Separating newcomers: pragmatism or ideology? Schools’ responses to newly arrived migrants in Flanders

ABSTRACT

This paper focusses on the organisational responses of secondary schools to newly arrived migrant students. In Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium), as in many other European regions, newly arrived students are placed in segregated classes that aim to prepare them for integration in mainstream education. Deriving from, on the one hand, academic critiques on the principle of segregated classes and, on the other hand, the autonomy that schools have regarding practices for newly arrived students, the paper aims to shed detailed light on the organisational choices schools make regarding newcomers and how professionals in these schools experience and relate to these choices. Based on representative survey-data and in-depth interviews, gathered for a research project for the Flemish Department of Education, the results address class allocation, interaction with mainstream classes and transition procedures in the education for newly arrived students. The findings indicate that education for newcomers, in spite of being poorly embedded in the mainstream educational system, opts for organisational practices similar to those in mainstream education and very typical for the basic grammar of schooling. Professionals in these schools express doubt and ambiguity over many of these choices, sometimes paving the way for departure from customary practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Newly arrived migrant students
• segregation
• inclusion
• grammar of schooling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In school year 2012–2013, about 30% of the group of non-Dutch speaking newcomers in secondary education in Flanders had migrated from a European country (both EU and non-EU), another 30% came from the Middle East (mostly Afghanistan, Turkey and Iraq) or Asia, and roughly 20% migrated from an African country (often Morocco) (Flemish Agency for Educational Services 2017). Data on recent school years show significant changes. For example, in school year 2015–2016, newcomers with an Afghan nationality account for 27.4% of the total number of newly arrived migrant students in Flanders; Syrian and Iraqi newcomers respectively, 13.7% and 7.9% (Van Avermaet et al. 2017).

2 The term is interchangeable with transitional class, international class, welcoming class, introductory class, etc.

3 In Flanders, newly arrived migrant students get referred to as ‘anderstalige nieuwkomer’, which translates as ‘foreign language (i.e., non-Dutch speaking) newcomer’.

4 In school year 2012–2013, almost 60% of the newcomer students in secondary schools were male (Van Avermaet et al. 2017). In the same school year, over 40% of the male newcomer students in secondary education were either 17 or 18 years old, as opposed to 30% of the male non-newcomer students (ibid.). For female newcomer students in secondary education, as well as newcomer students in primary education, the age distribution is similar to those of the non-newcomer students (ibid.).

5 In school year 2004–2005, 1,693 newly arrived migrant students accounted for 0.40% of the total number of students in secondary education (Flemish Agency for Educational Services 2011). In school year 2015–2016, this number rose to 4,111, or 0.97% of the total number of students in full time secondary education (Flemish Agency for Educational Services 2017). As of October 2019, there are 4141 students attending reception education, demonstrating the stability of the increase in the number of newly arrived migrant students (Flemish Agency for Education Services 2019).

6 At the beginning of the school year 2014–2015, 49 schools for secondary education offered education for newly arrived migrants. This number rose to 98 in July 2017 and declined to 90 in April 2019 (Flemish Agency for Educational Services 2019).

7 Formally, a pupil is considered a ‘foreign language newcomer’ if he or she is an actual newcomer (i.e., hasn’t been in Belgium for a period longer than one year), does not have Dutch as a home language or mother tongue, insufficiently masters the language of instruction (Dutch) in schools and wasn’t enrolled at a school with Dutch as the language of instruction for a period longer than 9 months (Flemish Government 2006; Flemish Agency of Educational Services 2017). To be eligible for education for newcomers in secondary schools, the pupil has to be between 12 and 18 years old on 31 December following the start of the school year (ibid.). Migrant children who meet the age requirement and reside in an asylum centre are immediately eligible for education for newcomers (ibid.).

8 Flemish mainstream secondary education offers an academic, a technical and a vocational track. For the 2018–2019 school year, 37% of all pupils in the final phase of secondary education are in the academic track, 32% in the technical and 28% in the vocational (Flemish Government 2019).

9 In general, the job opportunities for those who get their vocational degree are quite good (Flemish Public Employment Service 2019).

10 A report in Dutch is available for the public (Van Avermaet et al. 2017) As far as we know, this was the first research project in Flanders that focussed on the organisational aspects of education for newcomers.

11 Initially, out of the 47 schools that were contacted, 3 schools refused to participate, 1 school never replied, 1 school agreed to participate but never sent the required information. The other 42 schools agreed to participate and supplied us with the required information. During the data collection, another 3 schools failed to finish at least one questionnaire. Another 4 schools failed to fill in the questionnaire for principals/coordinators which focused on the organisational choices regarding newly arrived students. We thus have detailed data on the organisational choices of 35 schools.

12 Each table shows the respondents’ answers to the statements through adding up the outer two responses on the Likert-scale (‘not’ and ‘a little’ in the first column, ‘often’ and ‘very often’ in the second column), the minimum and maximum scores, the mean and the standard deviation. As mentioned in the method section we have reached 50 principals and/or coordinators employed at 35 schools. Since most statements in the survey focused on the individual perspectives of the respondents, we included all respondents in the analysis instead of using one only respondent per school.

13 It should be noted that the majority (54–63%) of newly arrived pupils end up in a different school from the one in which they followed the reception programme, mostly due to the fact that schools offer different educational tracks and specialisations and because students prefer to attend a school closer to home (Van Avermaet et al. 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robin Kemper

Robin Kemper is a PhD student at the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy and a researcher for the Youth Research Platform, an interdisciplinary cooperation initiated by the Flemish government to conduct and stimulate youth research in Flanders. His research interests include newly arrived migrant students, school organisation, diversity, inclusion and school wellbeing.

Lieve Bradt

Lieve Bradt is professor in Social Pedagogy at the department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy (Ghent University) and coordinator of the Youth Research Platform. Her research focuses primarily on processes of inclusion and exclusion of young people in relation to education and leisure, and on the social-pedagogical mandate of social work practices.

Ines Keygnaert

Ines Keygnaert obtained her PhD in Medicine on sexual violence and health in refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants. Ines is an assistant professor on sexual and reproductive health as well as the team leader of the ‘Gender & Violence Team’ which heads the research lines on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), harmful cultural practices and sexual and reproductive health of migrants and other vulnerable groups.

Reinhilde Pulinx

Reinhilde Pulinx obtained her PHD in the Linguistics Department (Centre for Diversity and Learning) of Ghent University and is specialised in sociolinguistics. She is interested in multilingualism, diversity, poverty, migration and integration, citizenship. She currently works for the Flemish Education Council, the official advisory body on the education and training policy of the Flemish Community.

Piet Van Avermaet

Piet Van Avermaet is head of the Centre for Diversity and Learning, at the Linguistics Department of Ghent University. His expertise and research interests cover topics related to multilingualism in education, social inequality in education, language policy and practice in education, language policy and practice in contexts of (social) inclusion, language assessment, diversity and inclusion, integration and participation, discrimination in education and migration.

Ilse Derluyn

Ilse Derluyn obtained her PhD in Educational Sciences at Ghent University (Belgium) and is currently affiliated as lecturer to the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy (Ghent University), where she teaches courses in migration and refugee studies. Her main research topics concern the psychosocial wellbeing of unaccompanied refugee minors, migrant and refugee children, war-affected children, victims of trafficking and child soldiers.