Gem

Synthesis Thematic Report on Intercultural Education (WP5)
Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia
Zelia Gregoriou Department of Education, University of Cyprus
Grant Agreement no. 216065
GEMIC. WP5 Synthesis Report (Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: The limits of culturalism and the quest for the repoliticization of Intercultural Education ........................................ 7 PART I: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS OF RESEARCH, METHODOLOGY AND NATIONAL CONTEXTS ........................................................................... 12 2. Expanding the theoretical terrains of research on intercultural education: gender, intersectionality, performativity ....................... 12 2.1. Engendering Migration Studies: Insights for research on intercultural education ............................................................................................ 13 2.2. Racializing and engendering research on migrant and ethnic students: intercultural interactions as a site of intersectionality. .............................. 15 2.3. Bringing performativity in the study of power relations and subject positionalities in schools ....................................................................... 20 3. 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. WP5 Methodology .................................................................... 24 Goal of the research ................................................................. 24 Objectives ............................................................................... 25 Basic premises, hypotheses and concepts .................................... 26
Premises .......................................................................................... 26 Hypotheses ...................................................................................... 26 Concepts .......................................................................................... 27 3.4. 3.5. Basic research questions ........................................................... 29 Research Methodology .............................................................. 30
Data collection.................................................................................. 30 Participatory Ethnography (Level One Data) ......................................... 30 Focus Groups and/or Intervention Activities and Workshops ................... 31 3.6. National Case Studies: Phrasing research questions in national context, Defining Research Field, outlining research steps ......................... 33
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3.6.1. 3.6.2. 3.6.3. 3.7. 4. 4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4. 4.4.1. 4.4.2.
Cyprus ................................................................................. 33 Greece ................................................................................. 33 Macedonia ............................................................................ 34 Data analysis and interpretation ................................................. 34
National Contexts .................................................................... 36 Cypriot National Context ........................................................... 36 The Greek National Context ....................................................... 41 The Madedonian Context ........................................................... 48 Defining Research Field and Research Tools ................................. 51 Cyprus: A Multi-sited study on multicultural schools ................... 51 Applying WP5 methodology in the Cypriot Context: Research tools
and research steps ............................................................................ 56 4.4.3. Greece: A case study on 49 t h Primary School of Athens, Kerameikos 60 4.4.4. Applying WP5 methodology in the Greek Context: Research tools
and research steps ............................................................................ 63 4.4.5. 4.4.6. Macedonia: A case study on Cvetan Dimov, Skopje .................... 65 Applying WP5 methodology in the Macedonian Context: Research
tools and research steps .................................................................... 67 PART TWO: ANALYSIS OF EMPIRICAL DATA ............................................. 70 5. 6. The cultural politics migration (Greece and Cyprus only) .......... 70 Masculinities, Femininities and Gender .................................... 76
6.1. Diligent girls, Aggressive Albanian Boys, Predatory Afghan others: From the Analysis of Geek Data ............................................................. 77 6.2. Ethnicized masculinities and femininities, sexual taboos and the quest for sex talk: From the Analysis of Macedonian Data .................................. 80
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6.3. The genderization of intercultural research and the multiculturalisms reinforcement of gender regimes: From the Analysis of Cypriot Data ........... 82 7. 8. 9. Ethnicity / Race / Cultural difference ...................................... 94 Violence ................................................................................ 101 Language .............................................................................. 105
10. Mapping Classroom Social Dynamics: Analyzing Sociograms of Multicultural Classrooms .............................................................. 114 11. 12. 13. Developing Research Reflexivity on the ethnographic gaze 126 Conclusions and recommendations ..................................... 129 References ....................................................................... 130
Writers and Researchers
Composition of WP5 National Research Teams

Cyprus Zelia Gregoriou (Author of National report and Coordinator of Research Team) Researchers: Zelia Gregoriou Paraskevi Michael Costas Stylianou Emily Christodoulou Mantalena Tsouka Kalipso Charalambous Giorgos Stoyias Rena Choplarou Valentina Chlorakioti Georgios Zoitsas Loizos Loukaides Vera Paschali
GREECE Alexandra Zavos (Author of National Report) Researcher: Alexandra Zavos MACEDONIA Ana Blazheva (Author of National Report) Researchers: Ana Blazheva Viktorija Borovska
WP5 Synthesis Report

This is a collective work of writing. The synthesis was composed by Zelia Gregoirou but the content, especially the presentation of findings from national studies, lies heavily on the analysis of data and discussion developed by the three authors of the Thematic National Reports. Frequent references to the National Reports were avoided for the sake of flow and consciseness, and this overshowes the authorial constribution of Alexandra Zavos and Ana Blazheva. I thanks both of them. Thanks are also extended to Alexandra Zavos and Nikos Kokosalakis for their insightful feedback on earlier versions of the report and to all the researchers.
1. Introduction: The limits of culturalism and the quest for the repoliticization of Intercultural Education
WP5 focuses on the intersections between gender and migration in the context of intercultural education. Intercultural education presents a considerably controversial area of socio-cultural development in multicultural societies and migrant integration policy applications insofar as it is understood as one of the main apparatuses and sites through which gendered national (cultural, religious, linguistic, ethnic) identities and histories are constructed and reproduced. In this sense, education is a highly political and politicized field, both for natives and migrants, minoriries and majorities alike. Over the last decades education has been celebrated across traditionally migrant receiving societies in the west as the paradigmatic social sphere for promoting intercultural dialogue, combating xenophobia by foregrounding diversity as a source of cultural capital, and cultivating the sense that tolerance to difference is an essential condition for the promotion of social cohesion and social harmony in an age of mobility and multicultural becomings. One of the most representative samples of EU policy documents that reflect this approach is Decision No 1983/2006/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 concerning the designation of 2008 as European Year of Intercultural Dialogue: At the heart of the European project, it is important to provide the means for intercultural dialogue and dialogue between citizens to strengthen respect for cultural diversity and deal with the complex reality in our societies and the coexistence of different cultural identities and beliefs. Furthermore, it is important to highlight the contribution of different cultures to the Member States' heritage and way of life and to recognise that culture and intercultural dialogue are essential for learning to live together in harmony (Decision No 1983/2006/EC, 2006: p. 44). In outlining the specific aims of 2008 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, the Decision calls for fostering the role of education as an important medium for teaching about diversity and increasing the understanding of other cultures and developing skills and best social practices (ibid.). The intercultural competence approach of European Year of Intercultural Dialogue has been deployed in guidelines for migrant integration and educational camplaigns attempting to bridge the call for cultural awareness with global challenges: 2008 has been designated as the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. Indeed, at a time of increasing societal heterogeneity characterized by globalization, migration and European integration, one of the most pressing questions facing policy-makers and politicians is how to combine diversity with inclusion and cohesion. The field of education is seen as crucial for the promotion of cultural awareness and expression as a key competence for successful participation in knowledge society (Faas, 2009). This grounding of intercultural dialogue in teaching about diversity and teaching for tolerance is becoming acclaimed across multiple levels (local, national and EU) and diverse strata of policy (migration and security, social inclusion, Lisbon objectives) at a time when critical
voices from within the field of intercultural education are increasingly questioning the content, the politics and, mostly, the absences in popularized understandings of intercultural education. Invocations to diversity and tolerance are increasing criticized for becoming banners for a depoliticized version of intercultural education, particularly a conservatized version that does more to sustain inequities than to demolish them (Daz-Rico, 1998). Some critics argue that the prevalent version of intercultural education focuses not on eliminating educational inequities, but on human relations and celebrating diversity (Hidalgo et al., 1996; Jackson, 2003). Concerns about the depoliticization of intercultural education echo similar concerns that have already been expressed about the overall project of multiculturalism as a hegemonic response to migrant Europe. In decoding some of the major formulation of anti-racist policies in Britain in the early 90s, Anthias, Yuval-Davis & Cain situate their critique of mutlicultralist thinking against the background of growing racism and fascism in Europe. Their target is not mutlicultural education as such but rather the view that there is no racism in Europe and that racist attitudes can be treated by promoting cultural understanding for immigrant others: Multi-culturalism emerged as a result of the realization, originally in the USA, and then in Britain, that the melting pot doesnt melt, and that ethnic and racial division get reproduced from generation to generation Multi-culturalism constructs society as composed of a hegemonic homogeneous majority, and small unmeltable minorities with their own essentially different communities and cultures which have to be understood, accepted, and basically left alone -- since their differences are compatible with the hegemonic culture -- in order for society to have harmonious relations (Anthias, YuvalDavis & Cain, 1993: p. 158). Whereas additive approaches to multicultural education promise inclusion, representation and recognition to the unmeltable minorities, competence based curricula come to cater for the rest. Analyzing the ideological cohort between the individualistic ethos of the competence approach and the espoused managed diversity of the multicultural new Europe-- managed and regulated so as not to disrupt systemic cohesionAlexandra Zavos (author of the Greek National Report) points out that multicultural education is preserving existing hierarchies of power. Idealized competences such as cultural awareness and competence for participation look sound more like user tools for a multicultural neo-liberal market of skills than education aims. The emphasis on cultural awareness and expression marks the eclipse of a vision for whereas the so called 'competence for participation, drawing on individualistic and market-derived models of social relations, subsumes the vision of multicultural education to an economic rationality where educational aims are blurred with profiles of psychological qualities. As argued in the Greek Report, the premises on which current intercultural educational approaches are based are drawn from neo-liberal, nationalist, euro- and westo-centric, individualistic and market-driven priorities, re/presented as multiculturalism and diversity. This framework is centered on the West, and therefore cannot develop appreciation of difference, or of the inequalities and oppressions that attend it. In addition, this outlook frames the individual and not social processes as the main subject (and object) of both education, and social change. The invoked individual has to fit the model of the enterprising and welladjusted participant, who through cultural awareness and expression deals with
diversity (not difference and inequality) competently, that is without disrupting social cohesion, i.e. without stirring the waters. This kind of framework does not account for the ways in which different processes of neo-liberal globalization (such as urban regeneration and development) affect local neighborhoods and schools with migrant, refugee and other marginalized populations. This is the intersecting (racialized and classed) diversity that the educational system does not want to deal with, opting instead for the glossy life-style kind, adding a little ethnic potpourri to good old national flavours. More recently, cultural critic and social theorist Paul Gilroy has recast the concern with Europes reluctance to engage with issues of racism in a postcolonial framework. He argues that [i]n seeking an explanation for the widespread reluctance to engage racism analytically, historically, or governmentally, we may observe charitably that questions about race, identity, and differentiation have a distinctive, mid twentieth century ring to them. They sometimes feel anachronistic because they do try to return contemporary discussion to a moral ground that we feel we should have left behind long ago (Gilroy, 2005: p. 14). The refusal to think about racism, according to Gilroy, structures the life of the post-imperial polity. This is not a mere case of a post-traumatic historical silence. Europes refusal to think about race structures its inability to see how the imperial system of race thinking has transformed into modernist rationalities (rational irrationalities of raciology, as he calls them) and how these constitute a driving element in the development of Europes selffashioning, its modernity, its cultural processes, its political theory. Browsing through EU member states National Campaign statements and National Action Plans on 2008 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue we will realize that words such as culture and difference are used in abundance whereas the words race and/or racism are slimly or never used. In fact, in the document of the Parliaments Decision, racism is mentioned once, as one among a series of problems to be handled with intercultural dialogue: Intercultural dialogue is an important dimension in many Community policies and instruments in the fields of the structural funds, education, lifelong learning, youth, culture, citizenship and sport, gender equality, employment and social affairs, combating discrimination and social exclusion, combating racism and xenophobia, policy on asylum and the integration of immigrants, human rights and sustainable development, audiovisual policy and research (Decision No 1983/2006/EC, 2006: p. 45). The idea that intercultural education is a practical necessity in educating citizens for a new global and multicultural world has become by far an orthodoxy for any educational initiative that claims to be progressive, modernizing and European. The meanings, nuances, uses, effects and implied silences of such formulations will be subjected to critical analysis in our research. What exactly do we mean when we declare a campaign of intercultural education towards combating racism and xenophobia? If, as Gilroy argues, cultural raciologies structure Europes modernity, including the educational declaration of respect for migrant and ethnic students difference, perhaps we fail to understand race the very moment we reduce racism to a practical problem of attitudes or ignorance to be tackled through intercultural education. If it survives at all, critical reflection on racism, Gilroy argues, is likely to be diverted to toward two equally unsatisfactory destinations. The first can be identified through its affirmation of practical action. This is commentable in many ways
but becomes suspect where enthusiasm for praxis combines with hostility toward reflection. The evasive unity of theory and practice is then replaced by the unconditional exaltation of practice, unencumbered by thought. What was racial politics becomes policy or therapy and then simply ceases to be political. At best, the enhancement of racial equality and the battle against racial injustice become technical problems to be managed and administered (Gilroy, 2005: pp. 16-17). One of the major challenges for this work package has been to develop theorizations of intercultural education and frameworks for research in intercultural environments which repolitisize the field. Revitalizing the links between theory and research constitutes in itself a step towards this direction. Terms which are have become commonsensical in intercultural education such as culture, difference, the others culture, inclusion, integration, European values etc. will be investgated in situ. How do teachers understand intercultural education? How do teachers deal with the challenges posed by intercultural settings and arenas? Does the talk on intercultural education, xenophobia and ethnocentrism finally disrupt reluctance to deal with racism or does the preoccupation with others and others difference constitute another raciology that is used to normalize borders and hierarchies? Pegging the question in a more acute way, Gorski (2006) asks: How do we conservatize multicultural education? When he asks multicultural education professionals in the US to define multicultural education, Gorski finds that their responses typically reflect more of a compassionate conservative consciousness than an allegiance to equity and justice: a majority of well-intentioned equity advocates respond that multicultural education is about learning about other cultures (which brings to mind the question, other than what?) or celebrating the joys of diversity. And although such lessons and celebrations may be valuable educationally; they do not, when unattached from a transformative vision, move a classroom or school toward authentic multicultural education (Gorski, 2006: p. 167). The theoretical question we have been posing throughout our fieldwork and the analysis of our data is this: What remains unspoken between formal understandings of the goals of intercultural education and the realities of the intercultural interactions in schools? Or, to phrase this in a reverse way, what kinds of boundaries are established when we speak about mobility and exchange of cultures in the multicultural classroom? Are regimes of patriarchal thought, racism and postimperial colonial melancholia replicated, contested or negotiated when schools, capitalizing on their multicultural agenda, fashion themselves as arbingers of tolerance to others? Furthermore, what happens with the colonial baggage of terms such as culture and civilization when, in a postcolonial European context (or heading), the mere coining of these terms signals ones commitment to the combating of racism? No speech act is used with such disciplinary certainty and sense of intercultural civility as the invocation to the signifigance of the the others culture. And yet both terms, otherness and culture are indebted to what Etienne Balibar calls the reinstantiation of the colonial moment. Etienne Balibar echoes Gilroys thesis on racialized rationalities of modernity when he engages with Europes liquid modernity as a machine of self-projection and border protection that produces otherness and transforms strangers into Europes enemies. In a recent exchange with Zygmunt Bauman, Balibar argues that the concept of european civilization which is often projected as the irreducible and unassimillable core of European identity, that irreconcilable maxim that migrants will have to learn to respect and reconcile their value systems with, is a specific historical construct whose roots can be traced in different phases
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of European imperialism. Analyzing the contribution of the colonial moment to the construction of the European identity, Balibar states: It has become common wisdom that Europe framed its image and the criteria of its membership in as much as it conquered and colonized the world. Accordingly, it developed its civilization which it perceived as Civilization per se as an instrument of power to be exercised over other peoples and cultures in the world, in the rest of the world, but also as a framework where to incorporate products, images and discourses from its colonial subjects in a conflictual relationship which remained dissymmetric until the colonization finished and even after but was never, I believe, completely onesided As Eric Hobsbawm recently pointed out, there was not really a concept of Europe as a juridical system of international relations among European nations and also not a feeling of common cultural identity before colonization, that is, before the citizens from rival colonial powers collaborated and fought against each other to divide the periphery or what they perceived now to be a centre occupied by themselves, collectively (Balibar, 2009). If intercultural policies, arrangements, measures, activities, actions and performances are played amidst, with and not against the conflictual and dissymmetric relations, any research committed to repoliticizing the concept and field of intercultural education must remain alert to recording and decoding both the instantiations of the colonial moment that Balibar describes but also its displacement and interruption. This requires that researchers as cultural others preserve that essential estrangement that will enable them to study from a critical distances the ethos of multircultural schools and investigate the origins, effects and opportunities for the interruption of what Gilroy calls the romance of racial and ethnic absolutism (Gilroy, 2005, p. 57). At the same time, in order to apply intersectionality toward the research of intercultural interactions in schools, researchers need to be equipped with theoretical tools that enable them to see how gender, race and migration are played out, interplayed but also displaced in what we could call the intercultural moment. In Part One we explain the theoretical underpinnings of our research, the methodology and the national contexts. In Part Two we present our research findings and conclude with comparative remarks on the three national case studies and recommendations for policy action.
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PART I: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS OF RESEARCH, METHODOLOGY AND NATIONAL CONTEXTS 2. Expanding the theoretical terrains intercultural education: gender, performativity of research on intersectionality,
The intersectional framing of GEMICs methodological approach to migration, gender and ethnicity as well as GEMICs theoretical indebtedness to critical race theory, postcolonial theory and transnational studies invite new theorizations of intercultural education, both at the level of educational goals and at the level of research methodology. This section attempts to renegotiate the conceptual and political borders of intercultural education by importing ways of thinking, concepts and questions from theoretical terrains outside the disciplinary borders of education which deal with issues of immigration, gender and intercultural interactions (gender studies, migration studies, research in anthropology). This attempt to chart new terrains of research on intercultural education along GEMICs axes of interdisciplinarity and intersectionality is outlined under four headings: (a) Engendering migration studies (with comments and recommendations on how some of these theories and methodologies could be re-iterated in WP5 towards the engendering of school ethnographies of intercultural interactions), (b) Racializing and Genderizing Immigrant Students Interactions and (c) Racialized and Gendered School Practices: Bringing performativity in. Introducing a gender perspective to the research on multicultural schools and intercultural educational interfaces means overcoming the usual understanding of gender as inclusion of the variable sex or intensifying the comparison of what boys and girls do across the axis of ethnicity. Our attempt to engender the study of intercultural education has built on three areas of research. First, we have reviewed how the engendering of migration studies has decelopped over the last years (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1999; Pessar and Mahler, 2003; Piper, 2006; Jones, 2008). Second, in order to avoid the trap of conflating the engendering of intercultural education with a focus on differences between migrant boys and migrant girls (which might also limit our understanding of the kinds of resistance to hegemony and agency we might be encounter in schools during the field work phase) we have focused on theorizations of gender as performance rather than identity (Butler, 1990; Youdell, 2005; Davies, 2006). Third, in order to avoid the trap of cultural essentialism and the idealization of difference we have taken into consideration both the interpretive turn to culture (Geertz, 1973) as well as the recent quests in the academic field to politicize intercultural educational by contextualizing the discussion of cultural difference in the context of conflict, global inequality, migration and national politics (Gorski, 2006). By bringing performativity in the study of power relations and subject positionalities in schools, we want to analyze moments of ambiguous positionings, that is, moments were students and teachers are hailed by dominant discources but, at the same time, performative opportunities that such moments implicate for subjects to break from context and position themselves in defiant positionings.
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2.1. Engendering intercultural education: insights from migration studies

In a critical genealogy of gender in migration studies, Mahler and Pessar note that, beginning in the 1970s, the dearth of research on women was replaced by a a flurry of historical and contemporary studies that took women migrants as the primary subject of inquiry (Mahler and Pessar, 2006: p. 28) and many other studies that incorporated gender by inserting the variable of sex into their quantitative data collection. This kind of interest in women migrants, however, did not amount to the engendering of migration studies itself. In a literature appraisal, conducted in the late 1990s, Hondagneu-Sotelo points out that the vast majority of immigration studies are still conducted as though gender relations are largely irrelevant to the way the world is organized (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1999: p. 566). Hondagneu-Sotelo notes the proliferation of works on women migrants as a category but makes the cautionary remark that a dynamic and fluid conceptualization of gender as relational and situational is still missing. She outlines such a conceptualization of gender back in 1994: Gender is not simply a variable to be measured, but a set of social relations that organize immigration patterns. The task, then, is not simply to document or highlight the presence of undocumented women who have settled in the United States, or to ask the same questions of immigrant women that are asked of immigrant men, but to begin with an examination of how gender relations [which are exercised in relational and dynamic ways] facilitate or constrain both women's and men's immigration and settlement (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994: p. 3). Mahler and Pessar acknowledge the contribution of poststructuralist approaches to the shift from the comparison of gender roles to a more dynamic and fluid conceptualization of gender. As they point out, conceptualizing gender as a process yields a more praxis-oriented perspective wherein gender identities, relations and ideologies are fluid, not fixed. But, iterating Ferree et al. (1999), they add a crucial caveat to this appraisal of poststructuralisms contribution: gender should also be understood "simultaneously as a structure, that is, a latticework of institutionalized social relationships that, by creating and manipulating the categories of gender, organize and signify power at levels above the individual" (Ferree et al., 1999: p. xix). The call to theorize gender as situational and procedural in tandem with the cautionary remark not to dismiss structures is traced in their own work. In a 2003 article they advocate "gendered geographies of power" as a framework for analyzing people's gendered social agency given their their positioning within multiple hierarchies of power which are operative within and across multiple terrains. This framework, they suggest, allows the study of gender as envisioned and practiced within and across different scales and transnational spaces while, at the same time, it acknowledges and accommodates the inconsistencies and contradictions across these spaces.1 Intersectionality is another approach that addresses the multiple, multi-sited and interlayered realities and social inequalities of migration as a gendered experience (Lutz, 1997; Hirsch, 1999; Anderson, 2000; Parreas 2001; 2005; Yeates, 2005). By examining the ways in which gender, race and nation intersect in migration contexts, a number of studies map new forms of marginality as well as new forms of agency. The application of intersectionality in migration studies brings up the need to rearticulate and re-emphasize intersectionalitys meaning
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The authors cite from Fouron and Glick (2001) examples of how patriarchy is both challenged and buttressed by transnational migrants' actions across geographic space and scales of agency. A similar kind of that shows the ambivalent deployment of power and agency in transnational trajectories as is found in Karen Richmans work (Richman, 2002, 2005, 2008).
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beyond an additive understanding of marginalities and identities (as in double-disadvantage, multiple jeopardy, triple oppression, etc.). Building on the 1990s scholarship from Black Womens Studies, researchers deploying the various definitions of intersectionality often cite Crenshaws (1991) definition of interlocking systems of oppression, Collins (1990) conceptualization of interwoven patterns of inequality as a matrix of domination, (Collins, 1990), Shieldss (2008) framework of mutually constitutive relations among social identities, Yuval-Davis (2006) ways multiple identities converge to create and exacerbate womens subordination. These rhetorical formulations, however, especially when they are separated from their original context, tend to overemphasize the mutually constituting character of social identities while downplaying the locality and location of intersectionality.2 In other words, intersectionality is attributed to identities themselves, e.g., ethnicity and gender identity seen as essentially intersecting and reinforcing each other, forgetting that intersectionality lies within sites of practice and not within identities themselves. Anna C. Korteweg (2005, 2006) points out how this reading of intersectionality can provide groundings for very problematic integration policies. If migration is understood as a catalyst that is augmenting peoples urgency for ethnic identifications rather than a meta-site for intersectionalities, it is easy to conclude that in conditions of migration, ethic fundamentalism and female subordination reinforce each other, both of them becoming indistinguishable symptoms of immigrants quest for identity. Korteweg assesses how gender differences have been managed both in emancipation and immigrant integration policies in the Netherlands, and argues that policy makers seem to reinforce those perceptions of gendered practices of minority women and girls that have given rise to calls for strong forms of assimilation. Korteweg cites as an example how new language and cultural competency requirements for new immigrants in the Netherlands are informed by the belief that gender differences are a major obstacle to immigrants ability to integrate into Dutch society (Korteweg, 2005). A dynamic formulation of intersectionality that avoids the trap of reinforcing perceptions of gendered ethnicity is figured by Stuart Hall. In Halls formulation, intersectionality explores how systems of oppression articulate with one another. As Collins (1998) observes, certain ideas and practices surface repeatedly across multiple systems of oppression and serve as focal points or privileged social locations for these intersecting systems of oppression. One of the research tasks for WP5 is to look into schools, formal and informal school practices, school discourses and school pedagogies for these customary, normal and neutral focal points that re-produce patterns of exclusion (excellence, stident diligence, culturally sensitive disciplinary mechanisms, dating, counselling). In conclusion, we could say that Pessar amd Mahlers framework of gendered transnational geographies of power combined with Halls notion of articulate systems could help us delineate settings, arenas, processes and dominant discourses in intercultural schools as privileged sites of intersectionality and explore in regards to them how and with which effects gender is racialized and race is gendered (Glenn, 2002). This framework of gendered transnational geographies of power would be particularly useful for the study of migrant students. The social gender imaginary of migrant children and adolescents is almost always examined within national geographies, with the focus being on transgenerational value conflicts between children and their parents (this might be a side effect of the focus on second generation migrant children). One of the dynamic aspects of Mahler and Pessars framework of gendered geographies of power is that it understands gender as a multitude
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For an analysis of family as a site of intersectionality see Collins, 1998.
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and multi-sited: gender operates simultaneously on multiple spatial and social scales (e.g., the body, the family, the state). Transferred to the sites and social scales of schooling, this framing of gender as a multitude could provide unique insight for the theorization of intersectionality in WP5. Both migration studies and intercultural education studies that focus on migrant students often examine how gender values are defined by migrant parents/community, in the home, in the family, and how they are negotiated when the children come into contact with other or others (majority) culture at school, etc. But what if gender is not that stable when it operates across different sites? As Pessar and Mahler (2003) point out, when gender is envisioned and practiced within and across different scales and transnational spaces, we often find examples of inconsistencies and contradictions. In other words, the operations of gender in school settings should be understood in terms of distance or proximity, conflict or harmony, with migrant family values but in terms of inconsistence and discontinuity. To put this in Butlers terms of performativity, we could say that gender is not extended to school but re-played in school, re-enacted.
2.2. Racializing and engendering research on migrant and ethnic students: intercultural interactions as a site of intersectionality
The notion that gendered practices are symbolic markers of ethnicity is a fundamental premise in the research on immigrant children and adolescents. Whether it is girls or boys who bear the burden of this co-construction of gender and ethnic markers, whether this is a burden of identity or a process of subjectification, whether the disciplining of these markers is continuous or ruptured, these research questions frame intercultural interactions as a site of intersectionality. A number of studies adopt a comparative approach to the gendered experiences of boys and girls and examine how values and conditions in the receiving society influence parental expectations of gender-related roles. Reviewing research findings for immigrants originating from a number of sending countries, Surez-Orozco and Qin-Hilliard (2004) note that compared with their brothers, immigrant girls tend to have many more responsibilities at home. Their own research findings show that girls are significantly more likely to report responsibilities for cooking and childcare. The same authors also report in their literature review that immigrant parents place much stricter control over their daughters activities outside the house than their sons (particularly dating). Immigrant girls are often not allowed to go to parties, spend time with friends after school, or participate in after-school programs and other activities that immigrant boys can typically choose to do freely (Olsen, 1997; SurezOrozco and Qin-Hilliard, 2004). Our literature review, however, suggests that immigrant girls are not always inconspicuous repositories of cultural continuity. Some researchers suggest that immigrant girls are more likely than immigrant boys to act as transcultural mediators while some others suggest that immigrant girls are socialized by their parents to be bearers of tradition. Research along the first line of analysis stresses that immigrant girls are more likely than boys to develop additive or hyphenated identities and to support attempts to bridge the two cultures (Qin, 2006).3
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Waters (1997) found that Caribbean girls seemed to have more leeway in identity formation than their male counterparts, who tend to face more pressure to form a racial identity due to perceptions of discrimination and unfair treatment from the mainstream society.
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Similarly, Rumbaut (1996) and Olsen (1997) found that immigrant girls were more likely than boys to choose "additive" or "hyphenated identities," while Qin (2006) notes that girls are more likely to attempt to bridge the two cultures (Qin, 2006, p.14). With an increasing number of researchers agreeing that cultural assimilation has negative effect on the psychological health and educational achievement of ethnic students, the combination of parental control (ethnic component) and adjustment to school climate (assimilation) comes to be perceived as a successful instance of segmented assimilation since it leads to academic achievement.4 The same line of research suggests that the boundaries between ethnic identities appear to be less fluid and less permeable for migrant boys than for migrant girls. Boys seem to have more difficulty in assuming bicultural competencies and making successful bicultural adjustments. There seems to be more alignment between schooling and femininity while masculinity and schooling are perceived as oppositional (Qin 2006, p.14). In contrast, in research along the second line of analysis, terms such as Espiritus double standards (Espiritu, 2001) and Billsons keepers of the culture (Billson, 1995) are used as metonymies for immigrant parental control of immigrant daughters sexuality. In part, this divergence of findings can be attributed to the impact of literature review itself as a de-contextualizing and reifying kind of academic writing. Because gender is not just an organizing axis of cultural values but also a register through which researchers make sense of cross-cultural interpretations, there is a tendency to organize findings on immigrant children across the gender axis while downplaying the context--or, to rearticulate terms from the previous section--the sites of intertextuality. For example, Espiritus findings on the parental treatment of immigrant girls as bearers of tradition are heavily cited in literature on immigrant children and adolescents. Focusing on the relationship between Filipino immigrant parents and their daughters in the U.S., Espiritu (2001) suggests that the virtuous Filipina daughter, partially constructed on the conceptualization of white women as sexually immoral, is a key to immigrant identity and a vehicle for racialized immigrants to assert cultural superiority over the dominant group. Overemphasizing this finding, literature reviews tend to sidestep the focus of Espiritus research on Filipina girls in US as well as the particularity of the focus on parental surveillance of childrens dating practices. A different analysis of the same researchs data could come up with very different conclusions, e.g., conclusions on dating as site of intersectionality that cements the connection of heteronormativity and nation in the US rather than conclusions on the gendered ethnicity of Filipino immigrant. Much more crucial than the reification of gendered ethnicity in reviews of Espiritu, is the elimination of the postcolonial politics of resistance which is paramount to the authors textual politics. As she explains, by exploring how Filipino immigrants characterize white families and white women, she aims to contribute to a neglected area of research: how the "margins" imagine and construct the "mainstream" in order to assert superiority over it. 5
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There is a tendency to conflate segmented assimilation (Zhou, 1997) with transcultural identity (Surez-Orozco and Surez-Orozco, 2001) especially within discourses on immigrant childrens development. This conflation is problematized from this Reports approach of radikal interculturality because the vision of social justice ideal is completely overshadowed by the ideal of school success.
5
Espiritu: But this strategy is not without costs. The elevation of Filipina chastity (particularly that of young women) has the effect of reinforcing masculinist and patriarchal power in the name of a greater ideal of national/ethnic self-respect. Because the control of women is one of the principal means of asserting moral superiority, young women in immigrant families face numerous restrictions on their autonomy, mobility, and personal decision making. (Espiritu, 2001: p. 417)
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What is also very important from the perspective of theories of citationality and performativity, is that immigrant gender imaginings in the metropolis are staged against colonial coconstructions of sexualized racialized other (in this case, Asian) women as morally licentious and uncivilized: Historically, the sexuality of racialized women has been systematically demonized and disparaged by dominant or oppressor groups to justify and bolster nationalist movements, colonialism, and/or racism (Espiritu, 2001: p. 416). Espiritus analysis suggests that the idealization of female chastity as repository of Filipino tradition in the US is also connected to the contemporary neo-colonial order of the world and the trafficking of sex desire in that context. She notes that the symbolic disowning of the Filipina "bad girl" is staged not only against colonial imaginings of the female exotic body but also against the contemporary trafficking of sex-desire in zones of neo-colonial control such as military bases: Cognizant of the pervasive hypersexualization of Filipina women, my respondents, especially women who grew up near military bases, were quick to denounce prostitution, to condemn sex laborers, and to declare (unasked) that they themselves did not frequent "that part of town" (Espiritu, 2001: p. 426). The theoretical and methodological insights to draw from this analysis for WP5 reserach methodologies are multilevel. The double disciplining of daughters by immigrant and ethnic minority families (daughters disciplined as racial/national subjects as well as gendered subjects) and immigrant imaginings of female chastity must be explored not only in relation to the immigrant and non-immigrant politics of holding onto traditional values6 but also against the background of historical relations of oppression and neo-colonial economies of sex desire, patriarchy and national longings. Context matters and, as Espiritus research suggests, those who can unravel the historical webs and understand the politics of gendered ethnicities are usually the ones positioned as subordinate objects of intercultural study than subjects of insubordinate historical discourse. Furthermore, like Espiritus study, most studies on gendered ethnicities focus on family life, parental views of childrens dating. What we do not find in current literature is how these imaginings of gendered ethnicities are staged and restaged in school contexts. If gender operates, then we need to see this gendering of ethnicity operating in intercultural settings. We also need to see how children and adolescents construct their subjectivities by negotiating the possibilities and limits of gendered and racialized practices in schools. Why immigrant girls outperform boys in education settings and have higher educational and future aspirations, why girls manage to negotiate the conflicting demands of different cultures and split expectations though segmented accommodation despite the close parental ethnic monitoring of their behaviour, why in the case of boys ethnic separation and development of a repugnant masculinity seem to overlap are some of the major questions addressed by the relevant literature. Two theories usually used to explain the development of ethnic identity by immigrant and minority students are Ogbus theory of oppositional identity (Fordham &
6
It is daughters who have the primary burden of protecting and preserving values both among immigrant families and non-immigrant families. But, as Espiritu puts it, the difference is in the ways immigrant and nonimmigrant families sanction girls' sexuality. To control sexually assertive girls nonimmigrant parents rely on the gender-based good girl/bad girl dichotomy in which (Espiritu, 2001: p. 432) "good girls" are passive, threatened sexual objects while "bad girls" are active, desiring sexual agents (Tolman and Higgins: 1996, p. 433). Immigrant and ethnic minority families exercise a double disciplining of daughters: daughters are disciplined as racial/national subjects as well as gendered subjects. In other words, young women who disobeyed parental strictures were often branded as bad girls but also as "non-ethnic," "untraditional," "radical," "selfish," and "not caring about the family."
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Ogbu, 1986; Ogbu, 1991) and Suarez-Orozcos theory of social mirroring (Suarez-Orozco, 2004). Teasing the limits of these theories, the authors reviewed below examine how constructions of gender identity intersect with (rupture or enhance) processes of racialization. Their focus is on gendered negotiations and racialized practices rather than individuals psychological responses to structural inequalities. Lopez (2002, 2003) examines the racegender gap in education among the children of the Caribbean immigrants (the largest new immigrant group in New York City), placing the intersection of race and gender in high school settings at the center of her analysis. Although both young men and young women had concrete experiences of gendered racialization men stigmatized as hoodlums, women discredited as sexually promiscuous mamasitas and welfare queensthe latter reported fewer problems with teachers at school. Ogbus theory of oppositional identity turns out to be limited not only because it cannot explain this gender variation but also because it is based on a modernist notion of subjectivity which localizes the origins of racialization (including processes of oppositional identity formation) in the individual psyche (e.g., the immigrant youth dismissing schooling, which they perceive as connected to mainstream culture). Lopezs research centers on how institutional practices and classroom pedagogy contribute to or interrupt oppressive racializ(ing) and gender(ing) processes in the high school setting. In her fieldwork she finds that the same so-called oppositional behaviour from young women is not sanctioned as harshly as that of young men and that both men and women teachers are generally more lenient towards young women who transgress school rules, are late to class, and miss homework, than they are towards young men. (Lopez, 2003: p. 75). In a similar study, Lopez (2002) finds that seemingly gender neutral practices such authoritative teaching and guard patrolling are actually informally directed toward young men, further racializing those from racially stigmatized groups and increasing their alienation from school. 7 Very similar to Lopezs are also the research questions and findings of Qin-Hilliard (2003). Qin-Hilliards study indicates that immigrant minority girls do better in school and are more academically oriented than immigrant minority boys, especially towards the later years of school, because they may be protected from risk factors like harsh school environment by a supportive network of teachers, peers and parents while boys are more likely to be negatively influenced by their friends. In this case, Suarez-Orozcos theory of social mirroring also turns out to have a limited applicability in explaining the interaction of processes of racialization and genderization. If parents and teachers have the same academic expectations from boys and girls, how come girls do well and boys do not? Interestingly, in this study, the strict parental control of girls is framed as part of the protective network of supportive relations as well as part of a form of social capital which can be instrumental in promoting educational outcomes of immigrant girls. Boys, Qin-Hilliard notes, even though they were exposed to and assimilate into the prevalent culture (which is often that of the inner city) they were deficient in supportive networks and had low school expectations and low academic achievement. How do we reconcile Qin-Hilliards findings with the view that segmented assimilation is a condition for successful school performance? If boys preserve their ethnic ties by constructing their gender identities on the basis of ethic identity and, at the same
7
Gillborn (1990) argues that the myth of an Afro-Caribbean challenge to authority (for example, a particular way of walking common amongst African-Caribbean boys in the school) is produced in as much as it is also productive of institutional disciplinarity: In the day-to-day life of the school almost any display of Afro-Caribbean ethnicity was deemed inappropriate and was controlled, either officially (in the case of non-uniform dress) or informally (in the case of speech or the style of walking noted above) (Gillborn, 1990, p. 29).
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time, establish bridges to the receiving societys culture by becoming assimilated to prominent youth culture, why doesnt this count as a form of segmented assimilation? It seems that not any kind of ethnic culture or any kind of acquired culture (preservation and assimilation being the two poles of segmented assimilation) would count as preferred components of a successful form of segmented assimilation. A comparative analysis of the research findings reviewed here suggests that segmented assimilation is a condition for school success only when it is normalized in accordance with dominant school culture. As Qin-Hilliard argues, For many immigrant students today, daily exposure and assimilation into urban school and neighborhood environments may lead to downward social mobility. For these students, ethnicitythat is maintaining native culture and languagemay play a protective role, shielding them from the negative influences of todays urban America. In regard to their education, immigrant girls appear to benefit from this shield of ethnicity more than their male counterparts (Qin-Hilliard, 2003: p. 106). Along with assimilation to prevalent street culture, Qin-Hilliard suggests that for immigrant boys, as in the case of minority boys, the construction of a masculine identity --acting cool and tough (Qin-Hilliard, 2003: p. 105) --is also likely to be in conflict with the school agenda: For immigrant minority boys, their construction of a gender identity was closely linked to their racial and ethnic identity. To be respected among their peers, immigrant minority boys often had to present and emphasize their masculinity at school by acting cool and tough. As a result, teachers, mostly female, may have been likely to perceive immigrant minority boys as having more behavioral problems than girls and likely to view them as more threatening and dangerous than immigrant girls, which may have led them to punish boys more severely. This had a potentially negative impact on their development (Qin-Hilliard, 2003: p. 105). In a more recent study that focuses on Chinese immigrant adolescents (Qin 2009), Qin reports that compared to girls, boys formation of gender identity faced more peer pressure which was channelled into downplaying education and emphasizing nonacademic activities like sports. Similar studies cited by Qin, interpret ethnic minority boys hyper masculinity as reactionary to or compensatory for ethnic boys experiences of racism and their development of a bitter awareness that structural inequalities and discrimination are obstacles that cannot be overcome. Qin, instead, attributes hyper masculinity to conflicting cultural expectations experienced by Chinese boys over the construction of gender and academic identities. Caught between, on the one hand, parental anxiety over their become wild and pressure to become dragons of academic success and, on the other hand, anxiety not to be perceived as a nerd (and experiences of bullying when perceived as such), ethic Chinese boys negotiate tensions by responding to peer expectations.8 Similar to Qins intersectional approach is Prieurs analysis of Muslim or Southeast Asian youths gender remix in Norway (Prieur, 2002). The term gender remix denotes a much more dynamic kind of intercultural process than Qins notion of negotiation (since the latter
8
This cultural conflict does not pre-exist. In a national Chinese context, gender identities and academic identities would not be characterized by culturally conflicting codes and values. Instead, the development of gender identity and national identity, academic identity and national identity, would be mutually supportive than antagonistic.). Chinese Students become ethic Chinese students because they reside in the interstices of migration.
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ultimately means succumbing to the most powerful pressure). Prieur argues that immigrant youth gender constructions can not be understood solely in the light of cultural influence, as if on a scale running from conformity to parents culture to conformity to Norwegian culture. There is something really new in the making new combinations and new creations reflecting the particular social situation of the young people of immigrant origin (Prieur, 2002: p. 53). Prieur uses the notion of gender remix to explain the making of the hyper-masculine, aggressive masculinities of immigrant youth from Muslim or Southeast Asian countries. Against the reading of aggressive immigrant masculinities as a form of gendered autoethnicization, Prieur argues that the major sources for this remix are youth entertainment cultures, subcultures and peer group cultural innovations: The ideas about honor and respect are probably less influenced by the norms and values of the immigrant boys grandparents villages than by movies, hip-hop and rap music, by a commercial derivation of black American culture (Prieur, 2002: p. 71). Territoriality, honor, friendship, physical toughness and the idealization of the male body are identified as common traits among these subcultures and the immigrant youth culture of hypermasculinity. Of course, one might argue why migrant male youth acquire these and not other traits, since subcultural identifications aim to differentiation from dominant culture and other peer groups and not to the development of hypermasculinity as such. Although Prieur adopts a cultural studies approach to explain the production and fluidity of gender remix, he does not dispose of notions of structural inequality when it comes to explaining this remixs accent on bodily practices. The subcultural values and practices that compose the immigrant youth culture of hypermasculinity, Prieur argues, are not arbitrary but rather constitute a form of reaction to social and economic marginalization. Desais (1999) research on bad Bengali boys in London and Bourgois (1996) research on Puerto Rican crack dealers in New York are cited as similar cases.
2.3. Bringing performativity in the study of power relations and subject positionalities in schools
The school as an institution comprises of a network of power structures and microphysics of power exercised on teachers and students, but also researchers.
I have started research in the school as of this week. It's quite a shock for me. I feel rather depressed. First of all, the feeling of there being no private space/time/thoughts in the context of the school. Everyone, and especially the children, is under a continuous gaze, as well as expectation to perform, deliver, answer questions etc. It is a kind of colonization. Also, even though the majority of the children are Albanians, this is somehow erased in the school context. The fact that they have a non-Greek background is not discussed, they speak only Greek and if some reference to something Albanian slips out during class, it is usually in a derogatory fashion, primarily by the kids themselves. So, at the moment, I am experiencing a kind of suffocation and disorientation. Of course, the paradox is that the teachers, who I believe, and see, to be dedicated to the children's 'success' need
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to make them 'good enough' for the Greek system, so in a way, even while they are aware that the Albanian aspect of their identities is not included in the school culture, this to some extent is also a premise for them to become successful students. It's somehow like wearing a straightjacket. (Alexandra Zavos, Fieldwork Diary) As I am leaving from school, Mr. Neophytos, the Gym teacher who has been assigned the check and control on the Arab boys rushes to catch up with me, and starts screaming to me: Why do you mess up with their lives and their fights? With this research you are doing you create a lot of problems. You keep asking who did this and whose fault is it, and this way you turn them against each other. Dont ask them anything, never again. Ask only me. These are different from the Cypriots. They do not understand. To avoid problems in the future, dont mess up with them. Let them fight! As you see, they are fighting with each other, not with Cypriots.
(Paraskevi Michael, Fieldnotes: Dianellion Larnaca, May 20, 2009) According to Althussers analysis, the school is one of the Ideological Apparatuses of the State, the function of which is not to transmit, in some kind of disinterested and rational fashion, knowledge, considered neutral and objective, but indeed to establish and regulate normative dimensions about social relations, identity, personal and collective goals. The role of the school in reproducing and normalizing social inequalities and discrimination based on class, race, gender has been studied at length. In addition, it is also interesting to consider these normative dimensions not only in relation to social and cultural relations, but also as they affect the organization of time and space, the body, and personal relations. It is important to pose the question, whether or not, there is resistance, transgression or subversion of these norms by teachers and students. More specifically, we want to examine how gendered and processes of subjectification are reiterated and re-signified in school settings. How do we study gender and race in intercultural school contexts as acts (both performative ways of hailing teachers and students to subject positions of both submission but also positionalities of agency)? In most of the research findings discussed in our literature review, the authors speak of racialized spaces, gendered geographies, processes of racialization and gendered practices. When it comes to measuring something, in qualitative or quantitative ways, researchers code values and measure attitudes towards them; interviewees are presented with possible future scenarios and asked to position themselves; interviewees are presented with statements and are asked to indicate their agreement or disagreement; interviewees are prompted to narrate their personal and others (significant others) experiences of othering and their narratives are analyzed: do immigrant minority students embrace disown (verbally or symbolically), associate themselves with or deassociate themselves from the bad Filipina girl, the welfare queens, nerds, male gangs. What we are suggesting here is that there seems to be a discrepancy between the theorization of gender as practice and its codification in terms of attitudes, values, beliefs. This part focuses on some kinds of research which attempt to reckon with the performativity of gender and ethnicity. The theoretical framework of these studies is organized around Butlers definition of the performative: that discursive practice that enacts or produces that which it names (Butler, 1993: p. 13), that which produces that which it names, tha which enacts its
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own referent. According to Butler, at the heart of becoming a subject is the ambivalence of mastery and submission, which, paradoxically, take place simultaneouslynot in separate acts, but together in the same moment: The more a practice is mastered, the more fully subjection is achieved. Submission and mastery take place simultaneously, and it is this paradoxical simultaneity that constitutes the ambivalence of subjection. Where one might expect submission to consist in a yielding to an externally imposed dominant order, and to be marked by a loss of control and mastery, it is paradoxically marked by mastery itself the lived simultaneity of submission as mastery, and mastery as submission, is the condition of possibility for the subject itself (Butler, 1995: pp. 4546). The focus on the performative implicates a fundamental shift in the conceptualization of education, ethnicity and gender. The latter are not seen as axes of identity but rather as acts of subjectivity (not acts performed by an already established subject but acts which re-enact the subjectivity of the one to whom they are attributed). The shift from narratives to discourses and from attitudes and values to acts implicates a more fundamental shift: from the sociocultural construction of identity to the discursive production of subjectivity. . In other words, we do not talk about identities of students and teachers but about subjectivities of students and teachers. Here we cite here two examples of research in multicultural schools that point out this shift from identity to subjectivity. The first example is from Deborah Youdells (2006) analysis of events and discourses related to Multicultural Day at Plains High as a collective performative interpellation (Youdell, 2006: p. 522).9 In what she describes as a playful skirmish than a battle, Lebanese and Turkish students (who have contesting performative claims over the national paternity of the stall) organize and are staff together the Arabic Food stall together under the collective given and taken, name, Arab. The following event constitutes the departure point for Youdells deployment of a whole terrain of interrelated performatives though which subjecthood, albeit subjectivated and subjugated, is effected. A while later, the Deputy Principal ejects another Arabic boy, also on a BMX, who has spent the afternoon at the stall. The Deputy Principal says to him You were going to light up on the premisesnow leave. The boy cups an unlit cigarette in his hand. One of the students from the stall asks: Sir, what if I personally vouch for him?. The Deputy Principal does not respond to this offer and directs the boy away. The Deputy Principal watches me watching (Youdell, 2006: p. 520). The focus on a collective performative interpellation rather than on identity development of minority students, the cultural conflicts they experience, or even the gendered geographies they negotiate allows the researcher to show the ambiguity or aporia of racializing practices and institutional racism. In constituting Arabic as a legitimate axis of minority cultural difference (thus projecting a multicultural politics of tolerance and presumably combating
9
In the schools acceptance of the Arabic students donation of an Arabic Food stall, the school constitutes Arabic as a legitimate axis of minority cultural difference and subjectivates the Arabic subject as a good student. And in donating the stall and participating in Multicultural Day, this goodArabic-student-subject takes up this subjecthood. In doing this, just as the school cedes the goodArabic-student-subject, so this subject cedes the authority of the school institution by which she/he is subjectivated. And the students gain the rights of the student (to invite guests) but also subjection to teacher authority (to have their guests ejected). The stall, the food it sells, and so the students and others who staff it, are named (by the students?) Arabic (Youdell, 2006: p. 522).
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islamophobic exclusion) the school subjectivates the Arabic subject as a good student. The student, on the other hand, takes up this subjecthood but, in doing so, he also cedes the authority of the school and its institutituional force to subjectivate and subjugate the Arabic students. As Youdell puts it, the students gain the rights of the student (to invite guests) but also subjection to teacher authority (to have their guests ejected (Youdell 2006: p. 522). Youdell attributes the same performative ambivalence to school securitization processes. The moment the Arab/Islamist threatens to burst out of the confines of service and the White, male, senior teacher stands in the quad in front of the stall, walkie-talkie in hand, the Arabic students gain public recognition as legitimate and the subjectivation opens up the opportunity for self constitution. However, as Youdell adds, noting the subversive performatives limited capacity to break from context and historicity, their self-constitution under the aegis of this legitimacy threatens to slide back into injury and the constraint of the Savage Arab/Islamist threat (Youdell, 2006: p. 523).10 Comparing Youdells analysis of racialization as subjection to Qins analysis of immigrant minority youth targeted by school disciplinary practices, we could say that both excplicate the productive aspects of raced and gendered educational inequality and exclusion. One difference though is that in bringing out the discursive nature of institutional arrangements and student practices Youdell is also bringing out their contingent nature. In other words, she suggests that within a context of performative politics, institutional mechanisms are also discursively mediated and, as such, they are not tools of control acting on students but subjectivating processes though which minority students discursive agency, albeit precarious and amenable to processes of subjugation, is produced. The second example is cited from Davies (2006). Davies analysis of scenes of subjectification in intercultural school contexts elucidates the relevance of Butler's analysis of performativity for the analysis of disobedient citations of gender and ethnic in school settings. Davies focuses on the interaction of teachers with primary school students to illustrate the complex simultaneous processes of recognition on the part of the students, how they take-up and subvert power and how they disavowal dependency and freedom from the power of the dominant other to grant particular kinds of recognition. Davies argues that this disavowal of dependency takes place through the reiteration and repetition of the discourses through which students are subjected to disciplinary control. In one of those scenes analyzed by Davies, we watch two boys, who had been involved in a playground fight two days ago, walking down the corridor past the teacher who had intervened in their fight. They speak pleasantly to her, and while followed by their own teacher who looks angry because they have just been very disruptive in her gym session, they move down the corridor, embrace each other and sing to each other (not provocatively, but loud enough for the teacher to hear), We are the naughty boys (Davies, 2006: pp.165166). Analyzing the performative aspects of this scene, Davies suggests that the two boys subvert, for the moment, the category of naughty boy, asserting themselves as powerful, and as independent of the teachers controlling gaze. Davies emphasizes that the boys do not escape the dominating force of the category naughty boys and of their positioning within it but, this does not mean that the naughty boys are engaged in a powerless form of mimesis.
10
In another study, Youdell (2003) elicits this performative ambiguity of hegemonic discourses in regards to subcultural bodily practices (e.g., the male Black sub-cultural walk). Youdell argues that bodily acts performed as citations of subcultural status in order to challenge White school hegemony, have the potential to recoup the male Black youth as a student-child which is being disciplined as an undesirable learner.
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Instead, she argues that something unintended can take place while the dominant discourse is put at play. The boys, Davies argues, submit to the teachers definition of them as naughty, but they do not, apparently, submit to what the teacher regards as the appropriate emotion of shame, or the appropriate desire to reform: The definition of naughtiness is prior to themit is outside of themselves, it is imposed on them and they both take it up, wilfully, and at the same time subvert the relations of power in which the teachers use of the naughty boy category, intended to rein in their power (Davies, 2006: pp.165166). The two examples cited from Youdell and Davies show that in order to study how students and teachers are constituted and reconstituded as racialized and gendered subjects in the context of intercultural interactions researchers must be able to go beyond narratives and witness, in situ, those critical moments of reiteration. More importantly, in order to understand how the process of reiteration creates the possibilities for the constituting forces to be reworked, the researcher must become familiar first with those dominant discursive processes that interpellate both teachers and students to the reign of subjectification and further, be to identify, beyond preconceived notions of educational structures, the uniqueness of those intersectional positionalities where from discursive processes are set in motion again and resignification becomes possible.
3. WP5 Methodology
How we avoid cultural essentialism without disposing all together the reflexivity of cultural interpretation? How can we avert the critical gaze from the racial object/migrant to the racial subject without uprooting racism from its social and cultural context and presenting the racist subject as a self-determined agent? Rather than choosing between these two ends as if they led to competitive and mutually exclusive research agentas, our research methodology has tried to sustain the tension between two different tasks: on the one hand, placing culture on stage, analyzing it as a play of semiotics; on the other hand, averting the gaze from the other student to the structures, codes and subjectification processes of racialization. At the same time, there are two preconditions that such an approach should meet in order not to collapse into a disengaged formalist analysis: first, the asymmetrical power relations of the inter-cultural encounter must be acknowledged; second, while engaged in the interpretation of cultural interactions, researchers must recognize that they are already implicated themselves in relations of power.
3.1. Goal of the research

