-maker, and one NGO representative from four different countries (France, Canada, Belgium, and Holland); all are involved to some degree in research, policy-making, program design, and intervention, and work with practitioners in the field. The fruitfulness of the exchanges will be insured by the sharing of conference papers before the workshop and by the workshop structure, which allows for a 30-minute discussion period. This discussion will promote the consolidation of comparative perspectives and encourage the participation of other interested researchers, policy-makers, and agents from various countries to the debate.

DURATION

2 themes will be discussed in two 1,5-hour sessions.

STRUCTURE

1.               General workshop presentation (5 minutes)

2.               Session 1 (1,5h)

Theme 1 –The concentration of immigrants in public schools.

• The genesis of school segregation: the case of France (Jean-Paul Payet, Université Lumière, Lyon II) (20 minutes / Questions : 5 minutes)
• The concentration of immigrant children in Montréal schools: what impacts? On which dimensions of integration? (Marie Mc Andrew, Université de Montréal) (20 minutes / Questions : 5 minutes)
• The debate concerning ethnic deconcentration in Flanders: postulates, school practices, and the point of view of parents  (Marc Verlot, Université de Ghent) (20 minutes / Questions: 5 minutes)
• Discussant: P.T.M. Tesser, Sociocultural Plan Office of the Netherlands (10 minutes)

Theme 2 – Ethnospecific schools

General discussion for both themes (30 minutes)