Citizenship, Ethnicity, and Education in Modern Greece

What is it about?

This paper explores some of the issues that arise from the relationship between citizenship, ethnicity and education in Greece. The introduction attempts a brief presentation of the debate on citizenship, which focuses on the relationship between the various models of citizenship and the values, rights and obligations of its holders. The paper is divided into three parts, the first of which attempts to list the different ethnic groups that resided within the territory of the Greek state when it was founded, as well as a brief presentation of the criteria that determined the granting of Greek citizenship. The regulations and educational facilities offered by the Greek state during the inter-war period to Muslims, Slavophones, Koutsovlachs, Armenians, Chamides, Jews, Armenians and Roma are then listed. These facilities were the fruit of diplomatic disputes between the Greek state and its neighbouring countries, mediated by the League of Nations, which made most of them ineffective in a short period of time. In the second part, an attempt is made to investigate the conditions concerning the education of Greeks repatriated from the countries of the former Soviet Union, as well as political refugees, migrants and asylum seekers during the last thirty years. This tracing has as its starting point the first presidential decrees of the 1970s concerning the specific population group of students attending public educational institutions in Greece and extends to the legislation and practice followed nowadays. Then, after highlighting the influence of the then European Economic Community, which seems to have played an important role in the changes that took place in the field of education of 'foreigners' and 'foreigners' from the early 1980s onwards, the paper focuses on the analysis of the regime regulating the functioning of Reception Classes, Care Classes and Intercultural Schools, and the way in which these forms of compensatory education have functioned and continue to function to this day. To a second extent, the paper attempts to investigate whether and to what extent these arrangements have responded to the particular problems of the pupils who are part of this section of the student population. The final part attempts to describe the general framework that defines the educational facilities provided to pupils and students.

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