Our main goal is to shift from an essentialist understanding of cultural identities to an analysis of interacultural interactions, and from raciological framings of others to a critical analysis of racial thinking. Why want to explore how regimes of gender, race and nationalism intersect with conditions of exlusion related to migrant and minority stutus but, at the same time,we want to explore whether intercultural interactions in schools create possibilities for the performative destabilization of gender norms and ethnic boundaries. Finally, we want to reframe the study of the intercultural condition in ways that takes the burden of identity away
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from migrant and national/ethnic minority students, and render visible the implication of educational institutions and school actors in the mediation of ethnic borders and conflict. This goal will be deployed in regards to three interacting fields: First, at the level of national context, to explore (a) national level policies and measures the integration of migrant students and promotion of an inclusive multicultural environment for majorities and ethnic minorities and (b) the relation between multicultural educational agendas. Second, at the school level, to explore (a) educational institutions responses to integration policies and the institutionalization and state regulation of intercultural education, (b) administrators and teachers understandings of intercultural education and how these understandings negotiate national anxiety and racial thinking on otherness, (c) how processes of racialization and ethicization interweave with ordinary student activities and rituals Third, at the level of cultural semiotics and performativity, to produce thick descriptions of intercultural interactions in school settings and school arenas and to explore whether there are moments of intercultural agency where agents can reiterate gender, ethnic performances in ways that destabilize the naturalization of borders and exclusions. We are particilalry interested in understanding the gender dimensions of cultural misrecognition and racialization and in exploring whether intercultural settings and culturally hybrid interfaces are hospitable (or inimical) to students renegotiation of gender norms.
3.2. Objectives
1. To explore how the implementation of measures for migrant students implicates states of exception which sometimes limit the opportunities for intercultural interaction and the challenge of gender norms but some other times create possibilities for multicultural schools to operate more autonomously and evade forms of governmentality exercised by the state. 2. To reclaim the fragility of intercultural relations as a condition for agonistic democracy in multicultural schools. 3. To record how (a) ethnicity is gendered and (b) gender is ethnicised in schools and to explore how the multicultural or monocultural profiles of schools and communities relate to the performative re-enactment of national, ethnic, gender identities in different school settings and school arenas. 4. To examine how intercultural interaction is organized around axes of gendered ethnicity, migrant/non-migrant and national majority/national minority status (selection of events) 5. To explore how students (all) and teachers use of concepts such as culture, cultural difference, cultural deficit, otherness, race, immigration, we/them is troubled when they are encouraged to provide thick descriptions of specific events of conflict and processes of racialization and cultural hybridization.
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6. To explore how the transnational experience of both migrant and non-migrant, national minority and national minority students (a) influences their understanding of culture, cultural difference and gender norms and (b) inspires the performative (in Butlers sense) iteration (and destabilization) of gendered ethnic performances of identity (in other words, how students play gender in order to challenge ethnic borders and play ethnicity to challenge gender norms. 7. To engage teachers and school administrators in a critical discussion of intercultural education in ways that destabilize essentialist understanding of culture. 8. To reframe intercultural dialogue in terms of critical pedagogy. This means, to enable students, in Freires terms, to recognize themselves as being with the world and with others rather than being in the world, to understand that limit situations are socially constructed rather than culturally inevitable and that ethnic conflict, bullying and other forms violence are not inevitable effects of personal psychological deficit and racist attitudes but rather related to global injustice.
3.3. Basic premises, hypotheses and concepts

Premises EU, National and School level policies of intercultural education are grounded on essentialist understanding of culture The implementation of immigrant student integration measures establishes and normalizes states of exception (Agamben). Learning about the culture of others and intercultural interaction is regulated by these states of exception, and students and teachers are alienated from political thinking and agency. Intercultural interaction is mediated by cultural semiotics Intercultural interaction creates the possibility for the performative re-iteration and negotiation of ethnicity in general and gendered ethnicity in particular. The narrativization and intercultural analysis of critical school events from culturalist approaches to difference and creates possibilities for connecting pedagogy to global politics of justice. Hypotheses Schools are not culturally homogeneous, politically neutral or socially harmonious places which just receive and accommodate migrant and/or national/ethnic minority students. Schools are already terrains of political debate, social tension and cultural
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change but their receptivity to cultural interaction is further radicalized when schools are turned into primary meeting point between non-migrant and migrant, majority and minority populations. Intercultural interactions in school settings can both crystallize and destabilize ethnic borders and gender norms. The fact that school settings in general and school arenas in particular are in-between public places (they combine conditions of exposure with conditions of intimacy) allows the possibility for unique kind of performativity. In both intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic relationships identities are performed in ways that combine repetition and variation, serious and non-serious citation of norms. Intercultural interactions are not territorialized in typical classroom environments where formal forms of teaching and learning are taking place. Intercultural interactions occur in the school yard, in washrooms, along the borders of the school yard, in parents association meetings, etc. Youth cultures often implicate forms of cultural re-appropriation and hybridization and gender is both the element and target of these cultural processes. Schools are national state ideology apparatuses invested with the mission to reproduce dominant national cultures and contain multicultural education within the ideological limits of national building. At the same time, however, the intercultural interactions which take place in school settings constitute hybrid stages where gender identities are national/ethnic boundaries are both replayed and displaced. Schools as apparatuses operate on students and teachers, regulate identities, control and contain cultural interactions; on the other hand, intercultural interactions and conflicts as new sites of overdetermined cultural practice where students and teachers, in acting-out identities and norms in hybrid contexts they are also inaugurating intercultural public spheres where a new politics of post-nationalist belongingness are enacted. Concepts
Transculturation (Pratt)
The term transculturation was coined in the 1940s by sociologist Fernando Oritz to describe the process by which a conquered people choose and select what aspects of the dominant culture they will assume. Anthropologist Mary Louise Pratt uses the term to explore intercultural borrowings of tropisms of self-representation in colonial encounters. She defines as transculturation the processes whereby members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture (Pratt 1992: 523). Transculturation is closely linked to contact zones, another concept developed by Pratt in her book Under Imperial Eyes. Pratt defines contact zones as "social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination" (Pratt 519). These concepts are crucial for the theoretical framing of the ethnographic study of intercultural interactions in classrooms and other educational zones because they acknowledge the asymmetrical power relations that accompany, condition, compromise or even become disrupted by intercultural interactions.
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Internal exclusion, state of exception (Agamben)

Agamben introduces the concept of state of exception in his book Homo Sacer where he argues that we continue to live under the auspices of a classical state and that political life stripped of moral agency and social intercourse and reduced to bare life, that is, life given a protected, even "sacred" status beyond the immediate grasp of political power, but it life that is also isolated and separated from the wider range of human forms of expression. According to Agamben, the reduction of political life (or, production of bare life) is instrumental for the states performance of sovereignty, since it is in the states capacity to define and occasionally erase the boundary between "normality" and "emergency" transform society into a "camp". Agambens concept of exception is particularly relevant to the study of intercultural education. On the one hand, intercultural education is usually framed in national migrant integration policy documents as the exceptional space for promoting intercultural understanding, respect for other cultures etc. On the other hand, life in schools is regulated by directives, rules, restrictions, measures which suspend rights. From this perspective, it would be important to examining whether the special measures and exceptions that characterize the inclusion of the migrant other in schools facilitate interaction or entrap migrant students in what Agamben calls a zone of irreducible in distinction (Agamben 1998). Thus spaces of exception (migrant reception classrooms, language instruction, zones of educational priority, remedial classrooms, and so on) are important sites for ethnographic research.
Thick interpretation (Geertz)

The term was used by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his essay, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture" (Geertz 1973). For Geertz, culture is an assemblage of texts which is to be interpreted rather than deciphered. What renders this concept important for the theorizing of culture and the delineation of intercultural interactions to be studied in our project is that it acknowledges that culture does not exist as such but instead it is the outcome of interpretations of symbolic interactions in which people engage.
Performativity, re-iteration (Butler)

Judith Butler describes performativity as that reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains. (Butler 1993,2). Butlers use of this concept in her analysis of gender as act is related to the destabilization of homosexuality and heterosexuality as natural and fixed categories. Theorizing gender as performance and as reiteration implicates much more trouble for norms of purity and authenticity when the study of gender focuses on intercultural encounters.
Other important concepts

critical pedagogy (Freire; Giroux) Hybridity (Stuart Hall)
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Precariousness (Judith Butler) Territorialization/deterritorialization/density/minoritization (Deleuze)
3.4. Basic research questions

How is intercultural education understood, institutionalized and implemented in different national contexts? Are there patterns of similarity in the genealogies of multicultural schools examined in the three different national contexts? How do school politics and urban interactions interact to create exclusions for migrant students? How do poverty and migration intersect in intensifying the precariousness of public schools in downtrodden urban areas? How are politics and policies of multicultural education transferred, modified and negotiated in the particular schools? How do issues of national identity and national politics affect the definition and implementation of intercultural education in specific schools and. vice versa, how multicultural schools negotiate dominant national discourses. In which ways are gender identities and norms troubled or solidified by processes of racialization and ethnicization in schools with migrants and/or National/ethnic minority students?
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3.5. Research Methodology

Critical ethnography constitutes the backbone of Research Methodology. We will start with participatory observation and non-structured interviews and multi-media data will be used to produce codifications which, in turn, will be used to elicit the renarrativization, thick description and critical analysis of events of intercultural interaction (e.g., events of conflict, racist bullying, cultural mediation/translation, transculturation) and institutional frameworks (e.g., how is the admission and placement of migrant students regulated in the specific school/classroom). In distantiating itself from naturalistic inquiry, this latter part of our research will effect a deliberate (rather than incidental) intervention in the research field. It will create opportunities for reflection, for both researchers and subjects, and destabilization of naturalization of ethnic and racial borders. The gaze on the ethic other will be displaced by critical interventions and migrant and ethnic minority students will reflect critically on processes of both racialization and dynamic transformations in intercultural contexts.
Data collection Survey A survey will be prepared in order to record the multicultural compositions of schools, their genealogies with regards to their shift from homogeneous to diverse, multicultural policies and measures implemented and critical events and public debates taking place with regards to multicultural schools. Based the findings of these surveys we will decide which schools we will select for our fieldwork. Participatory Ethnography (Level One Data) In order to collect student narratives, researchers will engage in intensive interaction in selected schools where they will witness, record and codify critical events. They will also produce thick description of the ways in which National Policies / Measures are implemented in the particular school/classrooms.
Observation
Before collecting personal narratives the research must establish rapport with the class/school where the case study will be contacted. The researchers access and mobility across a range of school setting and arenas in vital, for this reason the research steps and the scale of the research (described in attached diagram) can be modified. Observation aims to the localization of the particularscene, picture, setting, arrangement, site, arena, performative actthat will work as a catalyst for triggering students and teachers responses. Observation also aims to locating different settings and arenas of intercultural interaction in order to attend and document student interactions in these multiple settings, as well as phrase questions accordingly.
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Semi-structured interviews (Level Two Data)

In the context of these interviews we will encourage students to describe/narrate critical events that took place in the past, events which are part of the collective memory of the class or a group of the class (e.g,, migrant student can narrate its first day at that school, a nonmigrant student can narrate a fight that took place in the playground; what we aim to get here are not reliable data/objective descriptions but instead thick descriptions which are layered by meanings which the participants bring to the narration of the event). Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with teachers and other school personnel responsible for migrant and ethnic students (translators, counsellors, welfare advisors, teachers of second language and remedial classes, etc) in order to record their understandings of intercultural education, what/whom they frame as problem, culture, cultural difference and intercultural education. Focus Groups and/or Intervention Activities and Workshops Focus groups will work on various levels: (a) Student focus groups analyze the codifications produced from data collected though participatory ethnography and interviews. Our purpose at this level is to produce and not simply to collect data. The interactions between students are vital and must be encouraged. Each student comment/response/pause/silence can be framed as a topic for further analysis. (b) Student focus groups analyze excerpts from Level One Data. This activitys aims are informed mostly by critical pedagogy and action research. Our aim is not just to elicit and record views but to promote critical reflection by presenting to them contradictions, discontinuities and silences from their own discourse. The students will be presented with specific questions: E.g., what went wrong in this event or if this event (pointing to a specific codification) was narrated by M (male) student and not a F (female) student, a M (migrant) and a NM (non migrant) student, how would the story be presented? Another way to promote this is to create new contexts for a new pragmatics of speech and exchange of views. For example, in one other focus groups we had with a mixed group of Moslem refugee students and Greek Cypriot students (3rd Grade Lyceum), the latter had for first time the opportunity to listen to Moslem students talk of marginalization and experiences of racism, as well as of their willingness to subscribe to the National army (to which National students reply by reconstructing the concept of National army). This third phase, particularly with children of younger ages, can take up the form of a workshop which will give them the chance to talk about their emotions, their dreams, their friends. Photo eliciting or drawing eliciting can be particularly useful for dealing with problems of language barriers. The diagram below outlines various levels of critical ethnography as well various kinds of ethnographic tools. This is not meant to serve as a blueprint for research epistemology or a flowchart for research steps. It is meant to serve as a platform for mapping, tentatively and preliminarily, some research possibilities while inscribing within research steps the Ge.M.IC.s
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theoretical commitment to grassroots epistemologies. The diagram outlines a field of possibilities and combination of tools to be deployed in diverse ways by researchers, depending on the opportunities provided in the national context and various degrees of access granted to them by school authorities.
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3.6. National Case Studies: Phrasing research questions in national context, Defining Research Field, outlining research steps
3.6.1. Cyprus In the case of Cyprus the research team decided to contact multi-sited research. There are two reasons for this choice. First, each district presents different genealogies and ethic profiles of in-coming migration as well as different spatial deployments of migrants. Second, so far research on intercultural education has focused mostly on elementary schools so we wanted to explore how intercultural policies and interactions differ across different kinds of schools and different age groups. Third, a number of graduate students were interested in joining the research team so this made possible the setting up of an expanded network of researchers. In the case of Cyprus, access to public schools for research can be secured only through official permit by the Ministry of Education and Culture. Until final permit was issued, the research team secured informal access to some schools, provided that researchers would conduct only naturalist inquiry (no interactions or interviews;only observation). During this phase (December-March 2009) researchers kept journals with daily entries on their experiences and observations. Our aim was to record different faces of intercultural interactions which also represented different kinds of ethnic, class, age and gender dynamics. During phase II (April-May), after the official permit was granted by the Ministry, systematic participatory observation was conducted in the following schools: Phaneromeni in Nicosia (elementary and gymnasium housed in the same building), Nicosia 1st Technical School, Phaneromeni Gymnasium in Larnaka, Ayia Paraskeyi Gymnasium in Pafos, and Christakeio Elementary School in Limassol. The average ages of students in these schools are: elementary school 6-12, gymnasium 13-15 and technical school 16-18.
3.6.2. Greece Research by the Greek partner focused on a primary school in Athens (the 49th Primary School), a school located in a downgraded inner city neighbourhood of Athens, where mostly poor Greeks, migrants and refugees reside. The student population comprises approximately 100 students; 1/5 of the student population is Greek, and the rest are Albanians, Afghanis and Chinese, with the majority being Albanian. The school presents an interesting case study because it has become the nexus of wider processes of social transformation linking educational with migration, refugee and asylum and urban regeneration politics. As such it represents an example of intercultural communication that permeates but also transcends school, classroom and curriculum boundaries, allowing us to study the issue of multiculturalism from multiple perspectives, linked but not restricted to the formal implementation of intercultural educational policies. Field work was conducted for two months with particular focus in the Sixth Grade Classroom (the researcher had a very close partnership with the classroom teacher). Research included observation, interviews with 6th grade students and interviews with teachers. In order to encourage the students to talk about their lives, the researcher used drawing eliciting. The students were asked to make drawings about their ideal place and were later asked to talk about them. Interviews with the Afghani students were conducted through the help of a translator whereas interviews with Albanian students were conducted in Greek since all Albanians were fluent in Greek.
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3.6.3. Macedonia The national case study will be on a unique secondary school in Skopje Cvetan Dimov. This secondary school is located in the multicultural part of the city, and it is a school where students from different ethnic groups learn together, something which renders this school a unique place for research on intercultural relations and negotiations of gender, ethnic and other identities. The particular school was the first mixed secondary school in Skopje for girls and boys (though now there are more boys in the school than girls) and is located in the ethnically mixed neighbourhood of Skopje, with ethnic Albanians being the dominant group. Teaching takes place in two shifts and in two different languages correspondingly, Macedonian and Albanian, which are the languages of the two dominant majorities in the locality of Cvetan Dimov. However in both language shifts there are mixed ethnic classes. The multicultural outset of this school is quite different from the outset encountered in the Greek and Cypriot context. Whereas in the case of Greece and Cyprus multicultural schools adopt the same (i.e., national) curriculum and implement that in mixed classrooms (with migrant students offered separate supplementary courses in Greek as a second/foreign language), in this case Albanian and Macedonian classes operate in separate time slots (in morning and afternoon shifts) but within the premises of the same school. Albanian students are taught Macedonian language but Macedonian students are not taught Albanian. Within the same shift there are also two different tracks, gymnasium and economic courses. As in the case of Cyprus, the research team had to obtain official permission from the Ministry of Education and the school principal for conducting site-based research in the school. The original informant was a 3rd grade who functioned as a contact person with other teachers, administration, students etc. During the first phase, the researchers conducted participatory observation in spaces of interethnic interaction and connection as well as spaces demarcated and separated by ethnic difference and conflict. During the second phase, researchers had informal interviews with students on the themes of friendship and romance and recorded stories on relationships between young people from different ethnic and religious background as well as stories on conflicts between students (some of these stories were later used as codifications and researchers prompted students to offer thick descriptions of these stories). During the third phase, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews and organized focus groups in order to explore in more depth power relations among students and between students and teachers, as well as networks of power with regards to school hierarchies.
3.7. Data analysis and interpretation

