A comparative analysis of school-aged refugees in educational settings

The number of refugees seeking asylum in Europe has increased significantly in recent years, giving rise to questions about the efficacy of the measures put in place to facilitate their integration in the receiving countries. Schools occupy a pivotal position in the process of refugee integration, representing the initial social environment in which school-aged refugees are integrated following their arrival. The introduction of a framework of S-connections (School-Spare time-Society) in the SCHOOLAGEES project addresses a critical research question that has been overlooked in previous studies: namely, how does children’s engagement in educational settings in the host country facilitate their parents’ social integration? The research will adopt a policy-oriented socio-anthropological approach and employ an innovative methodology of qualitative content analysis of social media groups of parents. This will enable an exploration of the informal patterns and hidden mechanisms through which parents are involved in socialisation processes in the school context and interact with other parents. The research will demonstrate the significance of the informal school network and illustrate its capacity to assist educational institutions in advancing the social integration of school-aged refugees and their families. The objective is to establish a comparative framework of good practices implemented in Estonia and Italy, with a view to disseminating it to relevant stakeholders and to other countries that may benefit from its insights. This objective will be achieved through the implementation of research initiatives with specific focus on groups of Ukrainian refugees in Estonia and Palestinians in Italy.