The policy of Greek authorities towards immigrants is the subject of this paper. By the term "policy" we mean both the legal framework concerning immigration and the practices of Greek authorities and their agencies regarding immigrants. We argue that this policy is defined by the commitments and the obligations undertaken by Greece as a member of the EU, but also by the number, the ethnic composition, the economic and social situation of immigrants, the attitudes of Greeks towards them and, also, the effects of their presence. In this context, the policy is characterized by dilemmas and hesitations. This is due to the attitudes of Greek opinion and concerns about the possibility that the immigrants could in the long term create problems of national integration. Those main concerns are counterbalanced, to some extent, by the contribution of immigrants to the economy. Like other members of the EU, Greek authorities have tried twice, in  and in  , to legalize the illegal immigrants. Legalization seems to benefit both the immigrants and the Greeks. Crime rates have been reduced and xenophobia is losing ground. On the other hand, recent studies have shown that the situation of the immigrants has started to improve. Despite these positive developments, the dilemmas of immigration policy have already registered in everyday life and allow for various hostile practices towards the immigrant population.Similar to the other countries of Southern Europe, Greece was converted at the end of the  s into a host country for a large number of immigrants, most of them "irregular". The presence of hundreds of thousands of immigrants in a country poses diverse problems, which can be categorized as follows: . First, there are questions concerning the identity of the immigrants, the causes of their immigration, their expectations, their practices in the new environment of settlement (relations between them, attitudes towards the indigenous people, their organizations and the vindication of their rights)

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In this article, we explore the reasons why individuals who have dropped out of compulsory education in Greece return as adults to the educational system, particularly to Second Chance Schools. Second Chance Schools were planned and funded by the European Union two decades ago so that member states could offset the consequences of student dropout rates and counter social exclusion. In order to answer the question, during the school year 2018–1019, we carried out 23 semi-structured interviews with individuals who were attending Second Chance Schools in the prefecture of Eleia (Western Greece) or had graduated in previous years. The interviews were analysed using the Qualitative Content Analysis method. Four categories of reasons emerged from the analysis (instrumental reasons, inner needs, combined reasons and the influence of ‘significant others’) which reflect the varied ways of perceiving and utilizing Second Chance Schools. Although the majority of the participants belong to financially and socially impoverished strata, they do not face unemployment or marginalization. The use of the institution of Second Chance Schools in this particular area seems to be moving from reasons associated with social exclusion towards the fulfilment of other needs that were created by dropping out of compulsory education.

One of the less developed issues in the sociology of education concerns how the social formation of emotions affects teachers' collective identities. In this article we outline the ingredients of a conceptual scheme explaining the emotional dynamics which form teachers' social identities through a life-course perspective. In particular, we show how educational and job experiences related to teachers' social trajectories create emotional dynamics in their identities which undermine the sense of belongingness to their profession. Our methodology was based on biographical-narrative interviews treated through a Critical Realism prism in order to bring to the fore the causal process through which a specific outcome is formed. By researching the extreme case of VET teachers in Greece who were put into redundancy for two years in the memorandum years, we explore why the threat of job loss, instead of mobilizing collective action, feeds feelings of self-blame and of shame which annul teachers' social ties.