Data analysis and interpretation will be developed through critical discourse analysis of interviews and focus group data; reflexive analysis of fieldwork diary and personal research notes; and, if visual data is recorded, analysis of visual representations as well. Based on research questions and preliminary coding of data the partners decided during the second thematic workshop (Athens November 25 2009) on the major axes and codes to be
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used for analysis of data. Two major axes of analysis were decided, a thematic axis (vertical) and an axis of politicization (horizontal). The major axes and codes of analysis can be seen in the diagram at the end of the page. Findings will be organized across the following categories: (a) school: school ethos, school as an institution, genealogy of multicultural composition (data from field notes: reports on participatory observation and self-reflection entries), (b) teachers and other school personnel: perceptions of school, understandings of culture, use of raciologies or elimination of raciologies, color blind or not, vision of intercultural education (interviews), (c) students: narratives, interactions, ethnic clustering and mixings, social dynamics (data from participatory ethnography and interviews, sociograms), (d) engagement of students in reflective analysis (mixed focus groups, SCITs, etc.)
Partners also agreed on the following structure of National Reports:
National Report on Intercultural Education (length: 30,000 words) Introduction: National Context, mainstream ideas and dominant discourses, controversies, silences (2-3 pages) Policies (2-3 pages) Reflexive Methodologies (2-3 pages) Data Analysis Conclusions
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4. National Contexts
4.1. Cypriot National Context
From 2001, the year the Ministry of Education of Cyprus acknowledged officially the phenomenon of multiculturalism in schools, to 2008, the year intercultural education was framed as the year-long educational aim, the discourse on intercultural education has remained focused on the migrant object. The framing of migrants as alloglossi and the framing of alloglossi as the major problem faced by mlulticultural schools have come to define demands by teachers and schools and responses by the Ministry of Education. At the beginning of the school year 2001-2002 the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus used for first time the rhetoric of multicultural education in order to acknowledge the becoming multicultural of the Cypriot society and to announce a series of measures taken in response to the ensuing educational needs. In acknowledging multiculturalism as a new social reality, this response was also delineating the present from a presumably mono-cultural (i.e., Greek Orthodox) past: Cyprus, besides its serious political problem, finds itself today in the whirlwind of socioeconomic developments. The Cypriot society, which until recently was a relatively homogeneous society with Greek Orthodox population, has been experiencing during the last decade the consequences of mass influx of alien workers and Greek-Pontioi expatriates from the previous USSR (Ministry of Education, Memorandum, November 3 2001). Since then, the main focus of Multicultural Education has been the teaching of Greek to migrant students: This measure [Multicultural Education] aims at the smooth integration of foreignlanguage speaking children into the educational system of Cyprus and not at their absorption. The objective of the education offered is to provide enhanced and diversified programmes for learning the Greek language to children of repatriated and immigrant families for effective communication and smooth integration in society and to protect them against all forms of racial discrimination and social exclusion tendencies. The Centres of Further Education cover this need by offering afternoon lessons (Social Inclusion Report, 2006: pp. 24-25). Intercultural education in Cyprus has been understood as a necessary tool to help us deal with them. The term migrant students has never been used as a frame in educational policy discourse. The term originally used was allodapoi, i.e., aliens. As the problem of allodapoi became diagnosed as a problem of students who do not speak the language of instruction, i.e., Greek, migrant students became re-named, from allodapoi to alloglossoi, i.e., those speaking an other (lli) language (glssa). Framed as a prognosis for the problem of alloglossi, intercultural education was understood as teaching Greek to foreigners. Framed as the goal of integration, intercultural interaction was understood as a spontaneous process which would take off as soon as the migrant students were mainstreamed. Another reason why the discourse on intercultural education has remained focused on the integration of migrant/alloglossi despite the popularized motto of accepting cultural diversity is because culture and cultural difference have been linked to identity (of others) and not to processes of interaction and rerrains of politics. Multicultural education has come to the focus on the
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migrant student and not the multicultural classroom, the cultural difference of the other and not ethnicity and ethnic borders. Along with the emphasis on teaching Greek to alloglossoi intercultural education has also become framed as a policy of social inclusion for disadvantaged children. Towards this direction, the Ministry of Education has adopted the measure of Educational Priority Zones (EPZs). This measure aims at reducing inequalities for pupils attending schools in disadvantaged areas with an increased proportion of immigrants: The EPZ promote the qualitative democratisation of educational opportunities and pedagogical conditions of success for all children (Social Inclusion NAP, 2006). EPZs have been operating in three cities, covering a total of seventeen schools. Three of the schools where GEMIC fieldwork was implemented, Phaneromeni Elementary School and Phaneromeni Gymnasium in Nicosia and Phaneromeni Gymnasiun in Larnaka operate under the scheme of EPZs. Whereas in 2001 the Ministrys use of the term multicultural was very cautious, almost reticent, by the year 2008 the use of the term became so generous that multiculturalism came to cover every ethnic other, every inter-cultural encounter, every migration which the Republic of Cyprus was willing to accommodate within its national narrative. The National Strategy Plan for the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008, submitted in response to the Restricted Call for Proposals by the Culture Unit of the Directorate General for Education and Culture of the Commission, was composed bearing in mind the specific features of the Cypriot Society which bestow to it multicultural characteristics (Action Plan by the National Coordination Body of Cyprus, September 14 2007). Among these social features, the National Strategy cites: The existence of the constitutionally recognized communities and religious groups (Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Armenians, Maronites, Latins), the contact with the English culture during the period of British Rule and because of the presence of British bases on the island, the migration experience of Cypriots themselves, and the reception of foreign migrants in our days, tourism, bordering with Middle East and the repercussions of relevant political events such as the reception and hospitality of refugees from Lebanon, many young people studying in universities abroad, Cyprus EU accession. During the last few years, Cypriot society experiences an utterly new reality, mostly in the school environment.11
11
This is a translation of the Greek version which is posted on the website of the Ministry of Education and Culture (http://www.moec.gov.cy/2008_diapolitismikos_dialogos/pdf/sxedio_drasis_2008pdf.pdf). The text of the National Strategy as posted on the official EU website of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue is quite different, narrativizing the last hundred year of Cypruss multicultural becoming (without any reference to structural aspects such as marginality and racism) and foregrounding a hospitable national (Cypriot) profile:
The Cypriots are familiar with living with people of other cultures not only because of the tourist character of the country but also on account of the immigration of many locals to more economically developed countries in the past. Being neighbours with the Arabs and giving shelter to the refugees who left Lebanon during the civil war and the several crises in their country gave the locals the chance to know some aspects of the Arab culture. During the last decade the presence on the island of immigrants from Easter European and Asian countries is greatly noticed. These immigrants work in hotels and restaurants, as sanitary employees and domestic assistants and in many other occupations
(available online: http://www.interculturaldialogue2008.eu/fileadmin/downloads/documents/133nationalcampaigns/national_strategy/strategy_cyprus.doc).
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The first two first goals listed by the National Strategy are: a) All the people of Cyprus, local and immigrants should realise the importance of intercultural dialogue in their everyday life and be willing to participate in it positively. b) The immigrants should get familiar with the basic characteristics of the local culture whereas the natives should get to know the characteristics of the different immigrant groups. In this way they will be able to understand, tolerate and cooperate with each other.12 These two goals embody the dominant understanding of intercultural education as it has been developing across the elementary schools of Cyprus during the last few years, a combination of moralizing discourse on tolerance and a child-centered approach to the discovery of cultural otherness. Without teasing out first students understanding of race and by re-inscribing discriminatory racism with the glorification of the others cultural difference, elementary schools have come to frame migrant students as representatives of national cultures. In contrast to elementary schools, secondary schools have not embrace multiculturalism in such a celebratory manner. In the case of secondary education, increasing the enrolment of migrant students in Greek Cypriot public schools rather than promoting intercultural interaction became the guiding aim of immigrant student integration policy. During the period of 2003-2004, 1.866 non Cypriot students were enrolled in Gymnasiums and Lyceums. By 2006, this number increased to 2,052 students. Interestingly, these enrolment figures are also cited as indicators of social inclusion for the years 2003.2004, and 2006 correspondingly (Social Inclusion Report, 2006, p.87). To the extent enrolment of migrant students in secondary education and not quality of intercultural interaction is framed as the indicator of social inclusion, mainstreaming migrant students has become the primary goal of multicultural education at the secondary level. In addition to this, the subject oriented approach and the fragmentation of the teaching time into slots of time devoted to different subject matters with different instructors do not allow opportunities for thematizing and adding-on supplements of epochal themes, such as intercultural education. The marginalization of immigrant students has become normalized through the educational apparatus of auditors (akroats): newcomer immigrant students are placed as auditors at a grade level maximum a year lower than their age level and were granted an one year gratis (i.e., exemption from exams and evaluation) to learn, through immersion in a native language communicative environment, the language of instruction.13 Schools have become a privileged terrain of research on multiculturalism because they were the first places to attend both intercultural contacts and processes of racialization. Unlike the workplace, where the racial distribution of labour often keeps everyone in their place and limits intercultural contact, and residential areas, where apartheid is legitimized as social stratification, schools cannot, actively at least, separate migrant students from non-migrants
12
National Strategy on intercultural Education, Official English Version (available online: http://www.interculturaldialogue2008.eu).
13
The policy of mainstreaming different students as auditors in the comprehensive classroom was originally developed as an accommodating measure for special education students.
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students. The integration of migrant students in the comprehensive Greek Cypriot classroom, however, has been accompanied by forms of passive exclusion and cultural misrecognition (Taylor 1994) of minority migrant students. Guided by ideals such as respect for difference and recognition, early research on intercultural education in Greek Cypriot focused on the experience of migrant students and Greek Cypriot students xenophobic attitudes, but excluded from the scope on intercultural education questions on inter-ethnic conflict (a similar selective approach to the framing of migration and development of intercultural policies has been recorded in the WP3 Report, in regards to the internal migration of Turkish Cypriot workers who commute on a daily basis from the north side to the south side of the divide). This selective delineation of the intercultural is not a characteristic of Greek Cypriot national educational politics but a structural limitation built within multiculturalisms double loyalties: on the one hand, its disciplinary loyalty to anthropology and, on the other hand, its political loyalty to nation state politics. As a project committed to the recognition of the other, multiculturalism has inherited anthropologys legacy of excluding from cultural critique the familiar (ones society) and searching instead for the native other. Anthropology treatment of both the other and the others culture as spatially incarcerated (Appadurai, 1988) has resurrected its legacy in multiculturalisms fascination with the cultural otherness of immigrants. As a project committed to the politics of nation state, multiculturalism recognizes the difference that culture makes in order to modify and enhance the process of nation building. As Gupta & Ferguson remark, multiculturalism is both a feeble acknowledgement of the fact that cultures have lost their moorings in definite places and an attempts to subsume this plurality of cultures within the framework of a national identity (Gupta & Ferguson 1992: 7).
Measures taken for implementation of Intercultural Education September 7 1999

Ministerial Decision for the promotion of Intercultural Education and the establishment of reception classes so that the education of repatriates (term used for Ethnic Greek Pontians) and alien students could become more effective and participatory leading to the smooth and balanced integration of these students in the Greek [sic] educational system ( -
2002 beginning of school year (Directive dated 29 October 2002)
The Ministry of Education and Culture (MOED) sends Directive to Elementary schools informing them about: the preparation of a program of Intercultural Education, the preparation of an Action Plan developped around the axis of the smooth integration of the alloglossa in the the educational system and not their assimilation the basic aim remains the same, i.,e., the offer of supporting modified programs for the learning of the greek language and the childrens smooth integration in the social system ( ) protection of the freedoms and rights of all members of the Cypriot society from any racist discrimination and tendencies of social exclusion.
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2004 Educational Reform Report

The Report identifies the existence of a problem with regards to the education whose parents cannot testify to the legality of their stay (i.e., children of illegal migrants). Originally, some school would not register these children. Later, it was decided that all children could be registered, independently of migrant status (legal or illegal). The rationale behind the decision for this policy change was to prevent the risk of student dropouts because in case the parents of these children would later become legalized, the school would be burdened with cases of absolutely illiterate students or students who, compared with peer students of the same age, would have a serious deficit. It is obvious that the decision was based on a strictly utilitarian approach and principles of school efficiency, and no attempt was made to phrase it in a way that would sound in tone with any human rights or respect for diversity approach. The Report also makes note of problems related with the implementation of Intercultural Education in secondary education: the teachers express worries and doubts with regard to their capacity to respond to the needs of a multicultural classroom kids of a different cultural bavkground are at risk of lugging behind and facisn many psychological problems because of ignorance for or even scorn for their cultural specificities The teachers worry () about the relations between native students and migrants A solution is searched in the face of intercultural education, as written in the report, which is understood as a special educational process which integrates some elements of the other childrens civilization aiming to the support of these childrens modivation for learning and the betterment of their self-image. This approach, however, according to the report benefits primarily monority children and ignires majority children. The Special Committee for Educational Reform puts forth the following proposals: ) expanded teaching of foreign languages, something which would contribute to the more smooth integration of alloglossoi owning to the recognition of the importance of every language ) teaching migrant students their mother tongue ) in-service teacher training programmes for the traching of Greek as a Second/Foreign Language ) the promotion of the European dimension of education and, within this context, revision of textbooks with keen nationalistic character
2007-2008
The MOEC designates Intercultural Education as Special school year Aim. Until the end of the school year secondary schools have not received any directives or official guidelines about the grade/class placement of incoming migrant students. In our fieldwork we found out that secondary school abide with the informal policy of placing alloglossoi at their age grade under the status of auditor. This means that these students attend class but not as regular students: they are exempted from exams and they are not given grade reports. At the end of the school year, the students take the same final exams as regular students, and if they pass the exam there are, retroactively assigned regular student status for the year and continue their enrollement, as regular students, to the next grade. As explained to Gemic researchers by a MOEC administrator, tackling with the problem of
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alloglossoi in secondary education by placing them as auditors constitutes a case of a policy expansion rather than a new policy for migrant students. The option of auditing a class with same age peers under an exceptional status was originally developed for children with special needs who were mainstreamed in regular classes according to 1999 Special Education Law 113 (1). This option, however, when it was extended to migrant children, it had diffrent effects. Unlike children with special needs, whose inclusion in and mobility through regular classes was facilitated through the status of the auditor, alloglossoi attending as auditors could not move to the next grade (and at the same time make the transition to regular status), without having mastered the Greek language as a medium of learning and pass the end of the year exams (auditors can repeat a grade for more than once if they do not pass the exams or can move to next grade but still as auditors). Whereas for a child with special needs auding class means attaining social skills and acceptance by peers, for an alloglossos it could mean learning that his/her presence does not matter. In conclusion, we could say that in the national context of Cyprus, intercultural education accommodates others through forms of internal exclusion which promote inclusion of others in educational activities but at the same time enact processes of othering and exceptionality whereby other become inconsequential. The term inclusive exclusion is introduced by Giorgio Agamben (1998) and it refers to a kind of belongingness without inclusion. Yeenolu (2005) cites as a paradigmatic example of inclusive exclusion the case of Turkish guest workers in Germany who are conditionally welcomed. They are included in order to nourish the sovereignty of the German subject and yet kept out of the purview of general law. In Cyprus, in the case of measures and policies for migrant students, internal inclusion takes form in both of the two arrangements of flexible policy, i.e., the zones of educational priority ZEP and the auditors scheme. In the case of the first policy, schools with high enrolments of migrants are offered more autonomy with administrative and financial issues and more flexivility with curriculum issues. Whereas the ministry maintains the central control with both provision and financing of educational services, in the case of ZEPs schools are given authority and funding in order to design and implement actions (e.g., hiring translators). However, these actions, however, the providers of special services, even the special spaces set up for special provision (translators, coordinators of afterschool, etc), all of which operate under some special (exceptional) status, often become sovereign areas of educational authority, controlled by special people in charge whose only credential is that they really care for these children, and love them. In the case of the auditors, promoting belongingness (often limited to physical presence in a regular classroom) becomes the educational alibi for colorblindness and for the lack of collective action and school reform.
4.2. The Greek National Context

Research in Greece was conducted in the conjuncture of an important legislative initiative, and fierce social debate, concerning the naturalization of migrant children born and/or educated in Greece, who under certain circumstances will gain full citizenship rights. This presents a significant development in the regularization of migrant childrens, up until now,
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precarious legal status.14 So far, Greek migration policy had stipulated that all migrant children, regardless of their legal status, can obtain Greek public education and reside legally in Greece until their 18th year of age; thereafter, they are excluded from the above regulation and have to prove migrant employment in order to be granted temporary residence permit. Obviously, with the new legislation, the situation of (some) migrant children will be completely transformed. As Greek citizens they will have access to all the rights and obligations conferred on native Greeks. In this context, the role and importance of education for the promotion of integration and social cohesion will be pivotal. In addition, since education is regarded as one of the main criteria for ascertaining and granting national belonging and citizenship rights, the importance of education is doubly reinforced/highlighted. Research in European countries with long standing migrant and ethnic minority populations, such as the UK, has shown that migrant childrens educational attainment is an important challenge for the educational system. In addition, educational attainment is not evenly distributed among ethic minority children, or in relation to gender. Rather, certain groups have been systematically excluded and marginalized from educational success, while others have shown a great investment in education as a social mobility strategy. Moreover, within both categories, gender plays an important role in school achievement, with girls exhibiting higher scholastic achievement and boys either stopping school at an early stage or being channeled into technical training. Thus, it can be argued that school and education do indeed function as conditional selection institutions. In this sense, the development of schooling for migrant children in Greece in the next decade will be of critical importance for their social and cultural integration and mobility. The fierce public debate, involving representatives from all positions of the political spectrum, carried out on the web, in the media and at public events, has highlighted the issue of citizenship and national identity as a fragile and embattled ground. One of the arguments presented in favour of migrant childrens nationalization is the claim that, even though they are not of Greek origin, they partake of Greek national identity by virtue of their acculturation through Greek education. Metexoun tis imeteras paideias. In spite of the new policy measures, not all migrant children will be nationalized, a situation which will produce and reinforce status and socio-economic differences between migrants, rendering them internally heterogeneous and potentially divided. Thus, already, older and more established migrants / migrant communities are in collusion with the Greek state in enforcing a stricter and more prohibitive border control regime15, leading to the illegalization of large numbers of migrants and contributing to the further criminalization and endangering of population movements. This will have devastating effects on both migrant and local communities.
Institutional and Policy Framework, Policies and Directives

The legal framework introducing intercultural education in the Greek public educational system was developed in 1996 (Law 2413/96). This law specified the goals and objectives of
14 15
Cf. legislative proposal. Frontex.
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intercultural education introducing following measures: the institution of special Intercultural Schools, the foundation of the Institute for the Education of Greeks in Diaspora () and Intercultural Education (IPODE), the organization of Reception Classes ( ) and Tutorial Sections ( ) in regular schools. The development of these measures and instruments was further specified by subsequent Presidential Decrees (1996, 1998, 1999) and Ministerial Circulars. Also in 1996, an additional Presidential Decree established a Special Secretariat on Intercultural Education in the Ministry of Education whose role was to supervise and direct all efforts, and research programs, pertaining to the implementation of measures for the promotion of intercultural education in public schools. Intercultural Schools There are 13 primary schools, 9 gymnasiums and 4 lyceums in the whole of Greece that have been designated as Intercultural Schools. In actuality, it was existing schools with at least 45% of their student population belonging to Greek repatriates () and/or immigrants that were re-named as intercultural schools. These schools implement the national educational programs adapted to the special educational, social and cultural needs of the foreign students (e.g. special curriculum, smaller classes, extra language instruction). One third of the total number of intercultural schools is located in the Athens metropolitan area (3 primary schools and 4 secondary schools), while the majority is based in the Thessaloniki area.16
a. Reception Classes and Tutorial Sections

Reception Classes and Tutorial Departments are organized at the level of the school unit, depending on the number of foreign and non-Greek speaking students, and provide special language support in parallel to regular classes and school activities. Reception Classes (9-17 students) operate during regular school hours and students can participate in them for one to three years, after which and depending the acquired linguistic competence, they are reinstated in regular classes according to educational level and age. Tutorial Sections (3-8 students) operate in after-school hours, as extracurricular activities. Both measures represent the development of the previous, informal, system of instruction that aimed to provide teaching support to children of returning Greek migrants (mostly from Germany, Australia and other countries of Greek immigration).
b. Intercultural Education Research Programs

Three large University-directed research programs on intercultural education were implemented with EU funding: Education of Muslim Minority Children, 1997-2008, University of Athens, Department of Pre-School Education; Education of Roma Children, 2002-2004, University of Thessaly, Department of Primary Education; Education of Greek Repatriate and Foreign Children, 1996-present, University of Athens, Department of Philosophy-PegagogyPsychology. The programs included three main areas of activity: research, teaching materials, teacher training, socio-cultural intervention.
16
It is of some sociological interest to note that the majority of primary intercultural schools is in the area of Thessaloniki, while the majority of secondary intercultural schools is in the Athens area.
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c. Migrant Students
According to Greek law, and the /10/20/1/708/1999 Presidential Decree that regulated access of migrant children to Greek public education, all children of migrants, whether born or residing in Greece, are entitled to attend Greek public school up until their 18th year of life at which point they become of age and cannot further remain in the country legally, unless they establish official employment of student status. As argued by other migration scholars, the Greek migration regime presents a central paradox: on the one hand migrants are expected to assimilate to Greek culture and identity, on the other hand they are deprived of any and every legal right by which to ensure and establish terms of equal participation in the Greek polity.17 In fact, it could be argued that, at the level of the social imaginary, Greek society still considers migrants as a temporary presence and a state of exception. Greek educational politics are not exempt from this dilemma: on the one hand, and in harmonization with EU directives, educational policies and official discourses are articulated in terms of equality, tolerance, integration and multiculturalism. On the other hand, in practice, educational measures institutionalize discrimination and legitimize national supremacy. Very broadly speaking the tendency in education, as developed both by official educational policies and by informal social practices, is towards promoting a certain kind of informal segregation between Greek and migrant students, while at the same time, expecting migrant students to assimilate to the dominant national culture. On a policy level we have the institution of two measures: firstly, the establishment of special Intercultural Schools and, secondly, the establishment of Reception Classes and Tutorial Sessions in regular public schools. The legal framework introducing intercultural education in the Greek public educational system was developed in 1996 (Law 2413/96). In response to internal and external pressures manifesting more acutely in the 1990s, Greece proceeded to modernize its public educational program by introducing, among others, measures officially aimed at mainstreaming intercultural objectives in the regular school system. The new policy
17
Tsitselikis (2006) points out that, Through this process [of temporary regularization], immigrants acquire a new legal identity as a distinct category of non-Greek citizens, aliens, or of not-belonging to the local national population. This category may be provisional as the state has unlimited jurisdiction over granting rights and determining their legal position, and thus defines the minority as inferior to the rest of the population. Furthermore, the lack of political rights minimizes their chances for political promotion of their collective claims, a legitimate process in law-making. Immigrants strive for a better social and economic position in a country where they do not possess citizenship, and do not enjoy political rights. Xenophobia furthered by sectors of the local majority may aim to achieve two controversial goals: to assimilate and erase any ethnic difference, or to deny and reject difference. So, the lack of political power renders non-Greek citizens a non-participatory part of the broader society. Demeaning treatment of immigrants by the security forces, bureaucratic conditions for the legalization process, authoritarian restrictions of freedom of movement, refusal to recognize family reunification, custody under inhuman conditions, illegal deportation and de facto shrinking of the rights to seek political asylum are a few examples of the distortion of fundamental human rights that non-Greek citizens have been made to bear. In a sense, immigrants are seen as deficient in human dignity and therefore liable to restrictions on their human rights. They should not remain foreigner but they cannot become Greek.
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framework was developed in response to the need to provide equal learning opportunities to students belonging to parts of the population that were hitherto marginalized or downgraded, such as the Muslim minority in Thrace, the Roma population, and the children of Greek repatriates and migrants. The initial goals of the framework were directed more towards the needs of Greeces minority populations and Greek repatriates rather than migrants. It can therefore be reasonably assumed, taking into consideration the national priorities and identity of the Greek education system, that, while taking into consideration cultural and linguistic differences of the above mentioned populations, the underlying objective of this large scale intervention, properly couched in terms of diversity, tolerance and integration of course18, was to produce more successfully assimilated Greek subjects. For this reason knowledge of native languages other than Greek were not considered necessary. (The Law provides that native languages can be taught if enough parents request this, but such a request has never arisen so far, possibly because parents, suffering already from racist discrimination and prejudice against them, do not wish to draw more attention to their difference). Ethnic minority and repatriated children with non-Greek linguistic backgrounds, such as German and English at first, and later Turkish, Slavic, Roma or Russian, were taught Greek as a foreign language. In fact, in some cases such as the Muslim minority in Thrace, the possibility of introducing the native language, Turkish, was deemed not only unnecessary but also nationally endangering, since it could lead to the (further) Turkishization of the minority. During the course of the next decade, however, the entrance of growing number of migrant students in public schools has rendered these measures partly inadequate in addressing challenges and needs arising from migration. Today, explicit references to social and cultural heterogeneity brought about by the permanent (or semi-permanent) settlement of migrants in Greece, more poignantly mark the evoked rationales for the need to develop awareness and tolerance of diversity as one of the objectives of the modern, and EU harmonized19, school system. Migrant students in Greek schools are taught only the Greek language, albeit as a foreign language at first, until they establish a level of competence that will allow them to fully participate in the Greek curriculum. There are no official measures to introduce migrants native languages into the school program, and where such initiatives have been organized by parents and teachers informally, they have eventually been discouraged or sabotaged by the educational authorities. The case of the 132nd Primary School of Athens in Grava is a telling example: After nine successful years of implementing different extracurricular language and cultural projects for migrant and Greek students and their parents (Greek language classes for parents, foreign language classes (Albanian, Russian and Bulgarian) for migrant students and various other socio-cultural activities), involving the cooperation of teachers and parents in the organization of these activities, the school principal, who was at the heart of the initiative, was demoted and forcibly removed by the ministry of education and the work of the school was interrupted. A solidarity movement was developed, raising publicity on the
18
E.g. see statement of purpose of IPODE: Accordingly, Intercultural Education as an educational orientation does not have an assimilationist nature but constitutes an opening of the learning process that should permeate all educational levels and objects of study and is based on the appreciation of different experiences and diversities as a source of knowledge and personal development (my emphasis, my translation). 19 See above for an initial critical analysis of mainstream EU discourses on the goals and premises of intercultural education and the challenges of multiculturalism.
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unprecedented attack on the school by educational authorities, but the school projects have, nevertheless, been closed down. At the level of social practices, we observe the de facto segregation of public schools through the selective placement of Greek and migrant students in different school districts with a smaller or larger migrant population. In other words, Greek parents, as well as educational authorities, prefer to enroll Greek children in all-Greek rather than mixed schools, or, which amounts to the same effect, send them to private schools, which are, for socio-economic reasons, inaccessible to migrant families. Having thus ensured an informally enforced racialized and classed apartheid, Greek society and the Greek state can continue to evoke discourses of multiculturalism, while at the same time securing the reproduction of Greek socio-cultural supremacy. In this version of nationalist multiculturalism, Greekness (as racialized identity and cultural superiority) remains unassailable and unchallenged, and migration is framed as a state of exception. One of the many consequences of this informal educational apartheid relates to teachers dilemmas: on the one hand, they are keen not to be seen as distinguishing and discriminating between Greek and migrant students. They say: We dont separate them, we treat them the same, implying that they try not to alienate migrant students or treat them with prejudice. On the other hand, obviously, and for a number of reasons, migrant students are differently positioned in the Greek educational system and in Greek society more generally. The cultural context in which the teachers are practicing is monolithically Greek, and additionally, migrant students are systemically discriminated against, therefore, teachers practices of nondiscrimination must either challenge the system or obscure its workings. By pretending social inequalities do not exist in the space of the school or in their classroom they are denying and disqualifying migrant students experience of discrimination.
Migrant Children and Students: A Generation with No Future?

According to Greek migration law passed in 2001, all children of migrants, whether born or residing in Greece, are entitled to attend Greek public school up until their 18th year of age at which point they become formally adult and cannot further remain in the country legally, unless they establish official employment or student status. Today, about 10% of students in Nursery Schools, Primary Schools and Gymnasiums are foreign (migrants and/or Greek repatriates). The percentage falls considerably in the Lyceums, ca 4,6%, and, of course, even more in Higher Education (about ? %). The largest migrant group in Greek schools is Albanians (76%), followed by Bulgarians, Georgians and Russians. The majority of migrant students are located in the Athens metropolitan area (13,6% of total student population, 45% of migrant population). There is no data on gender ratio, but we assume it is about half. Already, even though these statistics cannot offer a detailed picture, it is clear that there is a significant drop-out rate among migrant children much higher than for Greek children in higher levels of education. There is also a tendency to attend vocational school rather than general lyceums after completing the 12 years of obligatory education. This picture becomes a little more complicated when we look at the social trajectories of the so-called 2nd generation migrants, a term that refers to children born in Greece of migrant
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parents, as well as children that have grown up in Greece. Research so far has mostly focused on issues of violence and criminality. Taking into consideration the ongoing criminalization and penalization of migrants (especially men) both in the media, as well as in the practices of the police and public prosecution that have cemented the stereotype of the criminal migrant in public opinion, it is still interesting to consider two emerging tendencies: a. On the one hand there is a rise in youth criminality among 2nd generation migrants, and in particular young people of Albanian origin. According to police and court records, a statistically significant number of offences are associated to mendicancy, followed by theft and drug related offences. While the available data and research is not sufficient to draw any firm conclusions about the development of a criminal career of 2nd generation migrants, certain hypotheses based on other European experiences are formulated. The lack of viable opportunities for upward social mobility and for successful integration in the host country, where after their 18th year of age they again become illegal (!), could be one contributing factor blending marginalization with crime in their personal trajectories. At the same time the encounter with prejudice in the dominant culture contributes to the internalization of shame and alienation, leading to further self imposed marginalization. Balibar has called this internal social apartheid, or internal exclusion. Obviously the school context and the educational system are not innocent of shaping these circumstances: The fact that migrant students are not taught (and often do not know) their native languages, the de facto devaluation of their native culture through the expectation of their assimilation, in concert with the systemic and symbolic impossibility of belonging makes them foreigners to both their country of origin and Greece: They grow up Greek but they can never belong to Greece. They are told to go back home, when there is no other home. Their parents often describe themselves as the lost generation, since they suffered the effects of the transition (both in their own countries and in relation to their migration), yet in spite of their hard work and sacrifices the future for their children is not secured, either in Greece or elsewhere. b. The second tendency that is recorded in the research concerns the development of particular macho versions of masculinity, and of neo-traditional attitudes towards gender and family relations. These performances of aggressive and authoritarian masculinity are organized in reaction to both a sense of emasculation they experience through their contact with Greek racism, and a wish to differentiate themselves from the hegemonic Greek culture. Here, the school context is a particularly significant environment in which to observe the gendered re-construction of these national identities. It is interesting to note however, as some researchers point out, that these masculinities are not unknown to Greek culture, since they were commonly associated with working class identities in the past. One of the questions that arises is how these social practices and their representations enter into school discourses and the performance of feminine and masculine migrant and Greek identities, e.g. in relation to issues of (racial and gender) violence? The following general points are not based on direct empirical research but rather draw on my familiarity with migration discourses and migration politics in Greece, and on my PhD work on gender, migration and the anti-racist movement in Athens. It appears to be the case that representations of migrant children in public discourse often reinforce and reproduce already existing racialized stereotypes about migrants gendered
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subjectivities. For example, migrant girls visibility in the educational system is either nonexistent, or constructed around the victim/whore stereotype. Thus, it was on the occasion of the rape of a Bulgarian female student by her Greek fellow classmates in a provincial school on the island of Evoia, that public awareness was raised regarding violence and discrimination against migrant girls in school. The intersection of racial and gender violence articulated in this attack was variously explained or condemned, but in any case, the ghost figure of the Bulgarian prostitute working in provincial night-clubs all over the Greek countryside signaled by the common slogan Presently Bulgarian Women appearing on sign-boards along the national highway - hovered in the background of media accounts. On the other hand, migrant boys visibility is linked to fears of other kinds of violence, usually associated with criminal or delinquent behaviour, which reproduces intact the stereotype of the criminal migrant. The fact that migrant youths are aware of the stereotype and develop various strategies for dealing with it, either by trying to evade and disprove it or by claiming an aggressive Albanian-ness, provides further proof of the dynamic re-construction of national identity as an essentialized and homogeneous minority identity. In other words, as research on 2nd generation Albanian migrants has shown, students of Albanian families identify themselves as Albanians not so much in relation to their country and culture of origin but in relation to the dominant Greek representation of the Albanian other. This points to the process of identification, homogenization and essentialization of ethnic identity in the host country, rather than something atavistically carried from before. Intercultural education, through its reification of the other contributes towards cementing such constructions and representations of identity both for migrant and Greek students alike. In other words Intercultural Education is implicated in the essentialization of static identity categories, rather than the problematization and multiplication or fragmentation of categories. Moreover, Intercultural Education is set up on the premise that only migrants are different and in contrast Greeks are all same. Alternatively, the rare success stories of migrant students excelling in Greek schools both provide the exception that justifies the rule namely that migrant students cannot/ do not do well in school - and are also tainted by extreme racist nationalist reactions, mostly in cases where distinguished migrant students are granted the right/privilege/honour to carry the Greek flag in national celebrations and parades. Thus such exceptional cases register on the one hand the normalized educational failure of migrant students and on the other their assumed identification with the dominant (majority) culture, i.e. with Greek identity. In other words, it is assumed that migrant students carrying the Greek flag become nominally Greek. This is violently protested and contested by many parents and fellow students, as well as generating extensive public controversy about the purity, origins, meaning and marks of Greekness.20
4.3. The Madedonian Context
20
Another such example can be drawn from school celebrations of national commemorations, such as Independence Day, where migrant students are instructed to sing patriotic Greek liberation songs. These performances of the heroic national self border on the hilarious representing a kind of parody or drag.
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Macedonia is a complex multi-ethnic society with wide ethnic and cultural diversity. Like the rest of the Balkan countries different ethnic, religious, cultural identities are in continuous tension being in juxtaposition for centuries. Diversity can be and in many cases is strong integrative strength which can enrich and enable significant interactions, experiences and processes, although recent history and present day show that ethnic and religious plurality can be as well, or even more destabilizing than integrating factor in the society. Since the independence in 1991 the country has faced a lot of social, political and economic challenges related to process of transition. However, one of the biggest challenges was overcoming the inter-ethnic conflict in 2001 which ended with international mediation and ratification of the Ohrid Framework Agreement. The agreement initiated contracted changes of the constitution, laws, new territorial division and local government structure and organization. As a result the new preamble of the constitution defines that Macedonia is established as a national state of the Macedonian people, in which full equality as citizens and permanent co-existence with the Macedonian people is provided for Albanians, Turks, Vlachs, Romanies and other nationalities living in the Republic of Macedonia. Therefore, politically and explicitly confirmed the multi-ethnic character of the Macedonians society and the need for its preservation and representation in the public life, and affirmed non discrimination, which in particular refers mostly to employment in public administration and public enterprises. Furthermore the agreement brought up the question of education and the use of languages. The agreement addresses education and the use of languages in manner that in primary and secondary education, instruction will be provided in the students' native languages, (OFA article 6.1) and that Macedonian language and any other language spoken by at least 20 percent of the population is also an official language, as set forth herein used in accordance with specific law (OFA article 6.5). This is also specified in the constitution: Members of the nationalities have the right to instruction in their language in primary and secondary education, as determined by law. In schools where education is carried out in the language of a nationality, the Macedonian language is also studied (Article 48). The agreement was signed as a base for stability of inter-ethnic relations and beginning of the process of decentralization, new phase of democratization of the country. The language of war ended with the promise of democracy although bind in with fear and disbelief. And these events, experiences and emotions, the lack of security and need for it, gave new meaning to the sense of belonging, and new strength of the attachments within the ethnic communities. Along these lines the attachments to the specific community (may) go ahead and widen the distance of/from the other, empower mistrust and fix the gaze only as far as the stereotypes making relation to the other/s intensified with anxiety and ambivalence. On the other side self-identification needs to be stable and confirmed, and can be as well glorious and triumphal in the narratives and manipulations of the archly political players. Education faces many changes and challenges. Some are reflection of broader processes, changes and tensions, some emerge from local contexts, and they all make schools unique stage of continuous struggle and negotiation among public and private lives. Schools face new ambitious and fast introduced national reforms, political influences, as well as reflections of global changes and processes, media, changes in subjectivity and different discourses of
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childhood and youth. Large educational reforms were made in both primary and secondary education towards modernization of education. Primary education is going trough reform from 8 to 9 year education and oriented more towards developmental goals and democratization of education. The reform in the secondary education is directed towards redefining curriculum, giving more choices and alternatives, reshaping vocational education and introduction of new form of national graduate examination. Although there have been efforts for the reform of the educational system from a traditional to a modern and democratic one, there is still a long way to go for building a solid structure of democratic values. Teachers, students and parents often confuse democracy with collision of values and/or anarchy. Democracy did not bring security, freedom and emancipation. Instead, it brought regimes of visual surveillance and physical securitization for the protection of students, along with more brutal violence, lower expectations and avoidance of responsibilities. The new law and the process of decentralization brought a lot of tension between local governments and the Ministry of education with regards to the reform of duties, responsibilities, power and funding. Media often report about education, portraying it as an arena of scandals and politization and a source of continuous marginalization.
Policies
A national policy for using languages of ethnic minorities in schools is inscribed in the law for primary and secondary education according to which both primary and secondary education students of ethnic minorities which follow instruction on the language other than Macedonian have the right to write in the adequate alphabet, also school documentation and the name of the school to be written in the language of instruction beside Macedonian language. The textbooks are published in the language of instruction, and the author of the textbook commits to translate and publish to other languages of instruction other than Macedonian. (Law for primary education articles: 9, 14, 100, 104, 119 & Law for secondary education articles: 4, 32, 84) Further documents and procedures which take care for the multicultural context and interethnic relations can be found in the documents of the Bureau for development of education. For example, in the methodology for evaluation of textbooks for primary and secondary school textbooks is appointed that textbooks should contain words and phrases expressing humiliation towards communities or personalities and attention should be paid to illustrations which should be respectful and in the direction of understanding and trust towards others. Other credentials consider giving respect to values of other cultures by inciting interest for understanding each others traditions, religion and symbols. In The National Program for Development of Education 2005-2015 there is a statement where the Ministry of education declares responsibility to create education with focus on the individual, his development and development of his individual and cultural identity, defined in the ambience of multicultural environment situated in the global national and international context. The latest reform in primary education, promoted by the Bureau for Development of Education in 2007, is the Ninth Grade Education. This includes the extention of obligatory primary education until grade nine and the comprehemsive change of the curricula of all subjects from first to ninth grade. One of the principles of the reform is Principle of understanding and multiculturalism, according to which content, methods and activities should promote the values of tolerance and respect of differences and enable the acquisition of knowledge and skills for the understanding and respect for others. According to this
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principle, living together requires respect towards culture, language and traditions of all communities, as well as students consciousness about their own cultural background and knowledge of their cultural heritage and cultures of others. Schools are expected to promote both of these two goals. Secondary education reform does not include an intercultural perspective in school policies or in the curriculum. It is left out to the schools to manage intercultural issues. State secondary schools are, with reference to the language of instruction, mostly Macedonian or Albanian, with some cases of classes in Turkish language and some special programs in other foreign languages such as French. Macedonian and Albanian students live parallel lives. Most schools where both Albanian and Macedonian are designated languages of instruction have separate language shifts and some are physically separated in different schools. Continuous ethnic tensions and incidents in these schools become regularly politicized in daily political battles between the government and the oppositional parties. Young people become manipulated through fear and by teachers and parents. There are a few examples of developing intercultural educational practices. One of these examples is the long time project of bilingual (Macedonian/Albanian) kindergartens. Based on the same model, an experimental program for bilingual education was implemented in one rural primary school during the school year 2009-2010. The latest development was provoked by a government decision to render mandantory the study of the Macedonian language for those students who study in other languages from grade one instead of grade four as it was until now. Albanian political parties, nongovernmental organizations and parents boycotted the decision and public debate was triggered again on issues of interethnic tensions. Until now, students who study in Macedonian language do not have the option to learn the languages of other minorities in the community. With the 2008 law for secondary education rendering secondary education mantantory and defining sanctions for parents if their children do not attend school, the issue of Roma enrolment in secondary education becomes a hot one. Although more and more Roma children enroll and finish secondary education, Roma youth continues to face problems in finding jobs. At the same time, continuous acts of discrimination and stigmatization put down the self-expectations of students from marginalized groups.
4.4. Defining Research Field and Research Tools

