Returning Children Migrants – Main Challenges in School Environment

Abstract

The present paper is based on the research project "(Un)easy returns home. The functioning of children and young people returning from emigration", the main goal of which was to investigate and describe the experience of children from Polish returning migrant families, and specifically to answer the question: What kind of challenges do children from families returning to Poland face when entering the Polish educational system? We conducted qualitative research taking into consideration four perspectives: children, adolescents, parents and teachers. In this paper, we focus on the most important challenges in a new educational context based on the narrations of children, adolescents, parents and teachers and dividing the challenges into three groups: purely educational, socio-cultural and emotional. Finally, we also discuss best practices which proved helpful for children's adaptation to the new environment and which may be used in the school context.

Children’s Well-Being as the Cornerstone of a Child-Centred Asylum Policy: The (In)visibility of Underage Asylum-Seeker Needs in Poland

“…We must realise that researching migrant children is methodologically challenging due to the lack of accurate methods and experience. Interviews compared with an analysis of law and institutional solutions across the different environmental settings enable us to take a closer look at the policy toward children migrants and their rights in the host country (Grzymała--Moszczyńska & Trąbka, 2014) and how they serve children well-being. The social policies following children's needs must be built upon the detection of their experiences, which comes from their open declarations, not adults' assumptions (Morrow & Richards, 1996;Thorne, 1993).…”

The Organisation of the Education of Returned Emigré Pupils in a Progymnasium

“…Juozeliūnienė et al (2019) investigated the issue of return policy implementation in Lithuania. Szydłowska et al (2019) discussed the feelings of returning migrant children at school. Lukočiūtė et al (2009) explored the issue of the identity of pupils returning from abroad.…”

Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic’s Distance Learning on Students and Teachers in Schools and in Higher Education – International Perspectives.

“…Language issues, together with cultural differences, have been the most common issues brought up in the Polish discourse on educating migrant children (Błeszyńska, 2010;Grzymała-Moszczyńska & Trąbka, 2014;Szelewa, 2010;Torovska, 2016). The low level of Polish language skills in migrant children qualifies them as "disadvantaged" in na-tional schools because language incompetence causes hardships for teachers as they try to educate and communicate with foreign pupils (Iglicka, 2017;Nowicka, 2014).…”