Integrating Immigrant Children into Schools in Europe

Chapter 2 – Demographic Trends2.6. Presence of Immigrant Pupils by Location of SchoolOn comparing the breakdown of the population of 15-year-old immigrant pupils in accordance with thepopulation density of the area in which their schools are situated, with the corresponding breakdown fornative pupils aged 15, it is clear that the former tend to congregate more in areas of high urban densitythan the latter. The geographical distribution of immigrant pupils and their parents is thus not spatiallyuniform but concentrated within urban environments.This phenomenon is illustrated in Figure 2.7 which shows the percentages of immigrant and native pupilsrespectively for each of four major categories of school location. It indicates clearly that the geographicaldistribution of these two groups is far from identical, and shows that immigrant pupils are clusteredwithin towns and cities in a sizeable majority of the EU-25 countries.As can be seen, the relative proportion of immigrant pupils in urban areas with populations of over100 000 is higher than that of native pupils in the majority of countries. Conversely, in many countries theproportion of native pupils is relatively stronger than that of immigrants in areas in which the populationis not as dense (villages and towns with under 100,000 inhabitants).In only a minority of countries, namely the Czech Republic, Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Bulgaria, theUnited Kingdom (Northern Ireland) and Romania is the proportion of native pupils in towns or cities ofover 100 000 inhabitants (and under a million inhabitants) relatively greater than that of immigrantpupils.Certain countries report a very high share of immigrant pupils in large cities. It is indeed in cities with apopulation of over 1 000 000 that immigrant populations in schools appear to be most denselyconcentrated. As an example, it may be noted that 68.9 % of immigrant pupils in Finland attend school inHelsinki.The reasons for this non-uniform distribution of immigrant pupils aged 15 within European Unioncountries are found in the intensive international immigration experienced by certain urban areas in EUcountries. This is a result of historical and socio-economic factors, given that this flow satisfied the needfor labour in those areas in years of strong economic growth. The impact of this highly intensiveimmigration has subsequently been magnified by the behaviour patterns of families seeking to staytogether, the establishment of informal networks for solidarity among former and more recentimmigrants and certain social exclusion phenomena. Finally, some countries bring asylum seekerstogether in order to provide them with more effective assistance, which accentuates the physicalconcentration of groups of foreign origin within certain geographical areas.27