4.4.1. Cyprus: A Multi-sited study on multicultural schools The term multicultural schools is associated in the minds of policy stakeholders (ministry, teachers, tarents and researchers) with particular schools: Phaneromeni in Nicosia, Ayios Antonios in Limassol, Sixth Elementary School in Paphos and Dianelleio in Larnaca. To the general pubic, the schools have been associated with educational problems ensuing from the enrolment of foreign students. Problematic schools have also become ethicised, each one associated with a specific nationality of incoming students. Phaneromeni (Nicosia) and Sixth Elementary School (Paphos) were among the first schools to be associated with Pontian enrolment since the largest groups of migrant Pontial ethnic Greeks in the mid 90s had settled in the old city of Nicosia and the margins of the touristic area of Pafos, Ayios Antinios school had been ethnicised as a turkish attraction because of Roma and Turkish Cypriots had started to settle in the nearby Turkish quarter since 2001 and finally Dianelleio, an innercity school, in Larnaka had been associated (in an ethicised-and-gendered way) with
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scarves because of the increased enrolment of Arab students. The euphemistic reference to these schools as multicultural and their demarcation as problematic and undesirable schools (some teachers even used the term non clean to refer to these schools as undesirable posts for appointment, see Codification B) constitutes them targets for research on intercultural education. However, the attractiveness of these schools to hankers of multiculturalism has created an opposite effect, that is, the resistance of school principals to the idea of accommodating more researchers messing with their daily businesses as well as the discomfort of teachers with the idea of accommodating on a daily basis researchers in their classrooms.
Gaining Access
As stated to us by the principal of Ayios Antonios, who found objectionable the idea of having a researcher in his school (though not explicitly denying access to us), we feel like we have become a zoo; being watched, never at ease. In the case of the high schools we approached as possible site of research, the crucial question raised by principals, in an investigative tone, was, what exactly are you searching for? When describing the nature of our research, its goal and some of the research questions, the usual reply was a prompt: So, you are interested in alloglossoi (alloglossoi as explined in the section on national context is the official term used for all others [alloi] who do not speak the Greek language [glossa]? This reply was also accompanied by a clarifying question, this one phased in a tone of relief: So, you are just going to be visiting the Greek language session for the non-Greek speakers? The reluctance of principals to accommodate researchers in the school premises and give them permission to observe classroom sessions, was intensified rather than relieved when we mentioned that we were interested in interactions among students, including interactions between migrants and native students. But we do not have problems of racism in our schools, was the usual answer. This mis-understanding was further intensified in some cases when we discussed the issue of gender and stated that we were interested in which ways intercultural relations and ethic borders were gendered. A specific principal thought that bringing gender in our framework implicated talking to students about issues of sex education, something which he stated would turn the school upside down and bring herds of angry parents to his doorstep the next day.
The schools
The schools where we decided to carry out field work meet the following criteria: (a) they have a considerable percentage of migrant students (with the exception of Techical school), (b) each one of them has a different ethnic profiling of its multicultural outset, (c) some of them have been receiving migrants since the early 90s but some of them only recelty attracted numbers of migrant and refugee students and thus had not been put yet on the map of multicultural (desirable for researchers, undesirable for teachers) schools, (d) the schools principal and the personnel were positive to the idea of hosting GEMIC researchers and (e) we combined schools of different student age/ levels. The last criterion was added after the pilot stage h because we realized that gender became a more dynamic factor in intercultural interaction in upper grades (teenagers).
Participatory ethnography and interviews were conducted in the following schools:
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NICOSIA Phaneromeni (Elementary and High School) Phaneromeni, located in the old city on Nicosia (within venetian walls), very close to the Green Line (Buffer Zone), houses three schools within the same building: Highschool (second floor), elementary school (first floor) and kindergarden (a little annex at the back of the school, almost like a niche). Faneromeni is one of the most historical schools of Cyprus. It was founded in 1895 by the Archbishop of Cyprus Makarios the First and for in period operared as a girls highschool. The percentage of migrants varies: 100% in kindergarden, 90%migrants in elementary and 80% in highshool. Most students are ethnic Greek Pontians (from Georgia and Russia), Russians and Eastern Europeans. The Gymnasiun does not foreground in any way a multicultural identity in its website (rather, Greek national and Greek Orthodox markers are more prominent). Its list of valedictorians (know also as the flal holders simaioforoi kai parastates- in school national parades) and central school council comprises mainly of migrant students. In her address, the Gymnasium Principal emphasizes the schools mission as a zone of educational priority and the aim of cultivating among the students the sense of joy, learning, creativity and success, as well the development of critical thinking and social skills in a multicultural school that promotes understanding, cooperation, friendship and acceptance of otherness. Technical School: Located at the outskirts of Nicosia, in a suburban area, one of the two technical schools of Nicosia. The number of migrants does not exceed 20, teachers and administration consider the number of migrants obsolete compared to another group of others, that is, the special unit for children with disabilities (the school takes great pride in achieving the inclusion of these students). When asked about migrant students, most teachers were under the impression that there were only two to three migrant students attending their school (where as their number is between 30 and 40) and all teachers stated that these students are well received. In our interviews with migrant students, though, we found out that the worst experiences of racism and discrimination take place during the Gymnasium years but are narrativized by students later on, e.g., when they are in Technical School. LARNAKA Participatory ethnography in Larnaca during the first phase was conducted in two high schools, Dianelleion (inner city school) and Phaneromeni (located between the fringe of the urban center and the old Turkish quarter). During the second and third phase we focused on Phaneromeni because this school presents the highest percentage of arab refugee students (most of them from Iraq but they are self-identified as Palestinian, all moslem girls wear the scarf and their parents have the legal status of refugee and asylum seeker). During phase
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three, we contacted critical analysis of codification at another school in Larnaka, the Vergina Lykeio. This school was not originally included in our research but after contacting interviews with moslem students in Phaneromeni and realizing that many of these students were not considering to continue school after their graduation from gymnasium, we realized that it would add another dimension to our research to examine how older moslem student (16-18) would comment on the scenarios of racial acts codified in the vignettes. The availability of an Arab speaking translator and the enthusiastic assistance by the principle were two other factors for extending Phase III to this school. Dianelleion High The school was built in 1961 and originally operated as an orphanage (1961) and lated as a professional school (1962). In the year 1977-78 it was upgraded to a Technical School, a new academic track of Gymnasium was added, and the two tracks operated parallely in the same premises until 2006 when the technical school moved to a separte new building. Nothing in the official website of the school speaks of a the presence of migrant students or a multicultural agenda even though the compating of social exclusion is framed as the schools yearly special (the two Educational Aims emphasised on the webpage of the school are the special school year aims designated by the Ministry of education for the school years 2009-2010: Compating social excuision through education in the context of a democratic and humanistic school ( , ) and Cultivation of a culture of peaceful co-livinf, mutual respect and cooperation between Greekcypriots and Turkish Cypriots, aiming to the termination of the occupation and the reunification of our country and our people. It is important to note that foregrounding of the new aims displaced the aim of Intercultural Education which was designated by the Ministry as the Special Aim for the year 2008-2009. It seems that markers of identity and exclusion which in the life of a multicultural school often intersect in ways that intensify exclusion, are demarcated by Educational Aims as separate and autonomous. This lack of intersectionality discloses the nature (particulalry, the racial aspects) of social exclusion but also exempts issues of migrant student itnergration from issues of national politics. Intercultural education is considered to be something exceptional, therapeutic rather than political, which come to tackle issues related to migrants students whereas aims related to democracy, peace and sharing of political power are considered to be universal (and implicitly, irrelevant to issues of migrants and other others). Phaneromeni High Phaneromeni Gymnasium in Larnaka, taking up the name its name from the Church of Panayia Phaneromeni (Mary Virgin) located 500 meters from the school, is housed in an old Neoclassic Building. The Gymnasium operated since 1980, with high enrolments of Greek Cypriot refugees from the city of Larnaka and from villages south west of the city. Its location on Okullar Street (which in Turkish means the road of school) is the only reminiscent marker of its previous identity as Turkish Cypriot Elementary school (until 1974). The school has a high enrolment of Arab students, many of them attending school under the status of auditors (it offers courses of Greek as a Foreign Language as well as special language
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sessions with an Arab-Greek translator. This multicultural outset of the school is not featured in any way on the official profile of the school. The school, as Dianelleion, foregrounds on its webpage the special school year aims as well as strong Greek Orthodox identity. LIMASSOL 1st Elementary School of Germasogia (Christakeio) The school was built in 1970 originally as a small 4-teacher school and, as the area of Germasogia turned into a suburb bordering the outer bringes of the city of Limassol, the school grew to a modern urban school. In his address the Principal makes a references to the particular emphasis put on the interculturality of the school unit. School celevrations and rituals, as featured on the webside of the school, revilve around Greek National Holidays, Christamas, Cypriot Folklore and Arts. Multiculturalism was the featured theme of the year 2007-2008 final celebration but seems to eclipse from recent celebrations and special learning activities and school projects. Between 50% and 60% of students are migrants, most of them from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, significant numbers of British also ethnic Pontians (Russia and Georgia) and recently Greek Roma. About 40% of migrant students are also from ethnically mixed families. PAPHOS During the first phase Research in Paphos was conducted at two schools, Gymnasium of Ayia Paraskeyi, Yeroskipou, and Gymnasium of Ayios Theodoros. During phases II and III research focused only the first school. Both of these schools are new schools located in residential middle class areas at the outer fringes of the city of Paphos. They have considerable percentages migrant students but none of them has a specific ethnic profile of its multicultural outset (they are known as schools with alloglossoi). Research during phases II and III focused only on the second school. Both schools seem to have responded positively to the special years aim of Intercutural Reconciliation (the announcement of the aim stimulated fierce reaction by the teacher unions and was debated for compromising national identity and sidestepping goals of national resistance against the ongoing Turkish invasion).
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During the school year 2009-2010 the school of Ayios Theodoros held a special day on Learning, Accepting, Living together (under the aegis of the special aim of Combating Social Exclusion. Activities included cooking of ethic food (with the participation of ethnic students), essay writing (Roxanas first day at her new school; Roxana is profiled as the name of a girl from an Eastern European country). Ayia Paraskeyi: The percentage of migrant students is between between 20 and 30%. Teachers identify four groups of others: Pontians, British, Polish and Bulgarians. The school implements, since September of 2009 {to be confirmed, check field notes}, a program on Teaching Greek as a Foreign/Second language. Besides this, the teachers interviewed mention of no other programs or activities related to migrant education. Teachers also mention dropouts of migrant students but no official data on dropout rates wer available.
4.4.2. Applying WP5 methodology in the Cypriot Context: Research tools and research steps Phase I included participatory observation and infornal interviews. This phase was conducted during the months March to June of 2010. Researchers prepared daily journal entries on theor school experiences. Phase II focused on interviews with students and teachers and took place during the months October-December 2009 and February 2010. The focus grpup with Leceum students (both Moslem and Greek Cypriot) in Larnaka, Vergina, was condaucted during this period. Researchers continued to write kournal entries for days when special events tooks place. Phase III was implemented during March and April of 2010 (focus groups on analysis of Codifications in secondary schools) and sociograms with elementary schools kids. Interviews with teachers A total of 42 interviews were conducted with school staff: 3 principals 3 vice principals, three translators (Russian and Arabic), two teachers of GFSL, 2 EPZ school coordinators. The interviews were semi structured and focused on the following themes: (a) migration and migration policy (prompt: reference to a recent Broom Operation, carried out by the Immigration Department and the Police in old city of Nicosia which let to arrest and deportations of many migrants), (b) impact of migration on school, their own schools policies, (c) Intercultural Education (definition and aims), (d) gender variation in intercultural interactions and school policies and (e) comments on Codifications A and B (cited below).
Codification A: The CD Story
The following event took place at the end of the school year 2008-2009 (in June) in a 6th Grade Class of an Elementary School. It was recorded by a researcher. It is a custom for graduating students to have a party the last day of class. The students play music of their preference, dance and enjoy themselves. All students had brought cds of their favourite music and the teacher (female, ) played the cds and kids danced. Ahmet had also brought a cd with Arabic music and at some moment he gave it to the teacher to play. Some other student (male, ) jumps in and says: What did you bring, you kilincir?The teacher played the cd and all the Arabic speaking kids were excited, as if they did not expect that the teacher would play the particular cd.
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Prompts: Any comments Whats going on here? What do you think Ahmet think of what happened? What do you think the teacher think when Ahmet handed the cd to her? What do you think the other Arab kids think of what happened? Eurydice (Greek name for girl), described the event to her mother. What do you think was the response of her mother? What do you think about the way the teacher handled the whole thing?
Codification B: Clean Schools A researcher in a Cypriot school has in informal interview with the teachers. Researcher: Are all school like this?? Are there so many kids from other countries in all Cypriot schools? Teacher: No, there are also clean school which do not have foreign [xenoi] students, such as the Saint Sophia School.
Interviews with students Interviews with students focused on itineraries of migrations, passages from one level of education to another, experiences with regards to the learning of the Greek language and gendered experiences (see Apendix C) Sociograms Detailed sociograms were developed for five classrooms of Christakeio Elementary School (UCINET software was used). All children were asked to indicate three classmates (positive or negative preference) in the following scenaria: Positive Dynamics: 1. Which three classmates would you prefer to spend time with during the break? 2. Which three classmates would you prefer to work with in class for a group math assignment? 3. Which three classmates would you prefer to go to the movies together? 4. Which three classmates would you be excited if they came to you birthday party? Negative Dynamics: 5. There classmates are absent abd their absence does not make a difference for the rest of the class. Which are these three? 6. Three classmates are often reprimanded by the teacher and are most likely to be expelled. Who are these three? Student Focus Groups In three schools groups group discussions were carried out as follows: Phaneromeni Larnaka: all refugee Moslem girls; Phaneromeni Nicosia: all Migrant boys; Christakeio Limassol: mixed (gender and ethnicity). The discussion focused on deep description of codifications. In the case of Vergina Leceum the same students were asked to analyzed codifications in different group setting: inividual, homogeneous group (all Greek Cypriots and all Moslems together) and mixed focus group. Some of the Codifications used are cited below:
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Codification C: The story of Halil, Ahmet and Tarek (Part I) The following story takes place at the parking of a Gymnasium in Limassol, the last week of February 2010. This Gymnasium is also attended by many Arab refugee students. The time is 7.10 am (the bell rung 10 minutes ago and classes have already started). The only adult who is watching this scene is a researcher, Mantalena Tsouka. Mantalena arrives at school after the bell rung, she is parking her car ans as oon as she gets out she sees a group of about 12 Palestinian boys arguing in the Parking. She gets closer to see whats going on. She does not understand what they saying but it is obvious that there is a lot of tension. Halil, wan nose is bleeding, is holding a mobile telephone and is talking to someone. Mantalena asks another child, Tarek, who speaks Greek and has been her translator, to tell her what is going on. Tarek explains to Mantalena that Ahmet, another boy, bit up Tarek with his fists and with a stone because Halil was having fun of him. The fight started in the classroom of Halil and Ahmet but they took it outside. The other Palestinian boys from other classes were notified about this event and came right away. Tarek also expains to Mantalena that now Halil is calling his father and asking him to com to school to beat up Ahmet. In fact, Mantalena sees the father of Halil arriving. She is very worried and rushes to the Office of the Principal to inform him. Codification D: The story of Halil, Ahmet and Tarek At noon, when Mantalena is leaving from school, she is meeting in the Parking with a Teacher, Mr. Ioannis, the Gym teacher, who is also responsible for the Arab boys. Why do you mess up with their lives and their fights? he yells at her. With this research you are doing you create a lot of problems. You keep asking who did this and whose fault is it, and this way you turn them against each other. Dont ask them anything, never again. Ask only me. These are different from the Cypriots. They do not understand. To avoid problems in the future, dont mess up with them. Let them fight! As you see, they are fighting with each other, not with Cypriots. Codification E: The scarfed girls
The following story takes place in a Gymnasium in Cyprus during the end of the school year 2008-2009.
Female students of Palestinian origin who wear the scarf in school refuse to participate in the typical all class phot at the end of the year becausem as they claim, their tradition does not allow them to take photos with men. Late on the same day, a teacher (female) notices that the girls are together, giggling and having a nice time while taking photos with their mobiles.She comments, while shaking her head in a derogatory way: You little scarfed girls!!! I know all about you. . !.
Codification F: Romance or War? Kalipso with Vinka Igora are sitting in the hallway (). The girls did not go to class because the class has ancient Greek ( ). Christina, a Cypriot girl, also comes out from the Ancient Greek class (says she is sick and she is excused) and comes and sits with them. is approaching them, sits next to Christina and starts teasing her. Christina seems to like it.
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There is another group of Cypriot Boys who are playing football. One of them, Kuriakos, is showing off his football skills, trying to impress I, who is admittedly, the best football player in the whole school! At some point, the ball gets off its way and bounces on . gets up and walks toward Kyriakos! He grasps him by the neck and shakes him up really hard! get really worried and screams to : Let him down! Hassan walks away, and Christina tells Kyriakos: He could have melt you, like a little ant, if he wanted!!
Codification G: Excursion to Saint Lazarus and Hala Sultan Tekke Grade one class of a gymnasium visits these two monuments during their end fo the year excursion. In this particular school there is a high enrolment of Moslem refugee students form Iraq. First they visit Saint Lazarus Church and later Hala Sultan Tekke. All boys bring balls to play soccer. Girls come all dressed up, including the Palestinian girls who put on nice scarves, necklaces and earrings.
At St Lazarus Church At the the Palestinaians (with the exception of Jemal who hangs out with a Russian boy) gather along the side wall of the yard and Ammal takes photos of them. Margarita, A GC girl, yells to them: Hey you, be quiet! The guide for the Palestinian kids gives them a tour and explains about the tomb, the holy water spring (ayiasma), etc. The kids use their mobiles to take photos of everything. Some kids are giggling and the guide reprimands them, telling them: you must respect our religious sites in the same way we eill respect your sites later, when we will take off our shoes befire we enter the Tekke. At Hala Sultan Tekke Moslem students separate themselves from the rest. They speak in Arabic, quite intensily, they listen to English music and take photos with their mobiles again. Later they start dancing traditional dances (the dances they are supposed to present at the end of the year school festival). On the way to the Tekke, Stephanos, a GC boy, starts complaining: I am not going to get in there! What they think I will give two euro to get in there? On the entrance, GCs start debating whether they should get inside or not. Most of them stay out and only about 15 decide to go inside. A group of these, make the gesture of the cross, as a joke. One girl, Liana, catholic Polish, says to her friend Maria, GC, who decides to stay out: Going in these doesnt mean that you will change your faith. Inside the Tekke another GC boy comments, in a very derogatory way: It stinks of Arabs in here ( .)
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4.4.3. Greece: A case study on 49th Primary School of Athens, Kerameikos
The school: 49th Primary School of Athens The 49th Primary School of Athens, located in the inner city area of Kerameikos on Ag. Asomaton Str., has been chosen as the main site of the fieldwork. The main reason for this is the main researchers, Alexandra Zavos, relationship to one of the teachers working in the school, Vasso Nikolaou, with whom she have had a longstanding acquaintance through their common political involvement in anti-racist and migrant activism. The school numbers approximately 100 students, although the exact numbers fluctuate since part of the student population is not permanently resident in the area, and therefore, often relocates. Of the total number of students, 1/5 are Greeks, 1/5 are Afghanis, and the rest are Albanians and Chinese, with Albanians actually outnumbering all other national groups. The percentage of boys and girls is approximately half, although the arrival of 17 Afghan boys from the Hostel of the Medecins du Monde, just before Xmas, has changed the gender dynamics of the school. There are 13 teachers and one principal, all of whom hold permanent positions at the school. The school is located in a downgraded area of the city, where nowadays mostly migrants, refugees and homeless people reside, while at the same time it is also part of a larger informal urban regeneration scheme, involving the refurbishment of old apartments and warehouses into lofts, as well as the development of new uses mostly in
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relation to the spreading in the area entertainment industry. A new urban middle class of mostly middle-age professionals, who do not hold ties with the neighborhood, is making its appearance. Morreover, the specific street on which the school is found, represents in recent years a rather uncommon arrangement since it has attracted a large number of cultural institutions and foundations that sit side by side with dilapidated and collapsed houses and empty lots. The school itself is housed in an old building that was originally used as a storehouse of the Ministry of Culture and later, already 20 years ago, turned into a school by adding iron bars everywhere. The building, anyway unsuitable for public educational use by all standards, is in very bad condition and cannot fulfill the needs of the students. An empty lot on the opposite side of the street had been acquired by the School Buildings Organization in order to construct a new school, but plans have remained on paper for a number of years. Currently, the school community, including teachers, students and parents, have begun very active mobilizations (picture on the right) to demand a commitment on the part of the Ministry of Education that the new school will indeed be built. However, the teachers, as Vasso reported, are rather skeptical about the success of their efforts, since it is assumed that the Ministry would much rather close down the school altogether, rather than take on the expense of a new school in a neighbourhood where mostly migrant children will become its students. In fact, it is further assumed that the trend towards urban regeneration is affecting the school negatively: rather than contributing to the growth and liveliness of the neighborhood, the new uses will actually destroy even the existing, sparse social ties that are kept up in part through the presence of the school itself. The current mobilizations on behalf of the school community represent a significant occasion for the invigoration or initiation of social relations between quite different and disparate residents of the neighborhood, all of who find themselves drawn together in the cause of demanding better schooling for their children. In addition, the school also accommodates refugee and other children from the surrounding hostels/shelters, thus performing a kind of emergency social aid role, in absence of other state provisions. In the vicinity of the school we find Koumoundourou Square, an old but recently (for the 2004 Olympics) redecorated
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public square, where about ten years ago a large number of Kurdish refugee families had sought shelter setting up a temporary outdoor camp. This square today is mostly used by migrants, living or working in the surrounding area, as well as by parts of the urban drug trade-scene. Closing down the school will also affect the uses and image of the square as well. The Greek Researcher, Alexandra Zavos, selected the particular school for her fieldwork for a number of reasons: a. The student population comprises a majority of migrant students, mostly Albanians. In this sense, student culture in the school is not predominantly Greek but mixed. b. The school is located in a downgraded inner city area of Athens, where two contradictory tendencies intersect: urban regeneration and institutional abandonment. c. The school has launched a campaign to demand that educational authorities construct a new school building; this campaign organized by teachers, parents and students together represents a site of more intensified intercultural interactions. For the purposes of research for the Greek case study this campaign is a significant site of negotiation of gendered and racialized power relations. Far from romantically idealizing the campaign as an example of intercultural cooperation, Zavos was interested in recording the interactions between social actors, the re-construction of identities of migrants and Greeks and of representations of migration, belonging, and social status, as well as considering these interactions in terms of citizenship practices. The researcher acknowledges that her position in the school as researcher would need to take into account the campaign as well as the ways in which she might be implicated or called upon to participate.
Gaining access
Access to the school could only be obtained informally, through the researchers personal connections. Formal access was officially obtained through application to the Pedagogical Institute of the Ministry of Education. Even though the relevant research proposal was prepared, the researcher was advised by other researchers as well as teachers to forgo official procedure since her application would most likely be rejected, or, it would take many months, even up to a whole year, before it was processed. As one teacher, head of the Cultural Division for Primary Education, indicated, when fellow teachers, friends of ours, want to carry out a research project in schools, we try to accommodate them informally, because the Pedagogical Institute creates too may problems for them. The researcher decided to follow this advice, and contacted a teacher friend of hers, Vasso Nikolaou, with whom they had previously engaged in anti-racist activism together, to explore the possibility of carrying out my research project in her school. Vasso worked at the 49th Primary School of Athens, where she taught 6th grade. She was willing to accommodate the researchers request, they agreed that Zavos would be doing participant observation in her class and they set up the timeframe for the fieldwork. Her agreement came as a relief, since the researcher was quite anxious about finding an available school. Nevertheless, even though the road seemed open, the researcher soon found out that she still had to obtain the permission of the school principal, a man with whom Vasso was not on the best of terms. A formal letter of application, signed by the scientific coordinator of the research project
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(GEMIC) and the university, wassubmitted requesting his permission to access the school and explaining the purpose and scope of the research. Even though he received the letter one month in advance of the planned start of the fieldwork, and he had been nformed him of the researchers coming, he required that she should resubmit the letter of application, as well as have a private chat with him in his office to submit her credentials, once she began visiting the school. This undue formality in an otherwise very informally run school, one indeed where Vasso commanded authority among teachers and principal, was impressive as an excessive exercise of rank on his part, meant to compel the researchers compliance (submissiveness) as well as ascertain her correct approach to school politics. In other words, he wanted to make sure that she knew he was running things, and that her research would not frame him or his school in a compromising way. Given the above constraints, the researchers previous relationship to Vasso, as well as her informally tolerated presence in the school presented particular challenges for carrying out the research. Specifically, the researcher felt on the one hand personally indebted to Vasso, a position which made it more difficult for her to enact her objective researcher role. Feeling interpellated as a friend rather than a researcher put a strain on my research priorities, particularly with regard to criticizing her teaching practices, or not taking her side in her disputes with other teachers. On the other hand, depending on the principals tolerance / clearance for access to the school put the researcher in a position where she was expected to perform submission and deference and continuously reiterate gratitude for his accommodation. The particularities of the specific school setting notwithstanding, it is important to consider questions of access and the regulation of research in education in relation to the ideological premises guiding educational politics and assumptions about childhood, accountability and safety. One of the arguments put forth in this analysis is that educational politics in Greece are governed by a longstanding preoccupation with issues of national identity: the safegurading and fortification of Greekness against perceived internal and external enemies. The politics of education have been historically and systematically defined by hegemonic struggles to determine the content and meaning of Greekness. Ideological wars over the identity of the Greek nation and people have been fought on the battleground of education.21 4.4.4. Applying WP5 methodology in the Greek Context: Research tools and research steps Fieldwork Fieldwork included participant observation in the 6th grade classroom, as well as the whole school community during break-time, including students in the yard and teachers in the teachers office. Fieldwork lasted from March 2009 to June 2009..A detailed fieldwork diary was kept by the researcher recording: mundane and exceptional incidents during school
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For example, the Pedagogical Institute blocked a study proposed by a group of students at the Institute of Education, School of Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, on high school students attitudes towards the lesson of Ancient Greek, given the overall low achievement rate in this class. Indeed, a small-scale pilot study on high school teachers attitudes showed even teachers lack of motivation regarding the study of Ancient Greek to contradict rationales provided by educational authorities on the necessity of this class. (http://www.alfavita.gr/anakoinoseis/ank26_5_9_0302.php).
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participant observation; informal discussions with teachers and students; general observations about the school, the neighborhood, teaching; other events relevant to the research; and, the researchers own feelings and experiences at school. Interviews Interviews were conducted with all school trachers (a total of eleven interviews), including interviews with the school principal, 1st to 6th grade teachers, physical education teacher, English teacher, French teacher, special education teacher. Interviews with teachers followed a semi-structured format and lasted approximately two hours each. For lack of space, they were conducted in various classrooms, or the principals office, that happened to be empty at the appointed date. Besides the teachers, the researcher interviewed the social worker at Medecins du Mone, responsible for the group of Afghan refugee families whose children joined the school after mid-term, and the Afghan interpreter who assisted during the interview with the Afghan student. Interviews with students included all students of the 6th grade (a total of twenty student interviews). In one case of an Afghan refugee boy an Afghan interpreter was invited to translate between the interviewer and the interviewee. All other interviews were conducted in Greek. Interviews with the students followed a semi-structured format (see Appendix TBA) and lasted approximately 1,5 hours each. They were all conducted in one corner of the basement, in arrangement with the special education teacher. Each interview was followed by a future projection drawing exercise, during which students were asked to draw how they imagine themselves in 20 years time, how their mother imagines them, and how their father imagines them. The purpose of this last task was to elicit students, and their parents, images and expectations about the future in a non-verbal medium that would allow affective elements of their personal / family context to emerge less mediated by rationalizations of proper responses. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed in Greek. Sociogram A sociogram of the 6th grade was elicited based on two questions: Which one of your classmates would you choose to prepare for a difficult exam with? Which one of your classmates would you choose to go on holiday with? The first question was meant to explore group dynamics between students based on scholastic priorities. The second question was meant to explore group dynamics between students based on leisure and friendship priorities. Group Interviews Several informal discussions with students in class took place addressing the topics of: gender and sexuality, relations with foreigners, class and school conflicts. A formal focus group session was organized with the help of the SCIT (Synallactic Collective Image Technique) methodology. The students were instructed to produce a drawing of their feelings from school and give them a title. Subsequently they were asked to vote one among all the drawings. The chosen drawing was posted on the blackboard and the students were encouraged to recall an incident or event of the school year, associated with the drawing, give it a title and note down their feelings about the recorded event. Afterwards, each student read aloud his/her remembered event and a discussion ensued based on the elicited memories and feelings. The purpose of this task was to allow students, as a group, to access
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underlying thoughts and feelings linked to their school experience, and to initiate a collective discussion about this experience grounded in their personal experience. Importantly, the format of the discussion facilitated the participation and input from all students and not just the more vocal ones.
4.4.5. Macedonia: A case study on Cvetan Dimov, Skopje
The school: Cvetan Dimov High The national case study will be on a unique secondary school in Skopje Cvetan Dimov. This secondary school is located in the multicultural part of the city, and it is a school where students from different ethnic groups learn together, something which renders this school a unique place for research on intercultural relations and negotiations of gender, ethnic and other identities. The particular school was the first mixed secondary school in Skopje for girls and boys (though now there are more boys in the school than girls) and is located in the ethnically mixed neighbourhood of Skopje, with ethnic Albanians being the dominant group. Teaching takes place in two shifts and in two different languages correspondingly, Macedonian and Albanian, which are the languages of the two dominant majorities in the locality of Cvetan Dimov. However in both language shifts there are mixed ethnic classes. The multicultural outset of this school is quite different from the outset encountered in the Greek and Cypriot context. Whereas in the case of Greece and Cyprus multicultural schools adopt the same (i.e., national) curriculum and implement that in mixed classrooms (with migrant students offered separate supplementary courses in Greek as a second/foreign language), in this case Albanian and Macedonian classes operate in separate time slots (in morning and afternoon shifts) but within the premises of the same school. Albanian students are taught Macedonian language but Macedonian students are not taught Albanian. Within the same shift there are also two different tracks, gymnasium and economic courses. The school Cvetan Dimov was opened in 1925/26year as the first Trade Academy in Macedonia. There is an interesting story and interpretation of this beginning stated in the history section on the schools web page: The need for a school of business , historically, is intertwined with the history and politics of Macedonia in the framework of Yugoslavia before the 2nd world war. The foundation of the first Trading academy in Skopje was an important event, more so over the anti peoples politics and regime of ex Yugoslavia which were against every line of enlightment and education of the nationally and socially oppressed Macedonian peopleThe foundation of the Business Academy was reflection of the need for exploitation and research of national resources of Macedonia from the government. After the occupation of Macedonia from Bulgaria in 1941 The Trade Academy became a 5 year Trade Gymnasium. In 1945 the Gymnasium was named Cvetan Dimov. Important year in the history of this school is the school year 1952/53 when the school transformed from male gymnasia to a mixed gender school, the first of this kind in Skopje. These are lines that show importance of this transformation for the identity of the school:
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This educational institution becomes symbol of equality among sexes with the renaming to boy-girl gymnasium. The young enthusiastic spirit which was felt from all present during the opening celebration , confirm the avant-garde and visionary educational and above all nurturing of young people, as a result of a cosmopolitan spiritus mundi well-kept in our institution. From then on the school passed through different changes and had its peaks as the best trade school in the country. Today Cvetan Dimov is an economic - legal and business school, as well as a gymnasium. The school is famous for its ethnic and cultural diversity. This is an important image that people from the school want to encourage: we have to modestly acknowledge that this school is on the right track of democracy and equality, vision of all men of reason and dedicated workers in the educational process, of all grown man responsible for the proper development of young individual (Cvetan Dimov, 2004). But the public image of the school is not that bright in the media coverage. For example, one title from a national TV station from 2007 says: Fights, quarrel and knives are part of school life in the secondary school Cvetan Dimov. (A1, 2007). The public image of the school is mostly related to violent incidents, stories of students carrying guns at school and as a school with ethnically mixed population, mostly Albanian, which is percieved as unsafe environment for development. The schools location also supports this image. It is situated on Bul. Dzon Kenedi (John Kennedy), street publicly known as a street of armed incidents of Albanian drug dealers. This is how the assistant director describes his attitude towards the school when he started to work:
Four years ago I got a job for the first time, as a teacher for economic subjects, and on the first day my thought was: O my God, where am I going? To a school that has reputation for bad things and so on and even if I had a chance to work at another place, I luckily started here. First time you see it as a school, if you listen to the stereotypes and prejudices, it sheds bad light on the school. First its location, people say that there is crime, and is this true or not is other thing. It is located on a very busy street (Fieldnotes
from Fieldwork in Cvetan Dimov).
The school pedagogue informed that in recent years mostly low grade students enroll in the school so the rating of the school is dropping, and lot of students from near by rural communities enroll which for urban citizens is treated as not attractive. Researchers chose the school as a unique school, one of few where students from different ethnic backgrounds study together, especially Albanian and Macedonian students, since they mostly study in separate languages and live parallel lives. One of the researchers already had experience with this particular school as part of one action project and one research. Her knowledge of some of the school issues and context enabled more insight in some aspects of the school life and relations. Cvetan Dimov is a big school with 1800 students and 128 employees which study and work in two shifts according to the language of instruction. The structure of the school that shows the number of students in the gymnasium, the legal and the economic education by ethnicity and gender are presented in the Table 1 and Table 2 in the appendix. After few visits and established communication with one class teacher, researchers decided to focus on her class, because the structure of the class offered ethnic diversity and reflected more or less the image of the school in a nutshell. The class was Third year in the school year 2008/009 and had 26 students and Fourth year during 2009/10 with 21 students, while 5 students didnt pass the year. 8 Albanian, 5 Macedonian, 2 Roma and 7 Bosnian students made this small
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community interesting site for research. Researchers observed only the Macedonian language shift because of their language barrier, but as well because students from different ethnicities are more present in the Macedonian language shift and the Albanian language shifts are basically all Albanian students. Gaining access The national policy for realization of research in education is under the authority of the Ministry of education. First institutions or researches apply for permission based on a list of documents that are needed for application. The procedure in our case was not very long and lasted about two weeks. Then, the director of the school is another authority who needs to give his consent for the realization of the research. There are other authorities who can be brought as steppingstones in the process beside the director of the school - the local government and the School Board which also have regulative power in the school. In this case the director accepted the permission from the Ministry and didnt ask for other administrative procedures or documents. 4.4.6. Applying WP5 methodology in the Macedonian Context: Research tools and research steps As in the case of Cyprus, the research team had to obtain official permission from the Ministry of Education and the school principal for conducting site-based research in the school. The original informant was a 3rd grade who functioned as a contact person with other teachers, administration, students etc. During the first phase, the researchers conducted participatory observation in spaces of interethnic interaction and connection as well as spaces demarcated and separated by ethnic difference and conflict. During the second phase, researchers had informal interviews with students on the themes of friendship and romance and recorded stories on relationships between young people from different ethnic and religious background as well as stories on conflicts between students (some of these stories were later used as codifications and researchers prompted students to offer thick descriptions of these stories). During the third phase, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews and organized focus groups in order to explore in more depth power relations among students and between students and teachers, as well as networks of power with regards to school hierarchies. The research consisted of three phases: (a) participatory observation on classroom events and interactions and informal interviews on experiences, (b) production of codifications based on data collected in phase a and semi-structured interviews and (c) critical discussion of stories elicited in phases a and b, with focus on gender, power, identity, relations between students and teachers and negotiations of borders and identities. In order to map the researchers insights on the setting and draw connections between these and major research questions and concepts, a list of indicators was prepared. This was an open list of indicators which mapped relations in regards to points of gathering, as well as modifications of relations with regards to ethnically separated as wells as dynamic and ethnically diverse settings (Appendix 2 TBA). Researchers were particularly interested in processes of identity formation and power relations, thus thay focused on stories about violence and conflict, experiences of closeness/intimacy, friendship, love and solidarity.
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Phase I Researchers started with participatory observation on school life and social interactions in the school yard, entrance hall and other hallways. The observation enabled researchers to locate different settings and arenas of intercultural interaction in the multiple settings in/around the school. Researchers wrote substantial descriptive field notes about visits and observations, notes about interactions and informal interviews, and their own self-reflections about certain feelings, events, moments. During this phase a workshop was carried out on friendship the class teacher introduced the reserachers to the class and gave them the stage for about 30 minutess. The researchers taked to the students about the research and the topics of their interest. They focused on the friendship, had a whole class discussion on friendship and asked students to write what friendship means to them, keeping in minding questions such as is friendship possible among girls and boys and what should the best friend be like. At this phase focus groups held non-structured discussions about relations in the school and the classroom concerning ethnicity and gender, relationships of friendship and love as well as experiences of conflict and violence. Researchers also had informal interviews with particular students and teachers, asking them to describe what they thought were memorable events of violence and closeness, friendship, love and solidarity. Phase II This involved reflection on all the data collected during Phase I and production of codifications that encapsulated in the narrative format of little vignettes the most interesting events and insights researchers had during Phase I. Eleven codification were developed and the most representative ones were used at Phase III to elicit thick descriptions from students and engage them in reflective discussion. Phase III Participatory observation was continued with specific focus on one classroom and in-depth interviews were carried out with students in order to elicit critical reflections on the stories developed in Phase II. Critical Ethnography in Cvetan Dimov included self-ethnography by the researchers. One of the strengths of the research was that the two researchers had the opportunity to go to the school together most of the times. They had the chance to talk to each other, write separate field notes and compare them, something which enriched the thickness of the descriptions and introduced multiperspectivity to the production of data and their interpretation. The language barrier presented a major difficulty. Both researchers were Macedonian speaking, with no or very little knowledge of Albanian which is one of the two major languages in the school (especially among students). Researchers felt this barrier mostly in attempting to establish rapport with Albanian students. This was further complicated due to the researchers gender and ethnic identity. Researchers made interviews with Albanian boys but did not have any opportunities to talk to Albanian girls. Researchers insight The research in not objective, in a positivist sense, but is rather marked by the researchers subjective position. The Researchers own experiences, expectations, ethnic and cultural background shape both the data and the interpretation. Team ethnography, however, can mediate the impact of one-sidedness since it provided the researchers with opportunities for
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comparing their findings and realizing how the researchers positionalities, their selections of prompts, the ways theu elicited narratives and their interpretations were also part of the thick descriptions to be produced. To some extent, the researched were also participating in intercultural interaction and not just witnessing the others interactions. Thus the researchers were also caught a the research experience which elicited on their behalf reflections on intercultural dynamics and challenged them with the experiencial reality of borders, on both sides, othering and being other-ed.
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PART TWO: ANALYSIS OF EMPIRICAL DATA
5. The cultural politics migration (Greece and Cyprus only)

