CHAPTER 1: Integrating the Most Vulnerable: Educating Refugee Children in the European Union

How to integrate through education the most vulnerable—the refugee and asylum seeking children—is the aim of this chapter. It proposes a comparative analysis of the educational integration in the 27 European Union (EU) member states. The comparison is articulated in the following topics: models of integration; politics, policies, strategies; education as empowerment; the actors of the educational integration; the inclusive ethos and environment. The concept of integration is analyzed in two regards: typology—different models of management of the ethno-cultural diversity and examples of countries which come more or less closer to the ideal types; diachrony—the concept has evolved over the past decades oscillating from more multiculturalist to more civic ‘republican’ understandings. The education as empowerment is expressed in the child-centred pedagogy and the understanding of children as full citizens. Among the actors of the educational integration the emphasis is on the intercultural teachers and the teachers-pupils-parents nexus. Browsing through countries, policies, and practices, one realizes that what counts most—more than policies and programs which vacillate from one model to another—the main engine for successful integration are committed and active persons with intercultural sensitivity, ready to innovate, experiment, build bridges of understanding and intercultural dialogue.