Zavos reports that analysis for teachers of kerameikos, the concept of cultural difference is abstract and linked to the discourse of political correctness. This is represented in the repeated evocation that they do not separate or discriminate between children from different backgrounds, but, rather, treat children the same, or, as same.
The kids are all the same to me. However, we forget where these kids come from. They alsohave their culture, they have their religion. They have their civilization, they have their customs, and they come in here, too suddenly in a way, to integate. This is not that easy (Interview with Pluto).
At the same time, however, it is also evident that teachers engage in a continuous effort to come to terms with, make sense of and negotiate ethno-cultural difference, and, in particular, forge connections, often drawing on notions of a common cultural-historical heritage (we were all part of the Ottoman Empire), or on notions of a common class identity (we too were once poor), or common experiences of migration (Greeks were also poor migrants once). Such attempts to establish similarity through identification with class or cultural background, simultaneously also perform a cultural politics of separation. Closeness is modeled on the basis of geographical and territorial proximity, and is established at the cost of erasing differences, or relegating differences to a developmental narrative of culture and history (we, Greeks and Albanians, are alike, but we, Greeks, are at a more advanced stage of social development). Unbridgable difference, on the other hand, is projected further afield, to those who come from afar, either in geographical terms (Asia, China), or in terms of social position/identity (war refugees). Thus, the integratable migrant is construed as the migrant who can be treated as same, modeled on the basis of national stereotype (Greeks were once poor migrants, so we can understand the experiences of current poor migrants). Integration means that the migrant can become a quasi-insider and thus be smoothly assimilated. Zavos notes that the construction of different kinds of migrants, variously, as other, quasi-insider, or grateful subject is linked to the production of the idealized self-image of the nation and the projection of its fullfilment in the future. Statements of the kind all kids are the same to me, we do not discriminate, etc. are also prevalent in interviews with Cypriot teachers. What is identified by the Greek Report as a discourse of political correctness, in the Cypriot Report is identified as a European correctness, a multicultural ethos ensuing from Cypruss EU accession, and a change of mindset required by global mobilities and reconstruction of local societies. Cypriots are racisits, we are racists, the Cypriot teachers state uninhibitedly, and attribute racist attitudes to Cyprus being until recently, traditional, a small and culturally homogeneous place, with a small population. Teachers, however, also state that Cypriots closed mindedness now has to and, eventually, will change. Cypriots will learn to accept others: This thing is still at its beginning stages, that is Cypriots have not get used yet to living with foreigners (Interview with MC, Technical School, Nicosia).
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All teachers agree that migrants provide cheap labour. They do the jobs the Cypriots would never do; they are the blood donors of the Cypriot economy. The discourses of multicultural ethos and economic rationality, however, do not tame or absorbe raciological discoures: I think in general there is racism even tough we pretend to be, lets say, comfortable, liberal, that we accept to have some kind of communication and equality with everyone, and so on I think many people have a racist attitude, and I think that it bothers that, for example, in Eleftheria square, at the center of the capital, from its start to the very far end, as far as you can see, most people walking around are foreigners, and, to get more specific and not to use these generalities it bothers and so on, many times I catch myself to be bothered that I do not see any Cypriots walking there and wherever I go I see that foreign element, which is not bad, it just bothers me, it is not the presence of foreigners that bothers me, sometimes it is even nice to go somewhere and see something from various cultures, but it bothers me to see them not respecting some things, some rules we have in our country. It may sound silly or very insignificant what I am going to say, but it bothers me there, in Eleftheria square, at the benches, all these foreigners sitting there If they dont take care of their appearance, it is their right to dress the way they want patheticIt just bothers me when I see that dirt around them, eating pamkin seeds and spitting the shells, I do not know if I become racist in regards to thts matter but I cannotit bothers me to see this thing. As long as you are in this place, I want you to respect some thingsa Cypriot could have done thisbut they [foreigners] are in groups, they are together and you see them, the way they sit, there is no but even if we bracket the way they sit, still, the gestures they make, they may be eating something and--notice this!the they may be eating seeds and throughing down the shells When they eat pumkin seeds they spit the shells out , this bothers me, and I think it is from these little things we start and move on. (Interview with Greek Filology Teacher, Technical School, Nicosia)
The same teacher, replying to a question on impact of migration on her school, says:
I think there has not been any, judging from the students in my class, there in no discrimination on grounds of someone being a foreigner, e.g.,. not taking him into consideration in the sense that tudents would say, He s an alien (allodapos) Mm and we are not listening to his opinion; it depends on the persons. In my own class I see that the migrant [f] student22 is treated by the rest as a member of the class, normally. She herself cannot participate in the lesson and the students know that she is foreigner and does not understand some things, e, does not know the meaning of some things, but later on, during the break, when I see her together with her female fellow students and her male fellow students, normally, there is no problem. Now, I do not know if in some other schools there is much more fanaticism and there is that kind of conflicts.
(Interview with Greek Filology Teacher, Technical School, Nicosia)
22
Because the gendering of referents such as student, teacher, migrant is not preserved in the English translation, the gender of the referent is indicated in brackers by f, m, fs, ms.
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The positive impact of intercultural education is understood as contact with a foreing presence [that] has entered the classroom. This contact is supposed to have a spontaneous effect on native students: the mere fact that they find themselves next to these people might help them later on, when they come out and much more easily will meet in their leisure time, the time they leave school and will go to the center where it is eaier to see the aliens [allodaoi], I believe that this first contact and this first communication
(Interview with Greek Filology Teacher, Technical School, Nicosia) The speaker is exceptional in her uninhbited tainting of migrant others as uncivilized and, at the same time, her upfront admission of being racist. Despite its exceptionality, the statement is paradigmatic of some patterns of speech in the interviews with teachers in Cypriot schools. The teachers state upfrontly at the beginning of the interview, we are racist or Cypriots are racist or there is racism. This is usuall accompanied by two other gestures. The upfront-ness of speech, fashioned like parhesia, exhonerates the speaker and allows her/him to proceed with any kind of stereotyping discourse. Racism is stated only to be placed at the beginning of an evolutionary process: racism will be overcomed as Cypriots come to learn, unavoidably, how to live with others. Only one teacher dismantles, in a quite sarcastic way, this statement of being recist and its performative emptying of seriousness by locating racism at the beginning of an evolutionary process of self-change. He states: We are racists without a knowledge of what racism is (Interview with Socrates, Design Teacher, Technical School). The discourse used by the philologist above is paradigmantic of a certain philosophy on the principles of migration policy, one that echoes the kantian hypothetical imperative on hospitality: I receive you are long as you respect the rules of the house and me as its master. In the case of Cyprus, conditional hospitality is projected as a balance of percentages (maximum ceiling on migrants), an exclusion of some kinds (some ethnicities are accepted and some are framed as malignant for school balance, i.e., school order), a disbanding of ethnic clicks (who often speak their language amongst themselves). The principal of a school where migrants exceed 50%, states that that migrants are well integrated in his school. Staff members describe the school as amosaic and a paradise for migrants: Here they find love, understanding, acceptance. Not just by teachers, in our way we push other children to embrace them (Interview with ). Balance, however, is framed both as an achievement and as a condition of fragility, for the school will not be able to operate if they exceed 60%. In the same school, staff contrasts the successful integration of migrants with the problematic new-comers, Roma migrants from Greece, to whom they refer othetimes as kilintziroi (decadent, abject, the lowest of the low), and other times, rather euphemistically, as seasonal or wonderers. Comparisons between old and new migrants are also made in Gymnasia with lower rates of migrant anrolment (between 20 and 30 %). Teachers in these schools make critical comments about the clicks that Pontians used to form in the past and state that now they are pleased to see that migrants and natives interact together. Still, they make negative remarks about the new ones, the Turkishcypriots and those who gather together and speak in there language. In Gymnasia with Arab enrolments (about 10%), there is a sense among both teachers and Cypriot students that the conditionality of hospitality has already been breached, that something has already been violated:
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Biology T: In order to have multiculturalism you first need to have culture. These are kilintziri. Philology T: If they had our level, we would not have problems, but their level is very low, they do not understand anything and their mentality is backward. Unfortubately, they have started to have a negative influence on us, something that has to stop. Biology T: You know what we have become? Araboeuropeans. Especially in schools. Instead of us assimilating them, they are assimilating us. It is us who pretty soon will need integration. They eat us. They are more than us, now. Researcher: How many non-Greek speakers do you have? 35? Biology T: - Ee, one in every ten. Is this a few? We are only 370.
(PM Fieldnotes, Phaneromeni Gymnasium, Larnaka) The responses of teachers are very different in the Phaneromeni Gymnasium and the Phaneromeni Elementary school in Nicosia. These schools came to be framed early on as the paradigmatic multicultural schools in Cyprus (the percentage of migrants is almost 85%). Teachers from these schools do not adopt any positions on the conditionality of hospitality. Thery make no critical comments about unassimilable ones, no ethnic comparisons between eastern Europeans and Arab others, no contestations over the difference (on no difference) between Turks and Turkish Cypriots, no derogatory comments on cultures and mentalities. Any comparisons made are rather sociological. Only one teacher in Phaneromeni Gymnasium compares the old migrants (with traditional values, strong family ties and solid belief in the value of education) to the new migrants. She talks about a moving world, an opportunistic one, without a solid family backbrounf (many single parent families and cases of kids who live with granparents as parents might be already elsewhere trying to make the way to a new start). Teachers talk of intercultural policies in their school as of a long ago established institutional rationality. Especially in the Gymnasium, teachers speak with nostalgia about the previous state (and status) of the school, talk of the exodus of the Greekcypriots and the overall decline of the number of students. Many teachers speak of the acceptance and love offered to migrants and only a very few complain about disciplinary problems. All teachers, however, speak about a decline of academic standards. The school is framed as a hospitable place that accepts others but not as a place for learning. It is as if the school were a heterotopia: neither a utopia, nor a dystopia; just an exeption, a place outside the polis and outside the terrain of educational politics. The only teacher who expresses a different, unconditional and non-deterministic view on the cultural politics of migration with regards to his school, is the principal of the Elementary school. He argues that as migrant groups will be changing, the kind of marriage that takes place among migrants will also keep changing, in a dynamic way: for example, the marriage that will take place this decade in this school will definity not exist in 50-60 years from now. It will be a kind of melting pot that will create a new culture. That culture will be something new. We have faced the same phenomena, as a Cypriot society, with the creation of the refugee camps. The conditional framing of hospitality and acceptance is also prevalent in Zavos interviews with Greek teachers, mostly with regards to Albanians, since they are the ones considered to have higher cultural affinity with Greeks and also to have integrated most (and perhaps, also the ones whose difference must be delineated on new grounds). Zavos reports that lack of language acquistion by parents is seen by teachers as a sign of unwillingness to integrate and become part of Greek society, and it is negatively valued. The criticism that they only learn what they need for getting on with their work, they do not make an effort for something more, implies that they are expected to be interested in Greece not only for economic but for socio-cultural reasons as well. This unfulfilled expectation and subsequent complaint by Greek
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teachers of Albanian parents lack of interest in Greek culture, points to the underlying affective terms of a relationship, which is mainly conceived in terms of economic rationalization and/or exploitation, and to the fundamental ambivalence that structures the relationship between Greeks and migrants. Seen as others, on the one hand, but also expected to become like Greeks, on the other. Even though they are mainly perceived as cheap labour by Greek society, (Albanian) migrants are also expected, at the same time, to be willing to take in Greek social and cultural norms, to become quasi-insiders, or at least familiar with Greek identity, thereby performing subjection to the higher Greek culture, but also love and gratitude. Their relationship to Greece is expected to be an affective one and not just opportunistic calculation of survival and profit
We opened up the doors, we offer them whatever we can but their parents must also say, Now you know, we are offered hospitality, here. We came here, to stay in Greece? Are we coming here, there are laws, there are responsibilities, there are rights, there are duties, and they should also help, getting integrated (Interview with Pluto).
Albanians are bound by the cnditionality of hospitality to behave towards other migrants in ways Greek nationals are not expected to do. As Zavos comments, whereas Greeks are considered justified to abandon the neighbourhood of Kerameikos, the exodus of Albanians is seen as a less ordinary practice that attests to the extreme degradation of the area. In fact, Albanian parents are not considered entitled to complain about the presence of other migrants in their neighborhood, since they themselves were also once in the position of the outsider or abject foreigner. Even though they are now considered more or less integrated, they cant lay claim to national cultural belonging as proper Greeks can. Seen as inferior or quasi-Greek subjects, who have been granted entrance into the national realm, they are expected to perform a submissive rather than assertive subjectivity; they should be thankful for what they have, rather than demand a better quality of life, especially when Greeks themselves cannot secure this: They cannot complain; thats too much. Even us, we were like this, yesterday. The same also holds true for Albanian childrens negative reactions to other migrants or refugees from Asia. Albanian childrens intolerance or racism is not justified, or tolerated. It is even seen as a sign of impudence. In Greek territory, they are not recognized as having the right to be intolerant of others; they are expected to identify with others plight and position, as they are both foreigners and poor migrants. Intolerance is an aspect of being Greek, rightfully belonging and ruling the national territory.
This Albanian tells me, The regugee Ms, the refugee. I say, I do not understand you well, what are you, arent you a regugee? How can you say this all the time? It drives me crazy It happened to me before, many years ago, a friend teacher of mine told me, the Albanian defies this little boy from Iran, mistake, Afganistan, and tells him, You came to our country to act like a ? I will kick you out. It drives me crazy (Interview with Machdi).
A significant difference that cuts across the cultural politics of migration in Greece and Cyprus is the construction of migrants and alien others with regards to the future of the nation. Zavos notes that the construction of different kinds of migrants in Greece, variously, as
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other, quasi-insider, or grateful subject is linked to the production of the idealized selfimage of the nation and the projection of its fullfilment in the future:
We had and stll had many students from Albania, but these you know have been integrated in some way. Several of these kids have been born here here, speak the Greek language [] have Greek friends. Our problems are with the other aliens, most of them from Asia [] kids who came from Afvanistan (Interview with Pluto).
A Zavos notes, Migrant children are considered to have a place in the idealized self-image of the nation to the extent the nation is projected as a hierachical socioeconomic system and education as its sychnonizer. Based on the abtract universal ideal of equality and rights, all children are entlitled to knowledge. Knowledge is distinguished from scientific or professional qualification, in order to allow for migrant children, who are assumed more than likely to fail such qualifications, to still partake of the benefits of education; they can become enlightened, cultured and discerning hairdressers or plumbers. Here, the perhaps protective disposition of the teacher, to provide a rationale for the value of education even if it does not return the investment in terms of achieving higher socio-economic status, also fixes migrant students, as second tier citizens, in positions of lower status, and in working class occupations.
We all have to try and we ll have right to improve our life, to open up what I call light, little windowpanes on our head we dont have to become all of us scientists You may be a plumber and still know how to love poetry, literature We talk about it many times and I tell them you might not become, not reach, change your mind, Ioanna, you can become a hairstylist [] it is not necessary to get a university degree I believe they will make it (Interview with Erato).
In the case of Cyprus, a national state and yet not a nation state, teachers refer to greekness as a benchmark rather than as the dialectic of the nation. National idendification is projected in the quest for a balance. Beliefs in the inevitability of migration and Cypriots mind change are cut across by fears of some inevitable destruction of balance: We already have more than what this place can take:
I am not a racist. I am in favour of Intercultural Education but I consider very important the presence of a measure in what we do. It was a a grand mistake of Vasileiou who did not sya, as Malt did, that we will receive migrants because we are not racists, but up to a point. We have to receipt that number which we will be able to fully accept so that problems dont take place and we do not lose our Greekness. It is logical that interaction will occur from the contact of civilizations, but, essentially, it is them who learn thigs from us [] Grand mistake that we did not put a limit
(PM Fieldnotes, Dianelleio Gymnasium Larnaka, Date).
A common theme in interviews with Greek and Cypriot teachers is the reference to common experiences of migration. The perception that Albanian parents live frugally in Greece in order to build a dream home in Albania is likened by Kerameikos teachers to earlier practices of Greek-American migrants who returned to Greece with lots of money to show off their success. Implicitly, however, such practices are also criticized by the teachers as lacking in taste and being somehow excessive or unreasonable. Drawing this parallel is assumed to establish a sense of commonality and acceptance between the Greek teachers and their migrant students. Implicit, however, in this identification, as Zavos comments, is also an understanding of migration as only negative, and prompted by the desire to overcome the
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hardships experienced in the country of origin. Migration as a force of positive social change in receiving countries is not even a possibility. Thus migration is framed as a one-way process that affects only migrants and not the receiving societies, which are assumed to offer a higher quality of life and a more advanced socio-cultural milieu. Whereas teachers in the Greek case study makereferences to a collective memory of Greek migration and allude to commonalities and identifications with migrants, teachers in the Cypriot study make references to personal experiences of migration, mostly as students in UK and the USA, in order to establish that they know of multicultural societies and how to live with others. While alluding to a common experience of being foreigner, teachers also make comparisons between English and American univesities admission and academic policies for international students and measures for migrants in Cypriot schools. The parallel they draw is that, if they had to learn English first, before they could take a regular academic classes, migrant students should alsohave to enrolled in reception classes first and become intefrated in the regural classroom only after they learn Greek. There is one teacher, however, who dismantles the logic of such comparisons. With reference to Cypriots studies abroad, he comments: We did not learn anything, we came back and we are so willing to strike others on the head. As he explains, we met all these people in New York, in London and basically we did not meet them well, we said, this is black, that is red, I will stay here in Astoria where they also speak Greek and they have Greek street labels and feel safe, secure, like in my mothers belly. We were uneducated when we went there; we were logs when we came back. (Interview with Socrates, Techniki School Nicosia)
6. Masculinities, Femininities and Gender

One of the reasons it is hard to separate normative gender thinking from culturalist approaches to the other is because gender norms are considered to be an exemplary chrystallization of the others cultural codes and values. Assumed to be concise and stable within and authentic and pure from without inferences, migrant groups gender norms and practices are treated as an organizing axis around which intercultural inquiry will navigate itself, knowledge about the other will be built and intercultural bridges of respect/sensitivity/tolerance will be deployed. The cultural interest in migrant/ethnic minority students is problematic from a gender perspective not only because its normative framing reproduces patriarchal thinking but also because its elucidation in school settingsinformal classroom conversations, gossip between teachers in staff rooms, prompting questions posed by researchers, culturally sensitive school practices, teachers tips on how to handle disruptive or unmotivated migrant/minority students, culturalist interpretations of school violencereproduces preconceived notions about gender and heteronormativity. As shown in the analysis of data from the three WP5 partners, teachers, students (native and migrant, national majorities and ethnic minorities) and sometimes even researchers, acquire, organize, exhibit and utilize knowledge about others in ways that preserve gender regimes.
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6.1. Diligent girls, Aggressive Albanian Boys, Predatory Afghan others: From the Analysis of Geek Data
Zavos reports that general opinion among the teachers holds that girls, whether of Greek or foreign origin, are more mature, more competent, more well behaved and better students. Girls are understood to create fewer problems in the classroom, or outside during fieldtrips, are more quiet, less aggressive, more tidy, more assiduous. In fact, both girls and boys, in terms of the social roles they perform, appear to conform to culturally dominant in Greece gender stereotypes, according to which, for example, girls are more in charge of cleaning up, order and subsistence, whereas boys are indifferent to such requirements and expect others, teachers or girls, to take care of chores. Such discourses surrounding feminized school performance distract attention from more meaningful structural analyses situated within economic and cultural contexts, such as the sentimentalized diligent (girl) child has come to represent a new neo-liberal subject (Burman 2005).
Girls are more competent, they seem to handle better their everydayness as pupils, at every level The boys, I dont know, in my own class there is a deficit with regards to boys Whereas girls are more smart and more mature [] Lets say, at the excursion The boys got up and went to play waiting for others to clean up the girls did not do that (Interview with Nano).
There are a variety of reasons why this is seen to be the case, most of which, however, invoke naturally determined qualities for boys and girls. Gender roles, and the performance of femininity and masculinity, are seen as a manifestation of innate and essential biological attributes:
Nefeli: E, gils, are, to some extent, by nature like this, more assiduous. Eleni: Look, it is generally believed that are more mature than booys, always, and the boys that have learning difficultires are usually boys, you know that. Stella: When the majority of kids in my class are girls, the class is perfect When its the opposite, the majority 12 boys, the minority 4 girls, the class is falling apart.
Moreover, girls and boys are assumed to connect better to teachers of the opposite sex, reproducing heteronormative stereotypes and expectations about gender relations and sexuality. Fears about older boys, especially darker skinned and socially more marginalized foreign boys, such as Gypsies or Afghan refugees, making sexual advances to girls are another common theme in teachers representations of sexualized gender relations in school. As Zavos remarks, homosociality and homosexuality are completely submerged in teachers understandings of childrens sexual behaviour in school, in spite of the fact that sociality among same sex children is quite developed and zealously guarded. Machdi: at some point they complained: Mm, they pull up our skirt and did things like that.
AZ: And them (boys), what about them? Did you tell them, Dont do it? What? Machdi: E, we explained to them, we called the social worker here, we told here this thing, that this Cannot go on Look, there are some girls who are being looked at,
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intensely. They look at them intensly because they are boys, boys in the age of falling in love and doing Did you understand? AZ: Yes. Machdi: And so things are a bit dangferous, from this respect Even before, when we had Roma kids () like this, who were older, again we had the same problem. They should be in Elementary schools, kids of fourteen and fiftenn years old
Clearcut demarcations of gender roles between girls and boys, separation of spaces and activities along gender lines and the performance of appropriate and clearly legible femininity and masculinity, are seen by teachers as important issues for children of Elementary school age:
AZ: Do you ever hear boys talking to girls dismissively, in the context of games, lets say? Podosfairistis: Not dismissively, they just tease them that they are not that good in playing Why do you have the girls play [soccer] with us, since they do not know? I try to convince them that They have to play so that they can learn, and you will help them learn E, at the beginning they do it, but as soon as the girls make some mistake, they start having fun of them, but not dimissively They want to play their game and they want to play the way they [boys] want to play Eleni: I just see that girls are looking at me with admiration, like a model even with regars to how I dress, that I have a nice body, they notice these kind of things more. With regards to the boys, the older ones, what seems to affect them might be the whole appearance, becoming for them a blueprint of feministity. AZ: What about the boys, what kind of perception do they have of women? Eleni: I cannot know of that but in general, you see that boys are starting to the way they look is kind of sneaky ( ). AZ: Do you mean theres a more sexual dimension to how they see girls? Eleni: Yes, of course. The girls of both 5th and 6 th grade are pusjing each other, touching each other during break, these are not accidental. They are beginning to explore.
However, gender relations and the social position of women and girls are also seen as culturally, and not only biologically, determined social roles that carry particular ideological and moral implications. For example, Albanian girls are considered more sophisticated than Albanian boys. This is attributed on the one hand to the backwardness of Albanian families, where masculine roles are considered to be more traditional and less refined.
Machdi: Girls have a better level, yes, they are more advanced. Boys are a little bit further back, maybe, I do not know, they imitate their father I do not consider these people to be behind. In their manners, their way of thinking, remind me of Greece of 40, 50, our own Greece, old times when it was in the villages.
Gender differences are also attributed to the predominance of womens role and power in the family, which is seen to be more matriarchal. This is culturally referenced back to the way of
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life of Arvanites families in Greece. Arvanites are ethnic populations of Albanian origin, speaking an older idiom of the Albanian language, who had settled in what is now Greek territory during the Ottoman empire. Such a comparison establishes a natural, historical link between present day Albanian migrants and older ethnic Albanian populations, thus naturalizing and appropriating Albanian migrants into the Greek cultural establishment.
Nano: I have the impression that the Albanian families are a bit matriarchal, like are own Arvanitikes [] the girls hardly talk about their father [pause]. They talk about the mother and the mothers problems. They talk, lets say, all little girls talk about the job of their mother, they do not talk about the father and his job [] my own experience from Methana, where I come from, this was happening, families were strictly matriarchal, yes, it was the grandmother, the mother. AZ: Doesnt this subvert a bit the image about the Albanians, that they are very traditional and that the men lock in the wives and beat them? Nano: This is just for just for looks [], this beating
The coincidence that girls of certain foreign populations do not attend the school, such as for example Afghan refugee girls, is attributed to this groups cultural backwardness and possibly also moral inferiority.23 This is contrasted to the higher cultural value attached to liberal western egalitarian gender norms, which Greece is also assumed to aspire to, in spite of the fact that sexism and gender discrimination in the Greek educational system has been exposed to be rampant. Interestingly, accounts of this cultural backwardness are often articulated in vague terms, not as hard facts but rather as general impressions, which both reflects such notions as part of culturally available western discursive repertoires, and imbues them with a sense of mystery. Zavos also reports that gender relations between Greek and Albanian girls and Afghan boys are seen by teachers as bearing particular sexual threats, and make Afghan boys a liability for the school, which is open to criticism by parents on account of not offering enough moral and physical protection for girls. Here, culturally attributed gender roles, such as an assumed aggressive and predatory masculinity, are invested with sexual implications that codify specific cultural identities and practices as not only inferior but also dangerous. Machdi: Boys, the older in particular, two of 14 and 15years old. They are men Where do you place these, in a school with first and second graders? They have other needs. And then, this is a people who have learnt to marry early, with the woman being suppressed. AZ: Yes Machdi: And if he finds a girl when he goes downstairs, to the toilets, what do we do then?
23
In fact, the social worker who was responsible for introducing the Afghan refugee children to the school, and whom I interviewed separately, clarified that there were no young girls amont the children of this particular group of refugees, and the older ones were distributed to the neighbourhood highschools. Nevertheless, she too referred to the position of Afghan women in the family as being oppressed and dominated by male relatives, often physically abusive towards their wives, but also, at the same time, dominating in relation to children, who were expected to work in order to support their older mothers. Again, this image carries echoes of traditional rural Greek family relations.
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Apart from the reproduction of dominant discourses of western cultural superiority, here we also see a displacement of the older stereotype of the dangerous, possibly criminal, Albanian migrant, with the sexually threatening and innately violent Afghan refugee, or unfamiliar Asian migrant (people from those countries). Albanian migrants, on the other hand, largely considered to have been Hellenized, do not stand out any longer and are seen as our more backward and traditional Greek relatives. In fact, Albanian families themselves assume a Hellenized, proprietory and superior subjectivity, as established and successfully integrated families, as insiders now, in relation to other, more recent, migrant groups, whom they consider, along with Greeks, as imposing on Greek socio-economic resources. The other of migration is no longer the Albanian migrant, but the Afghan refugee or the Asian migrant.
6.2. Ethnicized masculinities and femininities, sexual taboos and the quest for sex talk: From the Analysis of Macedonian Data
Ana Blazheve reports that esearchers in Cvetan Dimov noted from their first participatory observations masculine performaces of hardness, aggressiveness, confrontation, and hierarchical power relationships which were also racialized and/or ethnicized (Connell, 2000, according to Phoenix, 2004). Boys often played sports and other physical games and appeared more aggressive and loud. They seemed freer in moving in school space but also free to look at girls and free to use bandying words and phrases towards girls or other boys. On the other hand, researchers noted that girls were mostly together, walking arm under arm, two or three together, quieter, taking care and managing looks. Most of the girls wear make up and often spend time looking in the small mirrors and correcting the make up. They all look dressed up in fashionable clothes, mostly tight jeans and blouses. In contrast to them, there are other girls (mostly Albanian) who look very modest and girls who wear scarves, who dont wear make up or tight clothes. Hanging out with same sex peers (most dominant pattern) is enacted differently in girly and boyish way. Girls meet each other, say hello and kiss, and walk in pairs or three, arm under arm (Field notes_AB_2). Boys do not hold hands:
In front of the enterance from both sides there is a lawn. There was a group of boys on the right side lawn. One of the boys rides other one, one spitting, one laying on the grass, they shouted out aloud (Fieldnotes_AB_1).
Although basic feminine and masculine stereotypes were obvious (and dominant), researchers also recorded examples that show attempts to transcend gender behaviour norms. Performative transgressions of gender norms are often combined with crossing ethnic borders and socializing with peers from other ethnicities. Researchers note the case of a rebel girl whose performance transgressed from the dominant feminine appearance. She dyed her hair black, wore black nail polish and put only strong black make up, wearing also mostly black clothes, jeans and t-shirts. She was using more masculine performatives, openly acting/active up in an aggressive and tough manner. For example, one time she entered the classroom during the break, made her way fast and furiously to her girlfriends table, hit her
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hard on it, and asked her to go with her. This girl is Macedonian but does not deem threatened by other ethnicities. In fact, she has friends from different national groups. Transcending gender stereotypes is also enacted as transgressing good female student rules. She doesnt care for learning and misses a lot of classes which has brought her to a situation where she had to face multiple threats for expulsion. Missing class, running away from school, even being expelled is construed as opening up that space wherein she makes friends. Blazheva reports that in the school context ethnicized masculinity is framed as problematic particularly with reference to the Moslem minority. Muslim masculinity is mostly associated with aggressiveness, both because of representations of global terrorism and fundamentalism, and because of recent Balkan wars and conflicts. Muslim boys have been identified as under-achievers and problematic pupils, suffering high rates of school exclusion and low rates of post-16 progression (Archer, 2003). According to Phoenix (2004), it is difficult for boys to negotiate the imperatives of these masculinities and position themselves in ways they would seem to respond to the demands of masculinities while still getting some schoolwork done and without being cussed too much by other boys. Researchers in Cvetan Dimov record two cases of boys who negotiated in different ways imperatives of aggressive masculinity with academic performance. The first case is an Albanian boy who quietly gets on with his schoolwork and makes clear that academic achievement is a high priority for him. Whereas research points out that such boys are likely to face trouble and to be considered effeminate by other boys, this particular boy seemed well accepted by other boys. He was usually sitting quiet, listening and participating in class, though left out from the jokes and other boyish activities. This Albanian boy stood out from the typical masculine, as well as typical ethnic stereotype. He was not one of the popular boys, but he was accepted and looked at as somehow privileged to be involved in learning, and his quietness and dedication were acknowledged as something worthy. The second case is a Bosnian boy was also treated as a good student and participated in lessons. His strategic negotiation of masculinity and academic achievement was more playful than in the first case. Being already a popular guy, and also perceived as being lucky to know the language of instruction well (better than Albanian boys), he was not bullied for being smart and trying to have the right answers. In a school where knowledge is rarely expected, this boys good academic performance was construed as compatible with imperatives of masculinity because it was attributed to natural smartness and luck rather than to effort. Research in Cvetan Dimov has also confirms that school as institution and social environment is involved in the preservation of heteronormativity as the standard for legitimate and prescriptive social and sexual relations. Along the schools conservative tradition, sex and sexuality continue to be construed as taboos, with heteronormativity being reinstated as a dominant discourse since it is the only discourse available to talk about sex. In interviews with teachers, only one teacher felt free to talk about sexuality and the way students talk or, more accurately, how students feel ashamed to talk about sex and sexuality. This economy of shame/talk can be also noticed in the ways students interact. Boys and girls stay at distance, or touch aggressively or more in a shy manner rather than in brave and open communication. The search for someone to marry is the dominant theme in students stories on relationships. Many students, actually, find their partner from the school and marry quickly afterwards. There are also stories of girls quitting school to get married. Boys talk about love relationships that lead to marriage, as well as girls who wish to become wives and mothers.
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Discourses of sexuality were only indirectly traced in discussions with teachers:
AT: They cannot talk about these things at home, not for sex. Sexual education is very interesting to them. Girls feel ashamed. Researcher: Do they have sex education in school? AT: They may have some lecture, but we are always with the sex issues here. Researcher: They speak openly about this? AT: Boys say: dont talk about it now, in front of girls. Well. I say girls give birth don't they? And you what? Isnt it all this conversation about women? Their vocabulary is vulgar, they dont know how to express themselves in any other way. And they want us to tell them stories, they want to know what is sperm. They take biology classes but maybe this is not enough for them, from a scientific point of view. We usually discuss issues related to AIDS and then we start to talk how, what, and so on. They want you to tell them stories, not just basic stuff like colors, how you can mix them, yellow red, blue, they want stories.
(Interview with Art teacher)
Researchers in Cvetan Dimov also report on the importance of new technologies and their emerging role as tools for the transformations of traditional gender roles and relations. A number of girls and boys are hooked on mobile phones and listen to music with earphones. But researchers noticed that there are large numbers of the students who dont have these gadgets. It is obvious that there are class differences among students both in the way they dress and possession of various technology gadgets. Most of these young people didnt talk about internet use or other virtual worlds and identities.
6.3. The genderization of intercultural research and the multiculturalisms reinforcement of gender regimes: From the Analysis of Cypriot Data
Gender analysis from the Cypriot team focuses only on data from three Gymnasia, with emphasis on gender normativity in culturalist school discourse and intersections of gender and ethnic orders. Three common threats cut across findings from interviews with teachers in Cypriot schools and findings from interviews with teachers in Greek schools. Teachers believe: (a) that gender does not matter with regards to intercultural relations, with the exception of Moslems (uncivilized) and Pontians (patriarchal),24 (b) that migrant girls are better students than
24
, . . . , , , . - ? - . . (Tasoula, interview with Kalipso)
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migrant boys because girls are by nature more diligent, and (c) that gender differences should not matter and do not matter with regards to how teachers treat students. This gender blindness, fashioned by teachers as a commitment to the principle of gender equality, is contradicted by findings on a sharp genderization of intercultural school discourses and school policies. Furthermore, unlike the submerged discourses of sexuality in Kerameikos and Cvetan Dimovtalk of predatory masculine sexuality and at-risk girl innocence, in Keramikos, and traditional taboo constraints interlaying with an outspoken demand for sex talk, in Cvetan Dimovfield work in Cypriot Gymnasia records an explicit and aggressive presence of sexualized and sexualizing discourses, used by teachers, student counselors, boys and girls (migrant and non-migrant). On the first visit to a Gymnaium that hosts many Arab refugees and Cypriots mostly from rural and/or low socioeconomic backgrounds, researchers were directed to talk to the school councelor who is responsible for student relations and, by default, has been assigned the task of handling issues of migrant/refugee students. He insists that nowadays violence in schools is feminized and has to do with family environment and not with being migrant or not migrant,25 and to back his theory he cites the example of a school fight that involved physical violence between a Pontian girl and a BritishCypriot girl. Trying to expand the understanding of councelling issues, the reaesrcers ask whether there have cases of teen pregnancies, girl dropouts, abortions, etc. He replies that they do not have such problems in their school even though kids are sexually active. Asked to clarify, he states in an ostentatious fashion: Are you under the impression that the only sex our students do is orthodox sex? Knowing about kids sex life, sexing the kids, stimulating talk about kids and their family members personal lives are kinds of discourse that come to establish a sense of cultural intimacy, from the teachers perspective between them and the migrant/refugee kids. This intimacy is misconstrued as a kind of interculturally motivated attempt for proximity and an indicator of acceptance of others. The paradox is that such a voracious sexualizing discourse is often coupled with a selective commitment of cultural care to the protection of the scarf-ed Moslem girls and the disciplining of the Moslem boys. In one Gymnasium, for example, responsibilities for Moslem boys and girls have been demarcated and assigned to separate leaders, a female translator (employed by the school on an hourly basis under the EPZs scheme) for the girls and a Greek Cypriot staff member (physical education teacher) for the boys. The translator mediates between families and school, creates around her a spaces of cultural safety for Arab kids but often constitutes a source of fear for them since she is the one to often transfer to parents complaints about their kids misbehaviour. The male teacher is also deemed to create cultural safety for boys (making arrangements for them to play football). He is the one to adjudicate amongst them in cases of disputes and reserves the right to punish or reward. In another school, in order to deal with disciplinary problems with a group of alloglossi, the teacher separates the group into two gender separate wings and often addresses herself only to only the girls wing. In another school, the gender order is redeployed as the organizing pattern of the afterschool activity center. Girls on the right, doing homework, playing guitar and singing, nesting affectionately or gossiping in couches, keeping themselves busy with crafts; boys on the left, playing billiards. The two orders are divided by an invisible line where two unisex service points operate on the basis of one-to-one interactions between educators and kids: a homework help station and a chess table. The leading figure, inspiring paternal love
25
He cites the example of a girl from another high school who came there and bit up one of their students because the latter stole her boyfriend (four girls involved were a an EnglishCypriot, a Pontian, another foreign girl and a cypriot).
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to girls and fear to boys (the latter is re-enacted occasionally through events of verbal defiance-and-discipline), is considered essential by all personnel (most of them women). If there is not a male figure to fear, how are you going to inspire respect in these boys, comments one of the assistants. He himself believes that without control and pre-emptive strictness, those boys will one day evolve into criminals. (a) (Inter) cultural interest and gender normativity
I got in a math class. I asked the teacher (F) before if she allows me to observe the lesson but she responded, Please no, not with this class, you will lose any good idea about me ( ). I explain to her that I am interested in observing the relations between the students. In that case, come, we can have a discussion. She is at ease now. I wonder which kids she has in this class The kids one by one enter the classroom. I see Igor and Hercules. The first student to enter the class, is a smiling, tall girl. This is Aye, Igor explains to me. I am so happy to have Igor as my guide. He is the school contact. He knows everything that happens Aye starts talking. She tells me she is from Turkey and that her mother just yesterday came from Turkey. My mother, Mm, separated from my father, and for this reason she did not come to stay with us. She shows me a photo of her mother. A, bravo, says the teacher, good thing you remembered to bring me a photo of your mother to see (I wondered whether there were other times the teacher asked children to bring photos of their mother to show her). She is looking at that as if it is shows something she had never seen before, as if it was a super-real photo. The photo shows her mother holding a baby. She is not wearing scarf. The teacher comments, But she is not wearing that thing on her head, A? Aye explains that her mother was wearing it in Turkey, is not allowed to go around without that, but yesterday, as soon as she arrived in Cyprus, she took it off. We also used to wear. There, we do not go to school. Our parents dont let us. We only go to elementary school. After that, it is not right for girls to go. And we do not remove the hair on upper lip. We do not go to the hair parlour. Only when we become 16 we remove hair on upper lip. Marriage and afterword a hair parlour. When she grows up she wants to open her own hair parlour. Igor and Hercules keep getting out and coming back. I have never met a Turkish Cypriot (F) before. We only wear long clothes, she says. Mm, says Igor, the sister of Aye is very pretty. Are you are fond of her, my Igor? No Mm, what are you talking about? Dont you know? Me marrying a Moslem (F) [mousoulmana]? Oh my . [ mana mou]... Me either a Christian [ ], says Aye. Mm, these say they do not eat pork and her brother everyday eats souvlaki26 and gyros. Ee,. souvlaki ok, Im not eating that every day. Yes your brother everyday. Its different for him, re. He is a man, if he gets a bit off track maybe Allah will forgive him more easily. She tells me about her father, that he is very strict. Aye is the one who cooks home. Her sister is writing a book on the history of Turkey. It is very difficult there in Turkey. Here it is nice. Have you been to the occupied areas? I ask her. Only twice, Mm, she replies in a low tone. As if she was ashamed she did not want to speak about her visit. Where did you go? Around here, in Nicosia Why are you here with these kids in a Grade 1 class if you are a third grader? How come you have class together? I have religious education with Father () now in 1.1. I came to watch the religious education class there the
26
In Cyprus souvlaki (kebab) is made with pork (unless one has a special request, i.e., chicken, which is more expensive).
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other day thats why I did not see you. Yes Mm, both of us leave [when the rest have religious educ], my sister and I .... I asked her whether there is cami (mosque) close to their place and whether they go there often. She tells me there are two cami close by in the neighbourhood but they do not go. We sit in the house and pray. I did not know that women do not go to cami!!!!!! Many times, if she did not explain something to me in Greek, she would say that in Turkish and Igor would translate to me.
(KC, Fieldnotes, Phaneromeni Gymnasium Nicosia, 9.5.2009)
The excerpt above is cited in length because its ethnographic thickness and empirical denseness allow us to observe the multi-layered gendered nature of the intercultural interactions that take place in a multicultural school (among students, between teachers and students, between researchers and teachers/students), the multiple levels and kinds of reality that construe and are being construed are re-construed through these interactions (structural, interpersonal, performative), the various kinds of intersectionality involved in power dynamics, the way participants use various gender discourses, and the ways participants are positioned by structures and through discourse either as other or as familiar, as objects of study or as subjects of knowing, as actors or as acted upon. The thick description of Aye remains ethnocentric in its syllogistic assumption of analogies. It is assumed that the cultural equivalent of going to church is going to the cami; mobility across the Green line [going to the occupied areas] is assumed to be embarrassing for Aye and her family in the same way it is embarrassing, from the viewpoint of patriotic ethnos, for a Greek Cypriot, when in fact Aye and her family have more mobility in the north and via the north (for example, they fly in and out Ercan Airport). Of particular interest to the analysis below will be the gendered description of Aye by the Greek Cypriot ethnographer rather than the Moslem or Turkish order of gender exemplified in Ayes talk. Why did the teacher ask Aye to bring a photo of her mother and not a photo of her father? Probably because she thought that female otherness embodies better the cultural otherness that Ayes Turkishness encloses. Why did the teacher and the researcher long to see a picture of Ayes mother wearing the scarf? (Several teachers from the same school consider lamentable Meyves Ayes sister school dropout but rationalize it by attributing it to the familys cultural background.) Probably because in succeeding the racial interest, cultural fascination continues to combine that peculiar mixture of desire and derision for the other that Robert Young (1995) describes. Why are they so interested in the scarf? Probably because the interest in cultural difference (mobilized at the center of Europe and directed to Europes others) cannot be weaned from its desire for the exotic. The cultural interest in Aye is both voyeuristic, in its quest for pleasure, and policing, in its quest for power (knowledge about the others norms is often manifested as a right to evaluate the sincerity of the others commitment to cultural norms). As voyeuristic, almost bordering pornography, this interest wants to know about others bodies: about norms and rules regulating the care of bodies, thresholds and prohibitions, rituals of passage. As a policing practice, this interest remains gendered in a way that serves the patriarchal normative system: it is Mehmets (Ayes brother) and not Ayes eating habits which are often scrutinized by Greekcypriot kids; it is her fathers strictness and not her mothers power to separate him that Aye evokes in an attempt to reclaim their (cultures or familys) seriousness.
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The cultural interest in the scarf, though rendered inoperative in the opening scene of this session, keeps surfacing in our fieldwork. The wearing of the scarf by Moslem girls, mostly daughters of refugees and asylum seekers, in Greek Cypriot schools has never been questioned officially by school authorities, the polity or the public as a sign of Moslem insurgency, as assault against secularism or as violation of human rights. Many Moslem girls (but not all of them) wear the scarf. There are some girls who at some point during the period of our fieldwork stopped wearing it. Those who wear scarf also wear the regular school uniform or jeans (always long sleeves). Racist slurs, however, about girls wearing the scarf and derogatory comments questioning the authenticity of the scarf as a statement of adherence to cultural/religious identity resistance and self-ethnicization are constantly emerging, almost always claiming that ambiguous in-beetween status between denotative statement (serious, bearing racist meaning) and performative speech act (just a joke, no harm meant):
Researcher: I ve been told you have many foreign students in your school. Student (boy): Yes, Russianfags, Pontianfags, Blackfags Researcher: Why do you refer to them like this? S: Because they are so. Researcher: How so? S: Fine Mm, as if you liked Blacks!!! Researcher: Yes I do. S: Yeah !!! (ironic tone) Researcher: First of all, they are not Black. I have not seen Blacks in your school. S: Theyre Arabians []. Same thing Just look at them (F) ( ) They wear those scarves, like koulles [].27 Researcher: What is koulles? S: Look at them (F) and you will understand [ ]
Informal conversation with a group of Greek Cypriot boys during break (PM Fieldnotes from Dianelleion Highschool, 6.4.2009) In this instance, the veil (cover) is treated not as part of the Arab girls attire (cover of the head) but as a synecdoche for Arab girls overall appearance (covered persons and persons in cover), for Arabs as a race (black and racially inferior) and for Arabs cultural essence (menacing and ridiculous at the same time). The scarf is constructed as an overarching presence of otherness, a devouring Lacanian real, such a strong embodiment of cultural meaning that its wink quality (sign) collapses into a twitch (physicality), so strong that cultural interpretation becomes a pleonasm: see them and you will know. In many other instances, however, the scarf is treated not just as a sign but as a sign so capriciously used by its bearers that its structural arbitrariness (and structural authenticity, a cultural sign and not a power tool) becomes questionable, as in the scene below. A group of Greek Cypriot girls are debating whether the foreigners are all of Turkish or Arab origin and whether there is a difference between Turks and Turkish Cypriots. They are
27
In Cypriot dialect koulls means scary black person with the head covered; it connotes a besieging danger. The phrase the koulls is coming [ ] was used to scare off little kids, make tem eat their food, or make them come inside when it starts to get dark. Koullas has male gender in the Cypriot dialect and this is the first time I see it used as a female referent (authors note).
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settlers from the occupied areas, argues one girl, explaining how it is possible to have Turks in Cyprus and thus in their school despite the fact that Turks are not allowed to come from Turkey. Another girl argues that this is false, because most of them speak Arabic: No girl, you are wrong, most of them it is Arabic they are speaking. The Turkish girl ( ) is the only one. The one in our class. The researcher mentions that there is a Turkishcypriot (F) in their school and perhaps this is her (in other words, she suggests that the girl in question is Turkish Cypriot and not Turk). At this point the first girl recuperates her position by pointing to clear cut national borders and ambiguous cultural hybridizations: Mm, I dont get it, what does Turkish Cypriot (F) [] mean?? She is a Turk (F). Finished! [ !! !!!] And as if being a Turk were not enough, she is also a copyssa!!! (spelled like this in the original, argot/cypriotized English, meaning un-original). The researchers quest for clarifications elicits from the girls several citations of copyssas acts:
: Look what ever we do, she also does I had my hair cut She went and had the same cut. : I tied my hair up into a ponytail, yesterday, she pulled hers like that today. : She does not wear a scarf. : No! Since she is a copyssa!!! Researcher: Any other negative point to add? : Yes!!! She hangs out with the Moldavian (F) of the class
(PM Fieldnotes, 13.5.2009, Dianelleio)
In the interaction cited in the opening of the chapter, all participantsthe teacher, the two male school peers (a Pontian and a Russian), Aye herselfare competing in exhibiting cultural knowledge. Against the hypothesis that knowledge about the others culture will promote intercultural understanding and combat racisma hypothesis which has come to ground most programs and actions in intercultural educationthe exchange above illustrates how the interest in the others culture not only remains blind to forms of gender transformation and agency implicated in migration but it also reproduces the gender regime of the dominant (receiving) society. This interest is patriarchal in its structural optics (interested in how other women are treated in those other mens culture rather than interested in how women empower themselves in or across cultures) and atavistic in its cultural theory. Race, culture and place are treated as mutually confining and defining. For example, when teachers open up little talk on migrant students lives they are always interested in how are things home and almost never ask questions about the familys migration itineraries or how it is to live between cultures. In the specific interaction, neither the teacher nor the researchers ask Aye how her mother came to take off the scarf. It is also interesting how Aye feeds their desire for the other, giving them detailed prescriptive accounts about their life in Turkey, telling them everything they want to hear, sculpting into her account all those crevices and climaxes she has diagnosed in their battering, cunning questioning. This is not the first time Aye speaks as a professional insider about life behind the veil. Her account sounds proof read, polished to be fit and fitting for the specific audience. (b) Discourses of sexualization and heteronormativity
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Lessons of cultural literacy are also heteronormative. In their effort to elicit data on the limits of ethnic and religious identities researchers often pegged to migrant/ethnic students questions which aimed to trace their desires and test the openness of their romances to the idea of a cross-racial or cross-ethnic marriage (see excerpt from Fieldnotes cited above, Are you fond of her my Igor?). While this approach is supposed to test the openness of ethic others to new possibilities, it subjects, at the same time, their sexual fantasies and their fidelity to ethic tradition to a gymnastics of heteronormativity and auto-ethnicization.28 If the fantasy of the cross-ethic boy-girl romance is cast by researchers and teachers of the dominant group as a net for gathering data on the others culture, migrant ethnic students can also pull in the net and utilize it as a performative context for enacting ethnic pride and cultural resistance. By rejecting the idea of marrying a Moslem girl as an ontological impossibility, Igor re-establishes his authority by fashioning himself as a gate keeper of ethnic orders. The latter is particularly important for him, taking into consideration that he is fifteen years old and he is stranded in grade one as an auditor whose sense of agency is often enacted in skipping both regular class and remedial class, usually playing the one against the other. In their field research, Cypriot reserachers witnessed several times a performative intertwining of masculine ethnic pride with a racist rejection of (ugly or stupid) girls from other groups and a celebratory claim of ownership over some other (nice) girl. The following scene takes place in the smokers nest. The smokers (group of migrant students, mostly girls, and the researcher) are having a little talk while Guzlar, a third grader from Bagdad, carries out duties of guard. As the researcher approaches him, he tells her that was sorry he missed the religious instruction class when she visited their class and goes on to talk about issues of relations:
Gulzar: Can I tell you a secret Mm? You see that girl over there? She has burnt my heart! Researcher:That one? Gulzar: Not that one Mm, thats a Pontian. The other one, the tall one. Researcher: Why not the other one? Gulzar: Mm, Pontians do not have a brain. Researcher: Where are you from? Gulzar: From Iraq Mm, Moslem.
28
Cultural scenarios on intimate/family life used to elicit views on gender roles are even more prescriptively heteronormative and nuclear family when doing research with children. An interview with a Roma boy from Greece (he stays with his mother; father returned back to Greece) takes the following turn, as the researcher tries to elicit the boys views on gender roles:
F: My daddy in not here, he is in Greece. R: So, you are here alone. F: Here we are me, my mother, my brother, my sister, my grandmother, my uncle. Everybody. Except my father. R: Has he stayed in Greece for business? F: They are divorced, my mother from my father.. R: When you grow up and have family, do you want to do the house chores or your wife? F: My wife.
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As bell rings another girl who overheard the conversation, whispears in the researchers ear that another boy, Anton, is also in love with that girl. Researcher [addressing Guzlar]: Oh mine, Guzlar, she will burn your heart even more.
This kind of interaction does not take place in a cultural void. Who loves whom, who is whose girl, which boys are fighting each other over that girl, constitute dominant themes of conversation between teachers and students. They are the major catalyst for triggering interese in the other and feeding gossip among the teachers. The teachers seem to find these conversations enjoyable and sometimes even feed into them with comments and questions. The following exchange takes place in a small group remedial session with two boys (the teacher comments that she never really has class/lesson with these boys). The Researcher asks the boys what really happened the other day (a fight between two boys had escalated into a school emergency, with parents also becoming involved):
Igor: What happened Mm, I beat up a Cypriot because he was teasing my girl? Researcher: Exactly, how did he tease her, my Igor? Igor: E, Mm, he would embrace her, played with her hair, asked her to have a relationship with him and every time she says no because shes with me and he keeps insisting And he knows she in mine. A teacher (Diana) interjects to explain that the Cypriot is a very quite kid, never bothers anybody and if he teased her he probably meant it in a friendly way. Her comment irritates Igor: Igor: Would you like it Mm if someone teased your husband in this way?
(KC, Phaneromeni Fieldnotes, 18.5.2009)
Later on, the teacher attempts to bridge the gap and establish intimacy with Igor. The material out of which she weaves this intimacy is a confirmation of his masculinity. Towards the end, this gesture escalates into a hymn to testosterone vitality and an elicidation of its appeal on women:
Igor: if she is mine, why does he flirt with her? Teacher: Whats important is that she does not want him, my sweet one, it is you that she wants. Igor: Yes, but he teases her Teacher: What did your girl do during the fight? Igor: She was crying Mm. Teacher: And why did she cry? Igor: Because I bit him up and she did not talk to me we broke up, its her who told me Mm. Teacher: And now, have the two of you made up? Igor: Oh Mm, she does not talk to me. Teacher: Look, I think that she may have liked it Girls like, you know, this kind of character, this ethos, your looking after her masculinity emitting this wild thing smelling like a man [The following is spoken as an aside comment, addressed to the
researcher as an insiders view but also meant like an exclamation, summing up the real truth] Vanya is a very good girl, shes not some silly one, how did she get involved with
this crazy guy, oh my dear, nobody knows, they are driving us crazy she should be looking for a tall, good and handsome person
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Igor: (really irritated, getting up from his chair): Why, whats wrong with me? (The conversation, led by the teacher, shifts to a mapping of Igors violent Pontian temperament and his record of fights with Cypriots. The teacher has the closing line: Pontians, my dear, have this thing in their blood. [ .]
While building up cultural intimacy with the male student through a celebratory description of masculinity, the teacher does not hesitate, very abruptly, to emasculate him through the use of racial discourse. Engendering and sexualizing little talk in order to build cultural intimacy with students sometimes looks like a strategy of adoptive coloration used to permeate the others lines, to taste the selfs susceptibility to others charm and to confirm, in an exhibitionist act of othering, who has the sovereign power to regulate each partners positionality in the intercultural encounter. The same teacher, in a semi-structured individual interview, comments on the characteristics of migration to Cyprus: Cyprus does not bear the weight anymore it does not even suffice for us. This is reality. Well reach a point of tensions and conflicts, for this place cannot accommodate so much migration [ ] (Interview with Diana).
(KC Fieldnotes, Phaneromeni High Nicosia, 18.5.09)
(c) The politics of the scarf: suppressed opportunities for subversion and agency
Whereas in the interviews all teachers state that Arab girls wearing the scarf is unalienable cultural right and a cultural gender difference than must be respected, wearing the scarf makes many teacher eye brows raise when it is enacted as a cultural politics. Below we cite three such examples from three schools with Arab refugee enrolments.
It is late may, end of the school year. Female Arab students refuse to participate in the typical class photo at the end of the year. They claim that in their tradition it is not allowed for women to take photos with men. Later on the same day, a teacher (female) notices a group of the same girls in a yard corner, giggling, listening to music from i-pods and mobiles and using their mobiles to take photos. On passing by them, she shakes her head dismissively while commenting aside: You little scarved girls!!! I know all about you.
The second event is narrated to the researcher by Mrs Evdokia, the translator (F)29.
(PM Fieldnotes, 5/2008, Pagkyprio Lykeio Larnaka)
29
Mrs Ermina is a woman of style. Large Dior shades, a Calvin Klein bag, a courful Guess watch and gloss gelled nails are her necessary accessoroes. Her mother was Christian, her father a Moslem. On Fridays she read the Koran and on Sundays she went to Orthodox Christian Church. She states that she is a Catholic. She is from Libanon, married to a Greek Roman Christian. Herself states that she is Catholic. As a translator she has been assigned the care of the Arab students but it is girls who are particularly considered to be under her aegis. (Arab boys, on the other hand, are considered to be under the disciplinary control and protective aegis of a male GC teacher, a gymnast, who is considered to be particularly strict). Mrs Ermina functions as mediator and ambassador between Arab parents and school and Arab children and teachers and her sessions with students focus on communicative uses of Arab language and culture.
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She had told her girls that next day would be a school photos day and they should not wear colourful scarves so that they would not stand out, just black or white. Next day, in compliance with her guidelines, the girls did not put on scarves of bright colours but refused to take a photo. At first they said their parents would not let them take photos with boys for religious reasons but when given the option to take an only girls photo they refused again, this time arguing that the boys would be making fun at them for behaving differently. (The school vice principal (F) said they did have a photo taken Moslem girls only- and they even invited her to pose with them). On finishing her narrative, Mrs Ermina bursts out: It is their families fault for all these. They do not let them. They do not want them to attend Religious education or develop relations with people of other religions. Thats why they told them not to have photos.
When she finishes the narration, she starts her session:
She gathers them all around her for their session. She has brought a book on adolescence and reads to them a chapter on How to make a sunscreen mask. Boys and girls are very attentive, reading and conversing in Arabic. At the end of the session a girl approaches Mrs Ermina and confides something to her. What was that about, asks the researcher. Mrs Ermina explains that the girl is in love with Karim but Karim is in love with a Cypriot girl. And the girlfriend of our girl wrote to him bad words about the Cypriot girl, that she is not good etc. And because she regrets that she asks Mrs Ermina to tell him that he is sorry.
(PM Fieldnotes, 7.4.2009, Dianelleion High Larnaka)
The third event also takes place at the end of the school year (the banner Different Languages, Same Vision [ . ] is finished and ready to hoist). Its Friday and both teachers and students are loosening up as on Monday they will have the end of year school celebration. Lessons are minimal and the day is spent on rehearsals for Monday. In the school yard the waterwar has been on the whole day.30 Moslem girls, some with scarf and some without, are gathered since morning outside Mrs. Stellas class (Greek as a Foreign/O Language, hereafter cited as GFOL). Mina, a girl who recently stopped wearing the scarf, is also there. The last few days she has been trying on different hair styles and is happy when she receives compliments by the Researcher. Mrs. Sophia tells her that shes very pretty. Another teacher standing close by says to Janine (a girl with scarf): A few minutes later she encourages Janine again to take off her long sleeve light jacket because its too hot. Janine hesitates and tells her that she cannot take it off because shes wearing a short sleeve t-shirt underneath. Mrs Stella makes the following comment then:
-Come on Janine, it is also time for you to take off the kouroukla [] and change [your self].31
-Repression, sickness this religion! [, !)
30
Throwing each other water and wetting up themselves is a Cypriot custom for Assumption (also known as Cataclusm []. The custom has been picked up, mdified and intensified by kids (e.g., filling up ballons with water and throughing them at each other), and eventually brought to school as water war. Very often Assumption coincides with the last week/s of class. 31 kouroukla []: Cypriot dialect. Big head scarf which was rubbed by village women around the face and neck, especially when working in the fields. Denotes oldfashion, old woman.
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(MT Fieldnotes, 29.5.2009, Phaneromeni High Larnaka)

There are too many motivations and intentions which could be attributed to all actors involved. Instead of psychologizing the actors it is important to redirect our attention from the individuals to the structural and discursive aspects of such interaction. The petit scenes described above are taking place in the interstices of other grand school scenes, also involving performative doublings: photo scenes, stage scenes, playing scenes (waterwar). Through these doublings/mirrorings the school is renewing its institutional power on students by producing their consensus rather than imposing submission. At the same time, performances, which until some years ago constituted individual acts of misconduct punishable by expelsion, are becoming reappropriated by the institution, reified (student councils with the support of parent organizations negotiate with staff councils and manage to gain tolerance for such activities) and re-culturated from acts of deviant conduct to youth actions which are important for reviving traditional Cypriot customs and preserving Cypriot identity (waterwar on the Assumptions week, bringing scewers to schools and lighting up fires for barbecue on Tsiknopempti, etc). The cultural milleux of the Cypriot school, however, cannot enable similar re-enactments and re-significations for refugee Moslem girls scarf. The only previous meanings available (koullaes and kouroukles) are only those for other scarves and other racialized others, known by Greek Cypriots of, mostly, low-socioeconomic and/or rural background. The recitation of these namings by Cypriot kids in an underprivileged school remains an overdetermined act of resignification: it reclaims the use of the Cypriot dialect (which is considered culturally inferior and vulgar, other to the schools official Greek), racializes the new Moslems and inscribes them within a hierarchical order, resists the multicultural respect for otherness which has been imposed on teachers and students as another kind of sly civility (Bhabha, 1985). From the perspective of the young new Moslems (new in the sense that they neither the same to Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus or Palestinians in Irag but rather dislocated Moslems in a Cypriot context), on the other hand, the scarf has no past in the Cypriot context, neither a dissident meaning to be reclaimed nor an oppressive use to be defied. The girls re-enacting of the scarfs importance challenges both gender order (the quiet scarfed girls are disobeying) and school order (the school ritual of posing all together for a photo). Whe is this all? These girls, like many other groups of students, even groups of Cypriot students, have never felt part of this all. Throughout the year they have been the abject other: the koullaes, the mantiloudes, the kalicantzaroi. Throughout the year they have also been the absent other in the academic arena of learning: invisible, quiet, inconsequenstial. They have been Mrs. Eudokias girls, the Araboes. If there is something which is authentically their own, that is their marginality. At the end of the school year, the mutlicultural school comes to wipe out the signs of their marginality by hailing all studnets to pose in front of the photographic lens for the schools self-images of inclusion. By not wanting to take part in the all of us together photo, the scarfed girls, regardless of their motives, are engaging in an act of subversion that threatens reifying school rituals. In the school context, however, their act is readable only as female cunningness, as passive conformity with tradition and as obedience to parents (either as bad girls, or as good daughters/good fundamentalist Moslems). And the only available culture/gender discourse that can bestow to their acts of defiance meaning and legitimacy is the multicultural discourse of identity and difference. It is a sad paradox that the very school policies which have been adobted/imposed in order to promote tolerance for otherness are producing totalizing discourses and limiting students, Cypriots and non-Cypriots, opportunities to question
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traditions and cultures and to feel empowered in negotiating with intercultural arenas. Despite the fact that a great deal of school resources and intercultural labour by teachers and students are spent for boutique multiculturalism, the most fecund educational opportunities for intercultural interaction and growth are those that occur in learning context and involve translation than celebration of culture/s. Below we describe such an occation. In May of 2009 the GEMIC team organized a school visit by a group of about Moslem students to the Art Exhibition Art is the B-East, featuring political art by contemporary artists from Libanon, Egypt, Palestine and other Arab countries (artworks included Khaled Hafezs Video Projects Concept of on presidents & Superheroes and Revolution). We were particularly interested to see how students would respond to the political aspects of the works and mocking commentary on representations of Moslems and political rhetoric on the war on terrorism. One particular video installation monopolized the interest of the girls. It presented two figures from the shoulders up, wearing only scarves around the head, standing still next to each other against the wall of a bathroom stall, facing the camera and alternating one another in blinking. The only video sound was a rhythmic tik-tak, reminiscent of a clock (or a clock bomb). We had expected that students would find uncanny the combination of nakedness and covered faces. What the students found impossible, however, was another dimension of the work which was invisible to us, having mistaken the most controversial wink of the work for a twitch. While we focused on scarves, uncanny tik-taks and conspiratorial blinking eyes (a scenario of militant female Islam), the girls had focused on the gendered nakedness of the bodies and asked how was it possible to put a naked man and a naked woman next to each other. The debate soon shifts from this how is it possible to how I know its a man, with the girls engaging in a polemic semiotics of the male body in order to proof to us the obvious, that is, that the figure on the left was a man and not a women. The discussion had taken up a very interesting turn, with the girls explaining how rules regarding bodies, nakedness and gender segregation are mediated through conventions of representation in cinema, photography etc, when the translator stopped translating and terminated the exchange. She argued that the conversation was becoming too controversial, that girls were exposed to dangerous content (a photo of a naked man and a naked women next to each other) and that the parents of the girls would create a big problem if they found out about it.32
32
The same translator in a previous occasion had critiqued the parents for imposing traditional rules on girls and blocking their interaction with Cypriot kids in school. In this occasion, she does the opposite. Not only is she citing the parents view but she is acting as
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What is particularly interesting in this event, from the Butlerian theory of power, is that inscription into systems of power is never complete. The girls were hailed as gendered and ethnic subjects into normative Islam but at the same time they were speaking up, elucidating norms and rules from a position of cultural authority. Furthermore, the induction of prohibitions was enacted simultaneously with the infringement of these prohibitions since the girls were already presented with a prohibited sight. Actually, the more they were explaining the infringement of the ban by pointing to the two figures and elucidating the delicate anatomical differences between male and female shoulders, the more they were implicating themselves, as beholders, in the re-inauguration of the violation. The performative analysis of this event brings to the foreground some of the contradictions of school practices: (a) School translators are very often sealing the children from such transformative experiences, aligning themselves with the duties of protecting the normative bind of religions and traditions rather than the pedagogical duty to facilitate experiences of growth. Often they feel they are protecting the children when in fact they are protecting borders and effecting segragations of various sorts. (b) Offering hospitality for the others culture is a more safe task than offering hospitality for the others politics. Multicultural interaction has invested in the former, when in fact students are more motivated to participate in liminal experiences which push the limits of coventions and empower them as epistemic and political subjects (c) Migration, dislocation and re-location create new cultural experiences, new audiences, new interpretations and new subject positionalities for cultural and gender politics. Schools must take advantage of these new contexts and new interactions in order to promote discussions on power.
7. Ethnicity / Race / Cultural difference

Research findings from the Macedonian Report suggest that intersectionality of religion and ethnicity renders identidies even more rigid, with religious and ethnic boundaries overlapping and reinforcing each other. Research findings from the Greece Report show that the construction of migrant/non-migrant identity intersects with national, i.e., Greek/non-Greek identities, with the new young Greek Albanians (born and growing up in Greece) acknowledged as having birth rights and yet feared of mimicry and, finally, with the Afghan male dispensed to a possision of intersecting multiple otherness-s: other culture, other religion, other nation, other masculinity, other psyche (with the experience of war been attributed the qualities of a cultural trait). The fear of mimicry, as Zavos notes, drawing on Bhabha (1990; 1994) and Ahmed (2004), is fecund in that, at the same time it enervates the nations sense of security it also rejuvenates the nations imaginary quality.33 Research
the responsible authority for protecting the girls identity from cultural interactions and delimiting the limits of the girls experiences and critical thinking. 33 As Zavos explain, the love of nation has a paradoxical grammar: Why do we want them to love Greece, and not just use it, as we are using them? Because if they dont love Greece and are here only for opportunistic reasons, then the Greece we idealize as the object of our love may not exist, because the investment itself, the love, may not exist, and if that does not exist then our whole being, which is based on that love, is put into question. So, we need them to love us so that we know we are lovable, but we cannot love them in return because it would make us like them, i.e. unlovable.
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findings from the Cypriot Report show that migrant kids claims of cypriotness are pariculalry strong in Elementary school, with the rigidity and flexibility of ethnic borders being renegotiated in various school settings and arenas. In secondary education, however, processes of auto-ethnicization and hetero-ethnicization become more racialized, more violent and more reactionary, with migrant students feeling that their Cypriotness is under question and their belongingness something to be earned. Research findings from all three national studies show a gap between contemporary theories of ethnicity and teachers and students perceptions about identity and performative reenactments of ethnic boundaries. From a poststructuralist postcolonial perspective, identity is always changing and multi-faceted, constantly evolving and in process of becoming, as never achieved (completed or finished), and formed through their continual construction, negotiation, contestation and assertion (Hall 1996). Ethnicity is also socially constructed and produced through interactions and across public and private discourses it is not natural, pre-given or pre-existing. Thus, ethnic difference and race are not seen as biological, cultural or natural phenomena but as loosely bounded, ever-shifting collectivities whose membership is subject to continual re/construction and contest. The boundaries of ethnic groups which define who belongs to and who is an outsider are also constructed and negotiable/negotiated (Archer, 2003). Blazheve notes in her Report that in Cvetan Dimov primordial concepts of ethnic and religious identities are dominant in the overall discourse among students and teachers. The belief in the strong biological, blood ties to the group is based on a strong emotional aspect that implies, on the one hand a mystification of intraethnic relations and belongingness and, on the other hand, exclusion of others. Asked to consider the possibility or viability of mixed love relationships, teachers responded that it is religion and not nationality that constitutes the biggest problem. A teacher cites the example of a Turkish who married a Macedonian girl who converted to Islam, but four years later went to a church for Easter, saying that it pulls her in, the blood pulls her and thats it (Focus Group 1). For students, ethnic identity is closely related to religious identity and sometimes confused with it. They think that if you are Albanian you must be Muslim, or if you are Macedonian you must be Christian (Macedonian Report). According to the Kerameikos teachers accounts, Greek students are by now accustomed to living with migrants and dont show any signs of racism or prejudice against their foreign schoolmates. There is no difference between them and the Albanian children who have been born in Greece. But Albanian children too feel they belong in Greece, and dont distinguish between their country of origin and their country of birth. Birth appears to constitute, for them, a right of belonging. Zavos observes that Greek teachers identification with migrant students is attempted through reference to a common class background and the experience of social mobility. Just as the teachers themselves, who grew up in poor rural families, managed though education to transcend their low status social position, so, also, migrant students are encouraged to struggle for a better life through educational achievement. Alternatively, identification with some migrant students is sought through reference to a common historical and cultural background, one however, that the Greek society, in contrast to the societies of origin, has managed to surpass thus securing a place among the
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developed and progressive nations of the West. Cultural difference, as complete lack of connection or relation to the receiving country, Greece, is diagnosed in the cases of migrants or refugees from far-away countries, such as Afghanistan, or China; countries, however, whose positionality in the global hierarchy of value bears particular connotations which are projected onto their populations. Afghanistan, represented as a war-riddled, but also hard and fundamentalist country, evokes pity but is also implicitly associated with obscurantism and (masculine) violence, qualities that seem to rub off on the Afghan refugee children at school: They came from a wholly different culturem that is, no relations at all with us. Ok, with the Alban kids, theres something, we are not thatr different. Aggressive masculinity, linked to heterosexuality, is seen as an inescapable identity for Afghan boys, who are reported as disliking instensely, and feeling insulted, by performative enactments of femininity by Albanian boys in the context of the Greek carnival, where, it is common, and accepted, for men to take on female roles pejoratively. The apparent, for the teachers, burlesque element of such impersonations could not be appreciated by the Afghan boys, who felt their masculinity threatened. Gender and sexual identities are conflated. National cultures are also evaluated and compared. For example, Iran is higher in the culture value scale than Afghanistan, which for some reason is conflated with Pakistan, and Iraq, ravaged by war, stands in the middle. China, on the other hand, is associated with assertive global commerce and commands respect but also raises apprehension. As teachers point out, though, Chinese students are not attacked by their Greek-Albanian schoolmates, but, rather, tolerated. However, the meaning of this tolerance could be interpreted in terms of the elephant in the room or the acceptance of the obvious: in other words, Chinese migrants are obviously different and apart from the rest of the students in school and from the rest of the neighbourhood. Not only are they contained within separate enclaves in the city but they themselves do not initiate any mixing, which makes them culturally, and socially, inaccessible. According to interviews with teachers, discrimination against other (non-Greek) nationalities, or other migrants, or refugees, is not only a characteristic of Greek but of Albanian students as well. In fact, Greek and Albanian students team up en bloc against the unwelcome others, such as the newly arrived Afghan refugee children, whose presence in the school has caused so much destabilization for teachers and students alike. Zavos notes that teachers attempt to control or restrict students exhibitions of hostility or intolerance by appealing to childrens pity (the poor children who have lost their homes) or empathy (take the others position); they urge students to put themselves in the others shoes, to imagine what he has been through; but, to no avail. So, asks Zavos, what is it that makes children recalcitrant and resisting students? Regardless of the fact that the teachers themselves reproduce in their own narratives a distinct sense of discrimination against the Afghan children in school, students indeed do display certain ambivalence. On the one hand, when directly questioned, they refer to Afghan children in terms of pity and compassion (they have been through so much), but, on the other hand, in their daily interactions and when confronted with examples of conflict, they practice discrimination, the wish for segregation and fight. Zavos underlines some unspoken contradictions in these accounts: Why would teachers expect their students to be more empathetic than they themselves are? This, she ergues, is a case of cultural intimacy: they do not expect their students to be more related, what they expect is for them to perform what is the politically correct attitude, i.e. to publicly express tolerance, pity, compassion, while, as insiders, they also know and agree, that they would rather not have them amongst them at all.
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Albanian childrens reactions to the Afghan refugees sometimes involve derogatory comments on religious practices, and, in particular the issue of Islamic worship and the headscarf. For teachers this presents a paradox, since several Albanian families are themselves Muslim, and children often recall experiences of faith of their grandparents, but, at the same time, also prefer to dissociate themselves from any such practices. This may not be so incomprehensible if we take into account that the national religion, practiced by the mainstream and elevated to the level of political and nationalist ideology, is Orthodox Christianity which, for historical and political reasons, bears a particular antagonism to Islam. Research findings from Cyprus show a sharp gap between teachers understandings of ethnicity/race and their involvement in processes of ethnicizationa and racialization which take place in their schools. eachers state that Greekcypriot children accept difference or have come to accept migrants/alloglosoi, treat them well, at least in the classroom. Teachers also comment positively on migrants participation in National school celebrations, e.g., singing the national anthem. Hanging out together and/or speaking amongst themselves in Polish, Arabic, Georgian and so on, are treated by teachers as negative phenomena and as indicators of ethnic separation and ghettocization. Racist speech acts by Cypriots, however, are belittled, seen as unfortunate comments and individual racist attitutes which are attributed to the indifidual kids family environment: I do not like, lets say in my school, to see the Polish playing in one corner. And, as it shows, this thing exists, you might also witnessed this in the yard. Or the Persians in another corner or the gypsies in another corner (Interview with Iasonas, Christakeio Elementary Limassol). Segregation is often attributed to the cultural or ethic character of migrants, sometimes, implicitly, even by the researchers. Commenting on a fight between boys, one of the researchers concludes: What particulalry impressed me, though, is how united the gypsies are when one of them faces a problem (CS, Christakeio Elementary Limassol). It is interesting that before coming to his concluding remark on gypsies, the researcher develops a quite thick description of a fight which illustrates some very interesting intersections between ethnic and peer group positioninings and repositionings:
Today I watched the first fight between kids who are selfdefined as Cypriots, on the one hand, and as Helladites (gypsies), on the other hand. From what they told me, the reason for the dispute was that Nikos (a gypsy) talked badly to the brother of Charidimos (Cypriot). What is strange is that within the Cypriots lines, there were kids (such as Benjamin) who are not from Cyprus but felt that thay had to back Charidimos. After some wrestling, I heard Charidimos telling: Here came the gypsies, to speak to us about our mothers.
(CS Fieldnotes, Christakeio Elementary School, 12.2.2010)
The gypsy kids use of Standard Modern Greek (kalamaristika) in the Greek Cypriot school yard context (where the Cypriot dialect constitutes the normative vernacular) provides a new intercultural context where ethnicities and ethnic boundaries are redefined and renegotiated. In this context (unimaginable in the Greek school context), gypsies become identified as ethnic Greeks (Elladites, i.e., Greek state nationals) whereas the GreekCypriots become both de-ethnicized and renationalized, from GreekCypriots to Cypriots. It is also interesting that this double zone, a war-zone and a contact-zone at the same time, the limits of Cyprioteness become expandable, letting in the other Other, i.e., Benjamin (Iraqi refigee). This letting in is not a capricious or opportunistic tactic. Its possibility is conditioned both by
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a structure of repeatability and by a learning context that allows flexibilities of identifications. For example, on the Polytechneio Day (Anniversary of Students Revolt againt the Greek Junta), four months before the fight, the class teacher talked to the class about the events and introduced concepts such as dictatorship and fascism (in a multicultural fifth grade Eloementary class with so many alloglossi as the particular class, teachers are very unlikely to touch on such concepts since they consider them incomprehensible for the class). On that occation, Benjamin talked about his countrys experience of dictarorship regimes, and the other kids had adviced him to stay in Cyprus which provides security to him (CS Fieldnotes, 17.11.2009). Fieldwork suggests that rigid ethnic boundaries can be renegotiable but can also be recuperable, particularly in situations of crisis. An interpersonal conflict can erupt to an ethnic between us and Pontians. The diagnosis of a Filipino student returning from a trip to Philippines can erupt into a situation of emergency, with the school put into garantine and the claims of mutual acceptance put on hold. The example below illustrates how precarious acceptance can be and how tolerance for other cultures can relapse, almost atavistically, to racial abjection. At the beginning of the school year 2009-2010 (its beginning was marked by precautions, hygiene fever, and action plans against H1N1), during the morning school assembly, the kids of Grade 6 are teasing Bogdan (a boy from Poland) that has the pig flu. They hold their noses and cover their faces when around them, telling that he is infected. In their act (and acting) the performative display of abjection towards a skinking pig is conflated with precautionary gestures when conducting ones contact with H1N1 carriers (CS Fieldnotes, Christakeio 23-11-09). Interestingly, this event takes place the same time that Bogdans teacher remarks that he has been doing significant progress in learning Greek, that he participates in class and that he is now becoming accepted by his peers. In this case Irinel did not seemed particularly bothered (seems to take it as somekind of joke); in other similar cases, elementary kids internalize violence, marginalization or derogatory comment as an individual problem, without attributing this to their being Roma, Pontian, Polish, etc. In fact, even when such identifications are meant to empower them, the kids reject them claiming Cypriotness. For example, in a TGSOL session, the students are reading a text about a group of students of various nationalities in Gernany. The kids in the text introduce themselves by telling their names and the names of their countries.34 The Greek language teacher asks Georgi to speak about himself, that the orginal (text) and modifying the text (My name is and I am from ) will function both as a sort of scaffolding and as as a model of a real speech situation language use. Georgi says: I am Georgi and I am from Cyprus. The teacher prompts him to rethink his sentence (and way of identifying himself): Are you sure that you are from Cyprus? (Georgis parents are from Scotland and Serbia). Georgi frowns at the teachers comment (CS Fieldnotes, 10.11.2009).
34
The textbooks used for TGFOL in the specific schools are ( ), ) and , / / ( ). All TGFOL textbooks are available online at: www.ediamme.edc.uoc.gr/diaspora2/index.php?yliko. Most of these teaxtbooks have been produced for Greek diaspora rather than Migrants learning Greek.
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At secondary education, processes of ethnicization, both hetero-ethnicization and autoethnicization become sharper, particulalry among boys (derogatory ethnic comments against male migrant students are often received also as questionary remarks on their masculinity). The examples below are from Phaneromeni Gymnasium in Nicosia, a school where acceptance of difference is considered to be, at large, a goal already achievied. Two researchers ask a group of boys whether they live close to the school:
Nicholai: Two minutes walk! Researcher: You are so lucky, staying in this neighborhood. Nicholai: No Mm, now many foreigners have come and things are a little bit bad. Besides the Old Mill (after-school Center), my dad does not allow met go anywhere, for if anything gets stolen they always blame me because I am a Pontian, and for this reason he forbids met to go out.
The same boy, in a different context, explains to the researcher in what way Cypriots (You) are different from us: You Mm, have no brain. Whatever happens, you call the police, mommy, mommyWhereas us, if we fight, if we bit each other,we never call the police. Next day we talk to each other normally (KC Fieldnotes, Phaneromeni Gymnasium Nicosia). Auto-ethnotization sometimes implicates the citation and replication of racial discourses:
(KC Fieldnotes, Phaneromeni Gymnasium Nicosia)
Two boys rush into the remedial/support class without brings with them any books or bags. You came like tourists today? the teacher asks, and they lough. The researcher asks them where the are from. Igor says, from Russia, and, pointing to Andrei, continues: but this one is from Pakistan. After this both of them burst into laughters. No, Mm, says Andrei, me, Pontian. You did not figure this out? No, says the researcher, How could I figure this out? Andrei explains using as a visual aid the locker on the classroom door. You see, our head is like this, and shows to the semicircle part of the locker, flat at the lower back part, while yours is not like this. Yours, looks like the lower part of the locker, its square-ish.
(KC Fieldnotes, Phaneromeni Gymnasium Nicosia) Andrei, speaks Russian, Georgian, Turkish and Greek. He is fifteen years old and he is still at Gymnasium grade one, stranded there as auditor for three years. A shocking, raw, bodily self-racialization is enacted amidst a series of other, more subtle and normalized forms of racialization that take place at school unnoticed, including the researchers hailing of studnets into ethnic self-identification. The two students parody recognition and mis-recognition and disupt the mutlicultural survey which intends to inscribe them tidily into a map of origins and ethnicities. What this event shows is that multicultural discourse is becoming instituionalized as a disciplinary form of power (survey and taxonomy) as well as a procuctive form of power (subjectivication). The two students are hailed into the disocurse of multiculturalism as objects of ethnic identitfication and subjects of cultural knowledge (they can speap of their experience as Pontians, pakistansis and so on. In other words, the only way for a migrant student to become a subject in its school multicultural disocurse is by becoming an ethnicized subject. Against this condition, the students are reverting to the rawness and tastelessness of an inappropriate racial discourse, one that has the power to belittle both their otherness
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and the power of those who normalize their institutional power under the disguise of cultural interest. Foreign kids resistance to hetero-ethnicization by Greekcypriots implicates a stereotypical ethnicization of other foreigners as dangerous and a heroizing reclaim of ethnic stereotypes. This reclaim however, is most often received by Greek Cypriot as another symptom of their identity than a performative negotiation of ethnic stereotypic. Under the entry cited abobe, the researcher notes: they take the Law in their hands. For highschool kids, claiming belongingingness or contesting exclusion, is a frustrating and painful endeavour which often is misconstrued by peers and completely overstepped by teachers. A common finding in Macedonian and Cypriot fieldwork on teenage kids is that, unlike auto-ethoticization, reckoning with intersecting ethnic, racial and religious border is anti-heroic. The Macedonian study cites the case of Darko, a Macedonian youth, who claims to be Albanian, performing his transformation as conversion to Islam, as body practice and body change (fasting during the Ramadan and having circumcision this year), even as absence. A professor is reading through the class roster to check for absences: Darko? Darko is not here, the boy says, he is Mohamed now. The professor asks him whether he would like to be Albanian or Muslim, and he answers that you cannot be Albanian if you are not Muslim (Field notes_ VB_11) . The proferror thinks that boy cannot make difference between Albanian and Muslim. In the eyes of the other students and teachers he is a bit crazy, demented or mental, they make fun of him and his behavior, mostly because of his claims over his identity. Blazheva notes that Darko is an extreme example of identity in process of becoming since his desire is to become the Other. Albanians or Muslims were never as other as they are to most of Macedonians but nevertheless for most of the people it is seen as impossible and crazy thing to want or to become Muslim or Albanian. But exactly this impossibility and the desire for this impossible position is what makes this case so extraordinary. This case shows how rigid and primordial concepts of identity clash over, but as well how strong they are within the context revealed by the stigmatizing, marginalizing and exclusion of differences and individualities that dont fit the clearly shaped categories taken as natural and normal. Darkos negotiation about his identity is based on the acceptance of being the crazy one, the one to be laughed at, by continuously playing the role and confirming it, as if for him it is more important to have the protection and stability by belonging to something he believes in. The Cypriot study cites several cases of student border crossings, some deliberate and some accidental, some of them misfiring, some claiming acceptance as symptoms of madness or expressions of sacrifice and love for Cyprus as a new homeland, some belittled as noise, some picked up by teachers as signs of the others cultural inauthenticity and some politicized as threats against the schools rituals of Greek national identidy. While sitting with a grounp of girlfriends uring the break, Maram (Moslem girl) starts to sing the Greek National Anthem ( ). She says Mrs. Lucia taught that to her, in the music class. She thinks its a popular Greek song and sings that when she feels bored. She has no idea that tomorrow is the last day of school. She adds on that since they came to Cyprus her father says that shes crazy because she wants to go out all the time (PM Fieldnotes, 1.6.2009, Dianelleio High, Larnaca). In another school with high school, Manar (very competent in Greek; does not wear the scarf) is the only Moslem girl to participate in the school event for the commemoration of
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Resistance Day (resistance to the military coup of 1974; this commemoration day was introduced recently by the left government). She recites a poem and also sings with the chorus the National anthem. Asked about the meaning of the event, a group of Cyprit girls reply dismissively: I did not listen. The little Arab girl also talked, so what, how could I understand? ( . , , ! (MC Fieldnotes, 7.12.2009, Phaneromeni High, Larnaca). Mohamed, a refugee youth from Irak in Vergina Leceum, states upfrontly that Cyprus if his country now and he would so much wants to give his own blood for this country, e.g., serve voluntarily in the army (a legal impossibility because hes not a national citizen). When he participates in a blood donation that takes place in his school, everybody asks him why he did that since hes not a Cypriot. Hatice, known to be a Turk, does not wear a scarf and this troubles her peers but even the researcher. She expalins that shes a Turkish Cypriot, not from Turkey. The researcher confronts her, insisting on the duality of identities: Arent you a Moslem? Are you Christian? No, Im a Moslem. The researcher insists as she does not get it: Then why you dont wear the scarf? Hatice erupts, frustrated with the others inability to make sense of her dis-jointed, complex, different within, political, act of ethnicization : I told you Mm, Im a Turkish Cypriot! (PM Fieldnotes, Dianelleio Gymnasium Larnaca, 14.5.2009). Emine, a girl from Turkey, self-identified as Lucy, dressed in gothic teenage style who plays soccer with boys during the break, speaks of her experience of growing up as Alevi in a cosmopolitan secular Alevi community in Istanbul, and how her family tried to force her into a marriage with a backword Moslem Turkish Cypriot when they came to Cyprus. Her Alevi identity is unspeakable and unsignifiable to her peers and teachers, who know only how to distinguish between Turks and Turkish Cypriots (some teachers problematize even this cultural discernment, perceiving it as a political tactics that misconstrues the nature of the national problem of Cyprus, putting emphasis on ethnic conflict between GreekCypriots and Turkish Cypriots and downplay Turks invasion). In interviews with teachers from her school, Lucy is cited as an example of an unfortunate and untasteful implementation of inclusion policies, since her participation in the March 25th Parade (Commemoration of Greeces National Revolt agaists the Turks) stirred a justifiable reaction by her peers.
8. Violence
The three case studies record various attributions of violence and perceived localities of violence. Whther violence is construed as ordinary or extraordinary, coming from outside, internal to school culture or extension of violent others, it is a common finding across the three studies that the talk on violence is relativizing violence and rendering invisible, insignificant of even unsignifiable forms of gender and racial violence. The Greek study reports on an exceptionalization and exteriorization of violence. As represented in the Keramikos teachers accounts,violence is seen as something out of the ordinary that is brought to the school from the outside, by disturbing others, to disturbe the multicultural ethos of the school. In Cvetan, violence is considered to be all too ordinary, part of the schools culture, with various acts of violence being overstepped as jokes. In Cypriot schools, violence is something stirred from out-of-school factors (e.g., angry Pontian or
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Moslem fathers) or attributed to stereotypes of ethnic temper. Containing violence (which often means overstepping racial acts as unfortunate of jokes) is often misconstrued as preserving schools balance and not marginalizing Greek Cypriot kids. In interviews with Keraminkos teachets, violence is seen to disrupt the status quo and the peaceful co-existence of the (regular) students, and does not belong in the school, or the educational system, or among the proper members of the school community, all of which are assumed to be not violent, or in any way producing or inciting violence themselves. Prior to the arrival of these children in the school, the school was a harmonious place, things ran smoothly, there were no conflicts between students, or teachers and students. After the arrival of Afgans, all this situation that has formed this year, demolished everything incuding kids themselves (Machdi). According to teachers accounts, in the beginning, the Afghan refugee students were very scared, and hemmed in, possibly intimidated by their noncomprehension of the language used in school. Slowly, however, as they gained more familiarity with their surroundings and started to learn the language they revealed their aggressive side, and became a disturbance for the rest of the school. The presence of the Afghan refugee children in school has also brought up tensions and conflicts between the teachers themselves, who disagree as to whether they should, or shouldnt accept these children in school, or refuse them shelter. In those cases, however, where teachers interventions against Afghan childrens participation in school have brought distress to the refugee families, teachers also feel guilt and remorse. They dont want to see the children punished by their parents. Nevertheless, even this statement of responsibility is partially disclaimed as it is qualified by references to child abuse, which the Afghan parents are supposed to inflict upon their children. In this sense, Afghan parents disciplinary attempts are once more framed by the teachers in terms of the Afghan violent and inhumane culture, which the teachers have to either prevent or redress. The idealized image of a conflict-free school, where everyone has mastered the requirements and challenges of multicultural tolerance and co-existence, which is invaded by a hoard of angry and violent others and robbed of its peace and unity, clearly does not describe a real situation given the pervasive racism all migrants have suffered in Greece. What it does accomplish, however, is a dissociation of violence from the Greek context and a clear moral distinction between assimilated/assimilable migrants and non-assimilable others. In this sense, even the racist violence that Albanian migrants suffer (as occasionally acknowledged by some teachers), is minimized and downplayed. It cannot be that bad, if they have managed to integrate and become accepted in Greek society. Those who cannot integrate, such as the Afghan refugees, must be creating the problem themselves. Violence is brought to the school by the Afghan refugee children, who are the bearers of violence on account of their violent history and culture. Having experienced war and hardship in their native country, from which they are now fleeing to the West, they are expected to reproduce the tensions and conflicts from which they have suffered. In addition, they are also assumed to be the bearers of a culture of violence and antagonism, evidenced by the fact that they often are not only violent and aggressive towards other students, but are violent amongst themselves, and do not support each other. For example, they are described as telling on each other, rather than exhibiting the usual student solidarity against teachers.
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Interestingly, however, the issue of violence in students narratives acquires more meanings and references. While they all, unanimously, refer to the Afghan refugee children as being aggressive and violent and annoying; i.e. they indicate that they feel victimized by them, some of them also, notably Albanian students, refer to Greeks, and Greek society as being violent, and disrespectful of life, dignity and human rights. This is not stated directly, but rather surreptitiously. It is message meant to be read between the lines. Unlike Keramikos, in Cvetan Dimov violence is integrated in and integrated by the school. The following exceprt from fieldnotes attests to the cultural relativization of violence and the institutional imperative for a newcomers acculturation to this:
I heard gunshots coming from outside, gun riffles, I cant tell for sure but they were fast like from machine gun, not pistol. I got scared. One of the boysstood up and went to the window. I shouted, dont stand by the window! The professor was calmingly saying that it is nothing, probably a fire cracker. Girls from the second table got excited and though nervous, laughingly commented wow we are going to die here, to what the professor said it is destiny. Sit down it is nothing. They throw fire crackers she said. Students ironically affirmed: yeah right fire crackers Then the professor added that it may be a wedding, you know there are a lot of weddings in this neighborhood. Girls commented that before the class there were also gunshots and got scared and went to the toilets, but then got back to the classroom. The boy set down and said to the teacher Do not panic teacher. The teacher tried to explain to him that she is trying to soften the situation and repeated that it were probably fire crackers. (Field notes _AB_16)
The public image of the school is defined through the stories of violence, as well as the stereotypes for Albanians. This is a quite usual image for public schools with bad reputation, moreover a picture that no one actually feels they need to know about because it is so well portrayed by the mainstream discourse of young people. Stories of youth and/or school violence are perfect media issues for raising moral panic among the concerned moralizing public, which then tries to find who is guilty while trying to wash their own hands about responsibility they alone have, blaming never-ending transition in society and the clash of values, while further stigmatizing young people for their restlessness, disobedience and disrespect towards authorities. Usually, the debate ends up with new security measures being introduced in schools, such as visual surveillance and physical security, or, if violence is localized in ethnically mixed school, the measures to be takes against violence are division in shifts or separation into different schools. Citing Foucault, Blazheva notes in their report that the deployment of violence entails both disciplinary and productive forms of power (Foucault, 1977; 1991). On the one hand, surveillance meachnisms used to control violence in schools are actually serving as control and regulation mechanisms of student behaviors, turning schools into disciplining institutions. On the other hand, young people use violence as a mechanism for gaining and (re)establishing power and discipline in their own hierarchies which constitute a reflection of the wider structural and institutional context. Citing Bourdieu, Blazheva also argue that this double enforcement and production of power is interrelated with the institutional replication of group or class injustice, institutions of legitimacy and normalcy and systems of symbolic violence. When it comes to violence in schools it is mainly these institutions that perpetuate hegemonic masculinity and therefore face the problem they produce. Bringing Arendt into
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the analysis of hegemonic masculinity, Blazeva introduces a counter-Foucault approach to power. Arendt (1969) argues that loss of power tempts men to substitute violence for power but also that violence itself results in impotence or at some point loosing power. In their discussions with youth at Cvetan, the reaserchers trace echoes of Arendts analysis. Even boys whose masculinity didnt need to be measured and negotiated through physical strength, whose position are guaranteed by looks and social skills, state that those who carry weapons in the school are actually boys who are scared to become victims of violence. In their view, those scared scary boys carry guns as a protection and a sign that they can strike back:
K: I want to say this. There was one guy who was slapped by an 8th grader. Although the guy had a gun he didnt pull it out, it was only for show off, just to say that he has a gun. Nothing! He got slapped and that was it. In front of the whole school. Everybody was teasing him later that if only he had had a gun he would have killed the 8th grader, this and that. Everybody knew that he had a gun but he could not pull it out. Just for show off, so he can say I have one. Only those that are scared, they carry weapons. (Focus group 1)
Such findings suggest the research on school violence needs to examine, besides structures of social inequality and institutional mechanisms of surveillance, the affective aspects of power and vulnerability. Emotions such as shame, humiliation, and desire for inclusion are fundamental sites for discipline and control of hegemonic masculinity, and exclusion and censorship are the most effective methods of symbolic violence (Stoudt, 2006). Research findings from the Cypriot schools cofirm findings from the other two national studies. Like in Keramikos, teachers overlook the institutional dimensions of school violence and locate its sources outside the schools multicultural balance. Images of deranged Moslem and Pontian fathers who invade schools to protect their troublesome sons are frequent in teacher accounts of violence. Fieldwork in several highschools also shows that many incidents of violence where migrants boys are involved are treated as fights amongst themselves which should stay amongst themselves because their way or resolving conflicts is different. When teachers are confronted with descriptions of events of racial violence against migrants (Codification A: Greek Cypriot boy calling Arab classmate kilintzir; act overstepped by teacher) either they empty these events of seriousness or they attribute Greek Cypriot students mentality to their family environment, a space that falls beyond the schools authority. This delineation of fields of authority is very much linked to the discourse of teacher professionalization: Teachers cannot also intervene in the family and the environment where a student grows up (Interview with Artemis, Christakeio Elementary School); the attitude of the child is clearly racist but not his own; he must have transferred it from his home, the neighbourhood, his surroundings (Interview with Andreas, Phaneromeni Elementatry School, Nicosia). A significant number of teachers argue that such events are very frequent even between Cypriot students and one should not take them too seriously since such name callings are part of the argot used by youth. Structural marginality and dissymmetry of power are not considered (not only Ahmet cannot talk but he is the abject other against which Cypriot youth groups establish their cohesiveness, including the acceptable exchange of insulting words). What is interesting is that even those teachers who speak in the interviews about institutionalized racism, when they are asked to analyze the specific school event they revert to a neo-liberal discourse on racist attitutes and victim
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damage: Maybe I would not discuss this any further because I would put Ahmet in an uncomfortable position (Interview with Anne, Phaneromeni Elementary Nicosia). Whether its object is the perpetrator or the victim, the individualization and psychologization of racism constitutes a sustainable response to racial violence. When asked to evaluate the teachers role, all teachers turn to a retrospective evaluation of the years intercultural program (the event takes place at the end of the school year) and they deem that the cultivation of a spirit of acceptance and respect for other cultures shound have been more systematic and more comprehensive. This retrospective evaluation and the fetishistic turn to the recourse of respect to other cultures help to normalize violence and to smooth out contradictions in intercultural education (e.g., how can we reconcile the occurance of racial violence with the selfrighteous culturalist narrative of promoting and mastering acceptance). The excerpt below shows how acceptance of others and knowledge and respect of other cultures the cardinal goals of intercultural education in Cyprushave come to established a zone of educational comfort that faciliatates the containment and tolerance of racial violence. What particularly uncanny is that the person who articulates most adeguately the normalization of this zone of containment and tolerance to racism is one of the leading actors in the organization of the Zones of Educational Priority (one of the Ministrys major mechanisms for promoting the implementation of intercultural education):
To be honest I would not like to be in that teachers position either, I wouldnt like to have to start to explain and to preach or turn this into an issue of conflict and punishment, e.g., why did you say bad words to him and what did you tell him, I dont know what followed agter this event. That the teacher took the cd (a cd of arab music) from him (Ahmet) and played that sets an example, i.e., I appreciate your culture, what you are etc, I accept it, thus she passes her message in a very nice way, and, beyond this, Im sure she would have many other opportunities to incorporate into her lesson other elements from his culture and other cultures and to pass step by step these messages. In other words, our aim as, I said before, to teach them [others like Ahmet] to endure, because all of us find ourself in that position at some point, and to get stronger, to try to teach them [Greek Cypriots] to accept the different, a lesson which cannot be achieved either through teaching or reading around lies or someone else talking to you about anti-racism or all these things I believe that only through lived experience and this is how many of our students get this.
(Interview with a ZEP Coordinator) What the policy maker (and teacher) above does not get though is that the idealization of interacultural education and the preaching of acceptance of difference have normalized a multicultural ethos of civility that is blind to processes of racialization, power dissymetries, injustice and violence. Interviews with migrant students of older ages actually record students quest for a politics of justice and their frustration with teachers implication in the normalization of violence.
9. Language
Research findings from the three different national studies show that the way language difference in the classroom or school is dealt with in the three national contexts is interrelated primarily with the constitutional framing of the republic and secondarily with the officially
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declared principles and goals of intercultural education. In the case of Macedonia, where the multiethnic character of the society, the equality of Macedonian and Albanian as official languages and different nationalities right to education in their native language are constitutionally established, multicultural education means, primarily, provision of education in multiple ethnic and language forms, either in separate schools or in different tracks or shifts within the same school (as in the case of Cvetan Dimov). In the case of Greece, where the monolingual character of the Nation state establishes Greek as the only official language and as the only language of instruction in all public schools, linguistic variety of the multicultural classroom is dealt with the teaching of Greek to non-Greek speaking migrants and refugees and the provisional linking of integration with the learning of Greek. Furthmore, as Zavos notes in the Greek National WP5 Report, with recent changes in migration and citizenship law stipulating proof of language competence as a fundamental requirement for granting citizenship rights to adult migrants long-term residents in Greece, language emerges as a terrain where cultural, political and legal priorities or dispositifs converge and intersect with subjective performances. In the case of the Republic of Cyprus, which is not a nation-state, the constitutional equality of Greek and Turkish and the allocation of cultural and educational control to the two nationalities, creates similar conditions with Macedonia. However, with this constitutional provision suspended since 1963, with ethnic conflict in the 60s and the Turkish invasion in 1974 leading to the de facto ethnic division of Cyprus and with the Republic of Cyprus becoming a de jure Greek Cypriot Republic, Greek becomes also the only language of language of instruction in public schools in the south side of the divide. In other words, whereas Cyprus could have had a multiethnic language school system like that of Macedonia, it has a system almost identical to that of Greece. A similat caveat, however, seems to apply to the multi-ethnic multilingual policy of Macedonia. The nationalities right to education in their native language is not translated to individuals right to education in their native language because ethnic schools or ethnic shifts are diverse within (in Cvetan Dimov, for example, Albanian students attend the Macedonian shift or Bosnian students attend the Albanian shift). In this case, the monolingual character of instruction is even more normative and exclusionary for ethnic minorities than for refugees and migrants in Greek of Greek Cypriot schools. The minority students option to enroll in ethnic schools (individual choice) and the nationalities right for ethnic continuity through schools (collective right) provide a national, a legal and an educational alibi for monolingual schools (and tracts and shifts within the same school) to discourage or even prohibit the use of any other language in the classroom. Eventually, minority students like refugee and migrant students are burdened with the responsibility, the difficulty and the disatvantage of mastering the language of instruction in an educational environment which was not originally designed to facilitate, in parallel with the learning of content specific matter, the learning of the language of instruction as a second or other language. The comparative analysis of field data on language use in the classroom in the three national contexts shows that the normative monolingualism of instruction constitutes an ideological terrain. Zavos reports that the teachers approaches to the acquisition of Greek language skills by migrant students and refugees ranges between culturalist notions of language as a sign of cultural identity and functionalist notions of language as a communication tool. In addition, adopting the national language is interpreted by the teachers as willingness towards, or capacity for, integration, both by the students, but, most importantly, by their families. Even
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functionalist approaches, however, are invested with ideological views on communication as a one-way process: the one who has to do the communicating, who has to exhibit and practice willingness to engage in dialogue, is the foreigner, who has to communicate on the terms of the dominant cultural-linguistic communication formats. Children who do not progress in Greek language skills are assumed to not want to communicate, to resist establishing mutual interaction between teachers and host society and themselves. The attributed lack of interest in communication with the host society carries negative connotations; it is considered to indicate either general lack of motivation and aspirations for the future, or unwillingness to become part of the host culture. Gregoriou reports that in Cypriot schools, the category allglossos has evolved from a supposedly neutral student descriptor (the term was introduced to replace the term alien [allodaps] which was deemed racial) to a racial rationality of student regulation and multicultural school organization.35 Alloglossia identifies the otherness of migrants and refugees on the basis of lack of competence in Greek (construed, though policies and practices of placement, inclusion in mixed class as present absence and exeptions from classes as linguistic incompetence) and the number of allglossi in a school identifies the schools multicultural intensity and justifies its need for extra resources. As in the case of Greece, seemingly functionalist views on Greek language acquisition carry notions about the conditionality of migrants and refugees fitness for the Greek classroom. Though teaching TGSOL in reception classes for a year (before integration in the regular classroom) is proposed as a solution specifically for the language problem, this prognosis is invested with the expectation to solve problems of racism, segregation and violence. The underlying assumption is that the implied actor (the one who causes problems) is the migrant/refugee and that troubling interactions can still be located within the others zone of culture and reaction. Blazeva reports that the power dynamics, identity politics but also but possibilities for transgression, empowerment, solidarity and discrimination.in a normatively monolingual classroom reflect the ideological contradictions of a multi-ethnic society where the right to instruction in native language is constitutionally established and yet some languages are more equal than others. Cvetan Dimov is a rather typical example of the wider tension between languages spoken in the country also struggling for its recognition and identification. On the one hand, the official state language (Macedonian) is still in a process of negotiating its recognition, distinction and legitimacy in the political and historical context and perspective. On the other hand, even though with the 2001 reform Albanian was recognized as an official language, the struggle over its recognition and affirmation is an ongoing one. The Macedonian language is considered to be more privileged, but contexts like Cvetan Dimov school challenge this notion and show the complexity of the negotiation processes of language ideologies, identities and power. In school settings, both languages are being disputed and both negotiated to be recognized as an indissoluble part from their ethnic identity. Power dynamics are reflected in school administration. The major figure in the school, the director of the school is Macedonian, along with it, Macedonian is still the official language in meetings and official communication while assistant directors are Albanian and their position is to make balance to assure the power structure but also balance of language ideologies.
35
In high schools schools with significant numbers of Moslem students (around 35 acroates in each school), the term Alloglossoi is used interchangeably with the term Aravphoni (Arabic speaking).
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Interviews with teachers in all three national contexts show that teachers find themselves stumbling onto the aporia of teaching majorities and minorities, natives and migrants in an educational environment which was not originally designed to facilitate, in parallel with the learning of content specific matter, the learning of the language of instruction as a second language. In the case of Greece and Cyprus, this aporia is often registered as discomfort with their professional adequacy to teach Greek as a second/other language. Zavos also notes that the new language books for Elementary Schools (same ones used in Greek Cypriot schools as well) which were introduced a couple of years ago are considered inadequate or badly designed to meet the needs of migrant children, who require a different approach to language training based on the use of lay or common language, rather than formalized instruction in grammatical forms. Even though the new books are designed to facilitate an integrated approach to the learning of language, to promote multiple literacies and familiarity with multiple genres, teachers find that the books focus too much on the formal characteristics of language and not its use in communicative contexts. Even literary texts, however, lose their emotive quality when they are used as the medium for teaching Greek to migrants and refuges:
They have a very difficult vocabulary, kids do not understand them, so you end up breaking down the text to little parts and focusing on translation/interpretation. So the literary essence is gone. There is nothing left to feel, noting to experience, nothing (Interview with Vassiliki, Greek Report).
Teachers also find that the comprehensive approach the learning of language (built into the selection of texts, the exercises, teachers manuals and assessment tests) is useful with regards to the Books ideal audience, i.e., native speakers of Greek. This comprehensive approach, however, turns out to be disempowering for teachers when the same books are also used for the teaching of Greek as a foreign language. It does not allow a flexible differentiation of instructional aims and material, and teachers end up caught in a continuous hunting, which material to use, what skill to teach next. Althought the same textbooks are used in Greek Cypriot Elementary schools, Greek Cypriot teachers do not make any critical comments on these. Gregoriou suggests that this difference can be attributed, partly, to the fact that classroom teachers feel that the responsibility for teaching Greek as a Second/Other language is passed on to remedial courses and Greek Language sessions. Interviews with Cypriot Elementary schools teachers, however, also show that teachers relative contentment with the work done in the classroom is related to their sense that sustainable teaching in a multicultural school requires a change of attitude. Compromizing academic goals and expectations is constued sometimes by teachers as a cultural adjustment to the difference of a multicultural school. Unlike Elementary school teacher, teachers in higher and technical education are very critical of the policy of admitting alloglossoi in the class as akroates (auditors) because these kids are condemned to boredom. Their firm belief however that only separate reception classes would solve the language problem (plus all other problems attributed to the presence of alloglossi in their classroom), suggests that teachers are negative to the idea of a multicultural mixed language ability class. Another contradiction in Cypriot teachers diagnosis and prognosis framings of the language problem is that the idea of reception classes is invoked as an insightful educational borrowing from the Greek experience, when in fact this scheme, used for Roma children, has been heavily criticized for instituting neoracism under the ideological cover of respect for reference (Vergidis, 2010 ). The narrow framing of
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problems in a multicultural school as a language problem is also reflected in institutional blindness to the racialization of alloglossi and teachers negative reaction to migrants and refugees use of their language. Interviews with teachers in Cvetan Dimov do not register any distress with the inadequacy of teaching material or the added difficulty of having to teach minority students who do not know the language of instruction. In fact, the language problem is framed only as a learning difficulty and not a teaching difficulty. The only kind of aporia registered in interviews with teachers is whether they are correct in discouraging students from using their native language. Despite variations in teachers framings of the language problem, a comparative analysis of findings suggests that teachers (a) do not hesitate to hold migrant, refugee or ethnic pupils (and their parents, as in the case of Greece) accountable for not learning or not making enough efforts to learn the language of instruction and (b) treat the effort put into the learning of the language of instruction by the pupils as indicator of the their will to learn (and, in the case of Greece and Cyprus, their will to become integrated in a Greek setting as well). It is assumed that those who have the will to learn, they will learn anyway, despite structural inequalities, language barriers and other obstacles. Although it is applied specifically to the mixed language class, this line of thinking is not different from the reasoning used in neoliberal accounts of schooling which, in substantiating excellence, treat that, invariously, as the mobiling force, the product, and the hero (always individual) of an interpreuneurial school success story. Findings across the three national context diverge with regards to the use of native language in the classroom. In fact, our research shows that there are more commonalities between Macedonia and Cyprus rather than Cyprus and Greece. Zavos reports that in general, Kerameikos teachers adopt a more liberal attitude to students capacity to use their mother tongue, considering knowledge of the mother tongue an important aspect of childrens identity, which they should retain and develop. This liberal approach is expressed especially with regards to Albanian students. Lack of formal language training in Albanian students mother tongue is considered a problem, and an impoverishment of their cultural capital. Teachers do not go as far as advocating the teaching of students languages at school even though they consider that Albanian pupils will eventually lose their language:
Of course, unforltunately, they will lose it. Where are they going to use it? They do not learn it in school, ok, orally yes[they might preserve it], because of the home, the family. Growing up, getting a job [..] How is their family going to be? They might end up together with a Greek, a Pakistani, an Afghani. You never know. Their mother tongue will be lost. They will lose it, thats for sure. Unfortunately, for it should be this way (Interview with Nano, Greek Report).
Learning and speaking Albanian is for children of Albanian background a complex issue, according to teachers views. The school contributes towards legitimizing or discrediting the students mother tongue, but other factors outside the school also play a role. Most importantly, Albanian children refrain from speaking Albanian in public because they do not want to be identified as Albanian and would rather pass as Greek. But poor knowledge and command of Albanian can also present problems for these children when visiting family back
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in Albania, where they are treated with some disdain, by their peers, for not knowing proper Albanian. In fact, teachers contend that even though they do not want to be seen as Albanian in Greece, they would still like to have more formal instruction in Albanian, a provision that, in some teachers views, should be offered by the school itself, thus setting an example of tolerance of ethno-cultural difference. In contrast to Albanians who want to integrate by passing as Greek, and relinquishing the signs of difference, linguistic, cultural or historical, Afghan refugee children enjoy speaking their language and introducing their own words in class. While this is not explained, it is considered funny by some of the teachers, as well as too demanding for them to follow:
At the beginning, in order to learn, anything that I was trying to teach them they would say that in Afghan, for me, but unfotubaly I did not take the time to write these down, it would have been very nice for me to learn those [words, phrases]. So, I taught them something, they taught me too. I was never good at learning languages, otherwise they would have taught me a lot. Even now, yesterday in the zoo I was telling them This animal is like this and they would tell me, A, Mm, in Farsi this way (Interview with Machdi, Greek Report).
In some teachers accounts, speaking Albanian in school also becomes a resource or means for students to enact their autonomy from teachers, or other studnets, by using an inaccessible language - code, such as Albanian, to create and control their own separate culture. Zavos argues that teachers attidutes to the students use of Albanian reflect views that language functions as a mediator of national difference and a catalyst of cultural intimacy, For example, Greek teachers, who listened to their grandmothers speaking Albanian dialects at home, can now recognize similar words spoken by present day Albanian migrant children, and feel moved to identify with them. In a sense, these students and their families represent long lost relatives:
You know, I am Arvanitissa as well, and I know it [] when I was a little girl I knew it better that what I know it now [] I heard my mother, my grandmother, and you know, when they wanted to say something that children were not supposed to hear, they said it in Arvaitika. That was a motive for you to want to understand, to know what is going on in the family [] Now, I like it [Albanian langauge], for as I listen to this, it [Arvanitica] comes bacj to me and I feel a kind of pleasure. (Interview with XXXXXXXXX Greek Report).
Migrants/refugees (Cyprus) and minority students (Macedonia) use of native language is not mediated nither as a process of cultural interaction nor as an interesting class interaction. It is rather perceived as something that must be contained. While making this comparison, however, we must keep in mind that all data from Macedonia and most data from Cyprus on the use of native languages in the classroom are collected from high schools, whereas in the case of Greece data were collected from an Elementary school (specifically, a school where the majority of students speak a native language other than the official language of instruction). The following example from the Cypriot Report, shows how the use of native languages in the classroom is contructed as an expression of rudeness and a sign of conspiratorial action:
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Nina (the reactionary Pontian girl of the class), is called out by the teacher to solve a math problem on the blackboard. A male classmate tells something to her in Russian and she replies to him, also in Russian, in an angry tone. Come on, please Nina, dont talk about these things in your language. (Note: Ninas native language is Georgian and not Russian) Later, another student, Maria (also Pontian) is asked to come out solve an equation but she does not know the answer. Eighteen [dekaocht], the other students shout from below in Greek. Eighteen, Nina also shouts to Maria in Georgian. The teacher (female) turns to Nina and reprimonds her again in a really strict tone: Please, stop telling her the answer and, even more, telling her the answer in your language so as to laugh at/cheat me [ ] (KC Fieldnotes, Phaneromeni High Nicosia, DATE ).
The following example, from the Macedonian report, shows a situation where using Albanian (the students native language) in the Macedonian classroom is considered unacceptable:
Researcher: How do they speak among themselves, in their mother tongue, right? Teacher: Oh yes, and I scold them because I dont understand. And they say but I speak to him. Ahaa, but I dont care, maybe you say to him: look at her how she is.. But I dont speak about you. I dont know that, you will speak Macedonian. And it is so hard for them. I give them hard time.
Interviews with students from Macedonia and Cyprus also register how minority and migrant/refugee students negotiate the experience of this difficulty, variously, with silence, anger, humour and defiance. The first example, is that of Sabina, an Albanian girl who never participates in the class:
R.: You understand Albanian and Turkish, and how did you feel when you didnt understand? S.: If they started to laugh and look at me I thought that they talk about me andI felt uncomfortable. R.: What did you find out after you learned the languages, was this true? S.: I realized that they didnt talk about me, but something else. R.: You can experience it as personal when you dont speak the language? S.: When you dont know the language it is much harder. R.: Was it the main reason for you to learn it? S.: Well, from the entrance in the school, when guys from the security speak to me in Albanian and most of others too and I say I dont understand you, they said it is your problem and you should learn it.
The second example, an Albanian boy studying in the Macedonian class, shows how constructions of gender identities are intersecting with performances of linguistic competence and stamina. In the interview cited below, the boy foregrounds his learning of Macedonian and undermines any difficulties, even though participatory observation findings show that Albanian boys keep being together in their small groups, ignoring the educational process that goes on parallel with their games, conversations, jokes, or just not being there, missing the classes.
R.: How did you accept to study in Macedonian language? You studied in Albanian until 8th grade I suppose? G.: Yes, yes.
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R.: And you still dont know Macedonian like you know Albanian, how did you accept to study in Macedonian? G.: Well, I had low grades, I wanted to study in Albanian but they didnt accept my documents, so I transfered to the Macedonian..: R.: Wasnt a problem for you, didnt you want to go to another school to study in Albanian? G.: No, it is not a problem, we learned Macedonian in primary school as a subject and I knew something and here we can learn it better. (Mini focus group, May 29 2009)
The third example, from the Cypriot Report, shows that classroom experiences of communication gaps and the normalization of language borders are sometimes negotiated by students as a performative terrain where they can reclaim positionalities of power. During a TGSOL lesson, the class (all Arabs except one Moldavian) make a lot of noise. The most troublesome of all is Sahim who makes all the time side comments in Arabic. The teacher keeps reprimanding him: Didnt I tell you a thousand times that it is rude to speak Arabic in front of people who do not know Arabic? Sahim keeps ignoring her remarks. Finally the teacher shifts to tougher measures of control: Teacher: (GR) I will send you to Mr Neophytos if you do not stop [Tha se stelo ston Krio Neophyto an den stamatseis]. Sahim: (GR) No Mm [xi, Kyra] (GR) To the (EN) Immigration Police [Sto Migration] Teacher: (GR) What did you say? [Ti epes?] Sahim: (GR) Nothing Mm!!! About the Arbians Ha ha ha [Tpote kyra!!! gia toys Arpies. (The class bursts into laughters.) Sahim not only is disrupting the language lesson but he is also enacting a border which will later be turned by both him and the teacher into a warlike front. Her teachers threat to send Sahim to Mr Neophytos (the Physical Education teacher in charge of the Arab boys) introduces officially the order of power. Sahim both reiterates and expands her gesture, invoking an ever tougher disciplinary measure, thet is, the reporting of an Arab refugee by a Greek Cypriot to the Immigration Police (implying the threat of arrest and/or deportation). Whereas the teacher is trying to contain Sahims disruptive behaviour within the borders of the classroom and the schools authorized disciplinary mechanisms (both are topoi of exeption, in that both of them operate under exceptional rules which have been specifically developed for the management of the alloglossi Arabs of the school), Sahim is trying to politicize their confrontation and question the significance of the boundaries between school order and state control, the schools mechanisms for containing disruption (for learnings sake, for students sake) and the Immigration Polices mechanisms of surveillance, threat and deportation (for societys sake). What Sahim eventually seems to be doing is to say aloud, in front of the class and the teacher, the same thing that all Arab boys in the specific school have been saying individually and discreetly in their interviews with the researcher, that is, They hate the Arabs, they hate us, All Arabs out of Cyprus. This scene seems to confirm the hypothesis that in the discursive context of an intercultural interaction, a context characterized by asymmetry of power and dominated by normative monolingialism, there is still a possibility for subjects to reposition themselves as agents of defiance despite the fact that their subjectivity is originally enacted though their institutional interpreallation as both
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educationally deficient and ethnically dangerous outsiders. The same scene that, from the teachers perspective, constitutes an exemplary example of an alloglossos, a migrants, a minoritys, or even a deranged others disruptive behiaviour, from someother perspective it could be viewed as the transformation of the apolitical classroom into a politicized field where new solidarities can be enounced, denounced, empowered or punished, but, nevertheless, tried out as legitimate acts of intercultural politics.
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10. Mapping Classroom Social Dynamics: Analyzing Sociograms of Multicultural Classrooms

In this section we analyze some of the sociograms produced during Phase III. As explained in the methodology section, data on social relations were elicited by asking all students of a classroom to state their preferred (or non-preferred classmates) in regards to scenarios of social groupings in academic or leisure contexts. Social dynamics as mapped in the sociograms below are compared and contrasted to teachers views about students crosscultural and ethnic group dynamics. 46th Elementary School, Kerameikos
Diagram 1: Sociogram for School Work
As the above sociograms show, the most Pyrros, Alvina, Katerna, all these kids are popular students in class, around which a doing very well, this is because behind them, cluster of other students gather, are two its that big burden they have, they carry Albanians, Alvina and Esli. These two along. That same burden my parents passed students are systematically chosen by their onto me as a child, That is, to go to Albanian and Greek classmates as preferred university (Teacher Interview with Vasiliki, choice for both schoolwork and leisure Kerameikos) activities. Interestingly, while choices guiding leisure activities seem to be separated according to gender identities, boys choosing other boys, and girls choosing other girls, choices regarding schoolwork cross the gender divide. Significantly, the two Afghan students are also systematically avoided by other students, and form an island in the midst of the class.
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Diagram 2: Sociogram for Holidays Given the composition of the class, we observe that the majority of Albanian students impacts social relations in the classroom. It is Albanian, rather than Greek, students, who become the nexus points of social activity. Greek students either form alliances with Albanian students, or are marginalized. Albanian and Greek students together form a group that excludes other nationalities, such as the Afghan students. Socially, Albanians appear to be the dominant group. This, however, needs to be juxtaposed to the dominance of Greek cultural and educational discourses, which are reproduced by Greek and Albanian students in their interviews, and, particularly, in the common front that develops against other foreigners, who are considered culturally less adapted and more violent.
They (Albanians) are fully incorporated, they are integrated, they know Greek. Just imagine that, they say I will go to my village... Here, I was born; there, my village. They do see this as a difference between two countries (from Teacher Interview with Machdi)
At the beginning they all played together. But it was these two kids (Afghani) I have in my class, but even from other classes. Those were more reserved, they did not express. But slowly slowly, they started getting gout hostility, they got reactionary with each other and with the rest of the Afghanis. In the classroom I used to have them together, but then they did not want that. I do not want Rahman, I do not want Said. So I split them up and put them amongst the others, that way they would get help too (fTeacher Interview with Erato,
Kerameikos)
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Christakeio Elementary School Sociograms in Christakeio were produced for 5 classrooms. As explained in the chapter on methodology, social dynamics were mapped with reference to both negative and positive preferences (Synthesis Report, p. 55). This section provides some meta-analysis about the sociograms analyzed in the Cypriot National Report. In the sociograms we can observe three patterns of separation between Greek Cypriot and migrant students: (a) ethic clustering, where migrants and Greekcypriots indicate intraethnic preference (Diagmam 3), (b) centerperiphery deployments, where all kids indicate preference mostly for Greek Cypriots, with Greek Cypriots in the center of the popularity webs and mostly migrant kids marginalized and also isolated at the peripheries (Diagmam 4), and (c) combinations of these two (most frequent pattern). Ethnic clustering tends to be more instense in yard play than in classroom projects and the crossing of ethnic lines (mostly by migrant kids who combine hign academic performance with markers of socioeconomic status) tends to be one way (the crossers choose and are chosen by Greek Cypriot but do not choose to associate with other migrant kids).
Diagram 3 Sociogram mapping preferences for break time, Grade 5 (green indicates both parents migrants, yellow mixed family and blue Greek Cypriot).
Diagram 4 Sociogram mapping preferences for Math group assignment (Grade 6, A)
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When we compare these social mappings with teachers perceptions of ethnic relations as registered in the interviews, we observe that teachers are more sensitive to patterns of ethnic clustering but not to patterns of center/periphery. In other words, teachers consider negative the fact the migrants isolate themselves and speak amongst themselves in their language, but do not make a note of the most prevalent pattern of ethnic separation, that is, the dispersal and isolation of the majority of migrant kids at the peripheries of social networks. Diagrams on classroom marginally and silence were also mapped by asking students to designate classmates whose absence does not matter (Diagram 5). When comparing mappings of marginality in these diagrams (mappings of othering, i.e., classmates perceived as inconsequesntial) to mappings of social preference, we observe that othering is more consistent in classrooms with center/periphery than cluster patterns of ethic separation. In G6-a for example, the three of the four kids whose absence is perceived as insignificant are the same three migrants kids we were not picked as friends by any classmate (Diagram 4). In contrast, in the other Grade 6 classroom, where the four most marginal migrant girls form an ethnic clusters, the girls escape othering as inconsequestional by their peers.
Diagram 5 Sociogram mapping negative preferences: whose absence doesnt matter (Grade 6, A)
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Comparing Diagrams 3 and 4 we can also notice that the gender clustering in G6-A is slightly destabilized with regards to the math group project scenario (as opposed to yard/play scenario). Girls express preference for boys and boys express preferences for girls as possible group partners in math projects. These preferences, however, do not cross ethnic lines (Greek Cypriots would not prefer to work with a migrant of the opposite sex, even if that peer was among the most popular students, as Aysan).
It is interestic to take a look at cross-cultural and ethnic social preferences with regards to extra-school scenarios, such as going to the movies (Diagram 5) and home birthday parties (Diagram 6). What we notice in these diagrams in that migrant students are still located at the margins of social preference, with some some patterns of ethnic clustering beginning to emerge, particulry in the case of home birthday parties (where gender clustering is alo stronger). We also notice that in these social scenarios, migrants with both parents migrants (green) are more dispersed and more marginalized (Alexandra K., Maria and Philippos). What we also notice is that the three gypsy children (Alexandra R., Maria and Philippos) are those who break the gender division and express preferences for children of the opposite gender (more in the case of movies than birthday parties, probably because these kids would not be able or feel confident to invite other kids to their homes). Negative preference scenarios confirm the social dynamics mapped in positive preference scenarions. However, social dynamics seem to be more stable for boys than girls. The three boys negatively marked are the same both for the indifference scenario (whose absence does not matter) as well as for the expulsion scenarion (who is likely to be expelled). What is also interesting is that some kids look popular but actually are not. They are attracting the adults attention (both the teachers and the researchers) because they they acting out (most likely to be expelled, as in the case of Vanessa) but not the social networking preferences of their peers. One of the advantages of using a variety of research tools in qualitative research is that when coming up with discrepancies in findings researchers can reflect more critically on their tools and be more critical of cultural bias. For example, in designing questions for eliciting social preferences, we thought movies and birthday parties would be important social events. As it came up in student interviews, however, places like McDonalds, lounges with electronic games are among the most popular places for migrant students whereas there are also activities which though nonterritorialized in places they territorialize bounds of friendship (particulalry for Elementary school boys), such as roaming in the hood and taking long bicycle rides together. Also most migrant students mentioned friends who have the same ethnic origin but are not classmates (in some cases, not even schoolmates). For example, Fhilippos, a Roma boy who appears to be be left out in almost all mappings of social networkings, names in his interview as his close friends Raphaelos and Christos (older than him, also Roma, who do not go to school) and, other gypsies from different classes. The same with Gorky, who names as his best friends his thre neighbours, Benjamin, Michalis and Boyunlup, none of whom can be accommodated in the sociogram since none of them are classmates.
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l So, most probably, sociograms would map different distribution of ethnic clusters if the social dynamics were explored at school rather than class lever, as well as if social dynamics were explored with regards to McDonalds and other similar sites.
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Alexandra K.
Maria Marianna Philippos Angela Gorki
Nikoletta Katerina
Lydia Vaggelis Alexandra R. Aysan Demetris Ali
Kalypso Stefanos Vanessa Tomis Tasos
Diagram 5: Sociogram mapping Preferences for going together to the movies
Angela
Marianna
Vanessa Nikoletta Tasos Katerina Gorki Aysan Kalypso Alexandra R. Lydia Ali Demetris Vaggelis Tomis Stefanos
Diagram 6: Sociogram mapping Preferences for birthday party (at home)
Maria
Philippos
Alexandra K.
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Alexandra R.
Marianna Katerina
Aysan
Angela Kalypso Gorki
Maria
Nikoletta
Philippos
Ali
Lydia Tomis Alexandra K.
Stefanos Vanessa
Vaggelis
Diagram 7: Sociogram mapping Negative Preferences: whose absence doesnt matter.
Demetris Tasos
Lydia Aysan Stefanos
Maria
Angela Philippos Alexandra R.
Kalypso
Katerina Gorki
Vanessa
Tomis Tasos Ali Alexandra K.
Diagram 8: Sociogram mapping Negative Preferences: who is likely to be expelled.
Nikoletta Demetris Marianna Vaggelis
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Lets us take a closer look at some of the most marginalized 6th graders. Girls outsiders Vanessa H. is considered is seen as a Russian girl though she is from a mixed migrant family (mother from Russia and father from UK). Even though during our fieldwork she seemed to be among the most popular girls of the whole school, sociograms for questions 14 show that she is not that popular (actually, she was not picked by any peer for the Break scenario, whereas in Digram 8 she is picked by the class among these likely to be expelled. Vanessa speaks Russian and English and is also fluent in Greek (oral) Alexandra K came to Christakeio in the middle of the school year. She has been in Cyprus for several years and has changed many schools. Costas Stylianou, the researcher in Christakeio notes in his fieldnotes that her mammers and her appearance do not remind of a twelve year old girl; not at all. She does not participate in any events. She tried to dance with the other girls one or two times on the occasion of school celebrations but she did not make it and gave up (or was given up?). Her teachers do not like her and besides considering her a very low performer ( ) they also refer to her as a spastic. She has not been chosen by any peer for the four positive preference social scenarions while, as seen in Diagram 9, she is picked by her peers as the top kid whose absence does not matter to them. Alexandra R. is an interesting case. She is a good student and also popular (this is what was observed during the fieldwork, though it is not so shown in sociogram). She is a brunette, but as marked by Costas Stylianou in his fieldnotes, I would not guess she is a gypsy. She is very pretty and boys show to be fond of her. She speaks the Cypriot dialect, something that testifies to her long stay in Cyprus. She has Cypriot friends but is also highly liked among the other gypsies (Maria and Filippos) Angela M is a very quiet girl who socialized only with Marianna. Her parents are from Servia, speaks good Greek and does not belong to the clik of the popular sixth grade girls. During the field work, she was seen two-three times cruing because other girls do not want her to be their friend. As seen in sociograms for scenarios 1-4, what saves her from been pushed to the margins of class networks is her relationship with Marianna (mixed family). In all four scenarios, the two girls pick each other. Tis friendship seems to work as a social safe belt for Angela, for though unpopular in all positive preference scenarios she is not picked by the class as among those whose absence does not matter (they might not preferer her, but at the same time they are not indifferent to her). Boys outsiders Ali S. is perceived a a typical student from Iran. Both of his parents are from Iran but so are the parents of Aysan (female classmate). Although Aysans parents are from Iran, it is only Ali who carries the burden of identity. He is dark colored which is read by others as marker of identity. In the absence of exceptional cultural capital (i.e., high academic performance, popularity among peers, fluency in Greek, etc, as in the case of Aysan), his ethnic identity combined with class status comes to promote a cultural reading of Ali as Moslem. It is reported in several occations in the ethnographic fieldnotes, that Ali is the only Moslem student in the class (Aysan is exempted from this category). It seems that it is difficult for
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an ethnographer to estrange oneself from these cultural readings, particulalry when researchers in intercultural education are already predisposed to look for cultural differences and the difference these make in a multicultural school. The ethnographer is already predisposed to find out how Ali negotiates his Moslem identity rather than to ask,for example, Why is it that Ali is perceived as Moslem and not Aysan? or Why being moslem [Ali] and being modern [Aysan] are treated as mutually exclusionary identities. The following excerpt from fieldnotes illustrates exactly the difficualty to avert the gaze of intercultural investigration in school settings from the other student and how to start thinking critically on contexts, arenas, intersectionalities.
Wednesday, February 10. Theater Day. Christakeio El.Sch visits the Municipal Theatre of Ayios Athanasion to watch the play The quilt maker [ ]. The kids are excited. The principal calls a general assembly and they start with prayer. My gaze drops immediately on the face of Ali (from Persia), a Moslem I assume, who finally makes the sign of cross and says prayer like the rest of the students. Christakeio 10.2.2010 Filednotes
His moslem while Ali becomes also the object of multiculatural He does not cause any problems. He is a low performer and sometimes takes remedial lessons. He is fluent in Greek (Cypriot dialect) and an excellent football player (in our fieldwork we thought this has been a key factor for helping him having friends). As shown in sociograms though, he is friends only with other migrant boys and the only Greek Cypriot boy who picks him is Tomis, who is also among the most marginalized kids of the class. Gorki H. is Pontian (borh parents from Georgia). He is among those stidents who are acting out during class and give a hard time to the teacher. In all positive preference scenarions he is pickedone way-- only by Philippos (who is a gypsy and also amongst the most marginal kids in the whole school) and in the two negative scenarios he is among those most negatively marked. Philippos: Philippos is a gypsy and this also shows (as marked in fieldnotes). He is outspoken about his gypsy identidy. He comes to school only when he wants to or only when he wakes up early enough. He never participates in the lesson but does not cause ay problems in the school. His parents are divorced and he lives with his mother. His best buddies are two gypsies who do not attend school but he also has good relationships wi the other gypsy students in his school. In the positive preference scenarios (1-4) nobody picks him except Maria (also gypsy) who picks him only for the going together to the movies scenario. He is picked by peers for both segative preference scenarions. The exception of Aysan: High-achiever, modern, girly, good-looking Aysans parents are from Persia (Iran) but she is not seen as Iranian. This de-ethnicization of Aysan is both mentioned and re-instated in the fieldnotes:
Today the girls of 6th Grade-A did not attend the gym class. When I asked them why, they said that they do not want to ruin their hair since later they would have school photos taken. Aysan, Kalipso, Katerina and Vanessa are a very tied to each other. They are the typical Cypriot girls group (), as the gym teacher refers to them. Aysan is from Iranher parents, of coursefor she does not differ from Cypriot girls. She takes
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hip.hop lessons ans she is very modern, as Mr. Kinnis (gym teacher) Katerina has said that she will have Aysan as her bridesmaid. Friday, 27.11.2009
Aysan lives in Cyprus since she was two year old and she speaks out of her love for Cyprus. She is exceptionally popular, a good student, dances, and participates in almost all school celebration events. She is thirtheen years old (a year olded than her peers) and pays particular attension to her appearance. Her and her buddies (Katerina and Kalypso) engage all the time in little girl duels. One of the things we can trace in sociograms is whether a migrant student who becomes successfully integrated has relations with the other class migrants. As shown in positive scenarios socograms (1-4), Aysan picks only Greek Cypriots and not migrants (but is picked by migrant). Before generalizing any conclusions about gender, ethnicity and social dynamics in the particular 6th grade elementary school class, it would be interesting to compare sociograms of this particular class with those of other classes. For example, if we compare Diagram 3 (Sociogram mapping Preferences for Break Time in Grade 6, Classroom A) to Diagram 9 (Sociogram mapping Preferences for Break Time in Grade 6, Classroom B) we will see that preferred social relationships are more polarized around ethnic clusters (see Diagram 9). What is interesting to notice with regards to these ethnically polarized class clusterings, is that the students who break the same gender wall and express positive social preferences for both boys and girls are migrants. It seems that in this case gender and ethnicity form a situation of antagonistic intersectionality. That is, preferences for peers of same ethnic background are strong enough to cross gender borders. This phenomenon seems to be more dynamic than what class sociograms can show because sometimes very close friends of same gender and same ethnicity are in a different classroom or age cohort.36
Stefani
Irinel Maria G. Maria M. Alexandros Konstantinos
Stavri Stylianos
Anna-Maria Leontios Katerina Dimitris Haridemos
Denis
Nino
Elena Vasilissa Tomas Vlatislav
Diagram 9: Sociogram mapping Preferences for Break Time
in Grade 6
Finally, very interestic class dynamics seem to develop in a Fourth grade classroom where where Greek Cypriots are, nymerically, a minority (only 4) all girls are migrants (Diagram 10).
36
For example, in his interview Gorki (Pontian/Georgian) names Elena (a year older) as his first and one of his closest school friends because the two of them spoke Georgian together. Such relationshops are structerully impossible to map on class sociograms.
124
In this multicultural environment, the Greek Cypriot minority does not form any ethnic clustering. In this classroom, the most distinct ethnic cluster is the one formed by the thee gypsy children, Anna, Gerasimos and Spuridon (school faculty speaks of the Gypsies as the newcomer other others: they are also alloglossoi but they are considered to be vary different from the rest and expectations for their integration are very negative. It is interesting, though, to notice that this ethnic cluster operates as an interface between boys and girls and, as in the case of 6th Grade class B, an antagonistic intersectionality seems to develop between gender and ethnicity.
Alex-John
Stefan
Gianna
Gerasimos
Giorgos
Tasos
Kamil Anna Cortney Styliana Timur Michalis
Anthoula
Spyridon Karolina Kymia Alexander Stelios
Alina
Diagram 10: Sociogram mapping Preferences for Break Time
in Grade 4
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11. Developing Research Reflexivity on the ethnographic gaze

We exactly are we looking for when we do field work in multicultural schools? Can research in intercultural context defy the desire for the exotic? Are our epistemological frameworks for cultural interpretation disengaged from our desire for discovery, a desire that is complicitous to some extent with the legacies of colonial travel writing in wild zones? In regards to a different problematic, doesnt giving up our otherness and becoming insiders implicate the possibility of seeing everything as all too familiar, all too meaningful, thus perceiving as natural limits we are supposed to see as borders of exclusion, seeing culture were we should be seeing race, seeing codes of comradership where we sould be seeing acts of violence? Are the interpretations we produce continuous with the webs of meaning we decode and our intimacy as researchers complicitous with the structures of power producing the effects which (including the effects of our presence) we are mistaking for expressions of intercultural contacts? Are we recording or inventing otherness? The questions above, framed and phrased in different ways, came up in our second thematic workshop (25 April 2010. Athens). Although these questions seem to question the study of culture they are all too familiar in the field of anthropology. Lila Abu-Lighod (1991) captures the geist of the problematic described above when she describes culture as the essential tool for making other. As researchers observe structures of meaning, account for cultural difference, come up with hypotheses of cultural meaning for their why questions, they simultaneously help construct culture as a discrete entity, cultural difference and cultural coherence. Addressing this problematic, Alexandra Zavos discussed the example of balkansim in visual culture. Zavos presented slides from the works of two contemporary photographers, Klavdij Slubans Transsibriades (2009)37 and Wim Wenders Journey to Onomichi (2010)38 and introduced questions on representation: How does the ethnographer insulate herself from habits of vision or the ethnographic desire for the extraordinary in reckoning with new places and people? Is a realistic depiction possible or even desirable? The audience watched a slide presentation on Slubans Transsibriades and commented on the sense of emptiness, bleak and overuse that emanate from these photographs. As commented by one participant, these photos fit my idea of East Europe empty, foggy, ecologically destroyed, a place people want to leave from, an inhospitable place. Who would like to remain in these places, commented another participant, noting how Slubans representations are essentializing the bleakness of Balkans39 leaving unchallenged ordinary (but problematic) assumptions about
37Transsibriades (2009), photographs by Klavdij Sluban and text by Erri de Luca, published by Editions Actes Sud, appeared simultaneously in five European countries in October 2009. The book won the European Publishers Award for Photography 2009. 38 Wim Wenders: Journey to Onomichi (2010) Photographs by Heiner Bastian and Wim Wenders, published by Schirmer/Mosel. 39 In Lucas Preface for the book Balkanism is recast as neo-orientalism, with a slight difference: The other of the West is now within Europe, looking rather than being looked. In this kind of neoorientalism it is the East rather than the West who is framed as the object of desire, with the desiring subjects look, however, emptied of power:
One of the recent photographs amounts to a portrait of our time, the face of a woman with lips parted as if to kiss nothingness, inverted in a reflection. She addresses herself to a point irredeemably separate from her. This is the East, looking to the West. Its the most silent look of
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the nature of East to West immigration in Europe.40 The bleak emptiness of Slubans Transsibriades was compared with the ordinary emptiness of Wenders Onomichi. The latters depiction of the banal, the empty, the ordinary has almost the opposite, i.e., a de-essentializing, effect as there is nothing Japanese to his depictions of ordinary scenes and landscapes of the Japanese village. Two points were made with reference to the ethnographic gaze: Photography doesnt have to be a photo of the monumental. Likewise, ethnographic accounts and interviewing do not have to be driven by a desire to discover the extraordinary and thick descriptions do not always have to be descriptions of thick scenarios (some of the codifications our informants are asked to analyze and other visual probes used for the purpose of eliciting cultural accounts could actually be ordinary). What impact do assumptions of difference have on the ways we study multicultural schools? There is always a risk that descriptive accounts of situations can slide into causal accounts of ethnicity and gender. a. ethnography is never a depiction of reality, albeit its commitment to realism b. Possible reversals of the quest for the exotic: from thick descriptions of the extraordinary (in order to understand the other) to thick descriptions of the ordinary Applying insight from lessons on seeing towards a reflective analysis of the ethnographic gaze, Zelia Gregoriou shared the following excerpt from filed notes:
I am sitting in the teachers smoking room which is like a pre-hall for the non smoking teachers room which is literally a glass room. A student passes by, which is very unusual since access to teachers quarters is a restricted area. He wears his hood, like most boys in school. His passage stirs up my attention. I am trying the get a good look at him, but he moves fast, opens up the door and makes his way to the glass room. My eyes are stuck on him as he walks away and his backpack becomes an evanescent point for my desire. There I can focus, in search of anything that could tell me something of him, perhaps the logo of his soccer team, the extruding pocket of the back of his backpack becomes the ultimate screen for me to see, and there, I read what he has handwritten: I fuck the curious (From Technical School Field Notes).
What if our subjects do not want to be read? Do we record this as a statement, a voice, a sign of resistance or a symptom of teen age subculture? Are we bound by this sign as if it
the whole series, offering and demanding salvation, and creating a silence in those who look at it (cited from online magazine lensculture).
40 The tropisms of the empty landascape, the animalization of the natives and their ( animalizing or background-ing against the foregrounding of a heroic, penetrating traveller, reminiscent of 19th century colonial travel narratives, are replicated by Erri de Luca in his Preface:
Klavdij Sluban crosses abandoned Far Eastern towns on foot what happened to their inhabitants? A few are still here, wrapped up in the fog, like fleeing animals or with their backs to the wall. Searching for people, the photographer travelled outside Europe, penetrating into Asia, Russia, Mongolia, China, on the Trans-Siberian railway, yet he never encountered a density of population. Everywhere, the physicality of the land has taken over and rendered negligible the human species (ibid).
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were a warning to stay back, since we are positioned with the regime of adult/teacher authority or are we hailed by this, as is it were a confession of his having been already the victim of intrusion, to record this intrusion? Are there ways to record violence in schools without becoming complicitous with the processes of subjection and subjectification that produce these forms of violence? Ana Blazeva, transferring the problematic of dealing with the ordinary to her field work in the school in Skopje, shared the following experience: She is in a classroom when she hears gunshots outside Some kids point out that its just fire-crackers! and that this is very usual to happen. Are you not scared? she asks them, to hear again that this is ordinary for them. She has found out that students carry guns in schools and that they feel safe in schools. If they feel safe, she reflects, why they have to carry guns? Do they feel safe because they carry guns? We are used to it, the students say. It should not be usual, Blazeva exclaims. Abu-Lughod provides some suggestions which seem to counter this tendency for producing coherence (inherent in cultural research in general and research like ours which is already biased towards recording interactions between culturally different others). Researchers in intercultural contacts zones should look for contradictions and misunderstandings, strategies interests, and improvisations, and the play of shifting and competing statements with practical implications (Hannerz, 1996: p. 31). Another way to subvert connotations of homogeneity, coherence and timelessness is to refuse to tell stories about particular individuals in time and in place: As real people are portrayed agonizing over decisions, enduring tragedies and losses, trying to make themselves look good, suffering humiliations, or finding moments of happiness, a sense of recognition and familiarity can replace that of distance (ibid., p. 32). Boundaries and Borders The class that researchers observed has students from different ethnic backgrounds Albanians, Macedonians, Roma and Bosnians. The ethnic identity of the researchers and the language barrier were the challenges of this research and a barrier in making contact with Albanian students. This excerpt from reflexive field notes of the researchers from an interview with two Albanian boys can illustrate how researchers experienced the distance and difficulty in making contact:
We talked about the difference of this conversation in relation to other interviews, the restlessness of the boys, their nonverbal signs and the distance we felt. G almost constantly was looking through the window and C although was more present seemed so distanced, keeping his hands crossed all the time. We talked that maybe it is a reaction to the questions we asked openly about relationships and love, which may be taboo and unpleasant for them, but as well the fact that we are women and Macedonian has to do with the detachment. (Field Notes _AB_9)
Researchers also didnt make contact or interview with Albanian girls due to the small number of Albanian girls in the class, but also because of the language barrier. The only Albanian girl researchers met in the classroom was very silent and withdrawn and hardly spoke Macedonian language.
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Ethnic identity for students is closely related to the religious identity and sometimes confused with it. Students think that if you are Albanian you must be Muslim, or if you are Macedonian you must be Christian.
He found interesting the case of Darko. It started when he read the name of present and absent students, and when he read Darko, the boy said Darko is not here, he is Mohamed now. And then the conversation went on about him. He told them that from the first year of school he wanted to become Albanian Muslim. And told stories how it is bad to die like Macedonian. The professor asked him if he would like to be Albanian or Muslim, and he answered that you can not be Albanian if you are not Muslim. He thought that boy couldnt make difference between Albanian and Muslim. (Field notes_ VB_11)
12. Conclusions and recommendations
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13. References
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Synthesis Thematic Report on Intercultural Education (WP5)

Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia

Zelia Gregoriou Department of Education, University of Cyprus

Grant Agreement no. 216065

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Writers and Researchers

Composition of WP5 National Research Teams

WP5 Synthesis Report

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2.1. Engendering intercultural education: insights from migration studies

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For an analysis of family as a site of intersectionality see Collins, 1998.

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3.1. Goal of the research

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3.3. Basic premises, hypotheses and concepts

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Internal exclusion, state of exception (Agamben)

Thick interpretation (Geertz)

Performativity, re-iteration (Butler)

Other important concepts

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Precariousness (Judith Butler) Territorialization/deterritorialization/density/minoritization (Deleuze)

3.4. Basic research questions

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3.5. Research Methodology

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Semi-structured interviews (Level Two Data)

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3.7. Data analysis and interpretation

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Partners also agreed on the following structure of National Reports:

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GEMIC. WP5 Synthesis Report (Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GEMIC. WP5 Synthesis Report (Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GEMIC. WP5 Synthesis Report (Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Measures taken for implementation of Intercultural Education September 7 1999

2002 beginning of school year (Directive dated 29 October 2002)

GEMIC. WP5 Synthesis Report (Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2004 Educational Reform Report