Mapping European Stakeholders on Migrant Education
A mapping of EU stakeholders on the education of migrants (2012) has shown that most European-level organisations working with migration issues prefer to focus on access to education and on participation, less on the ways to make formal education more responsive to the needs of migrants (e.g. language support at school). Education policy stakeholders, on the other hand, prefer to focus on support and inclusion of all disadvantaged groups, seldom promoting targetted measures that would be specifically designed to improve the education outcomes of migrants. The reason for this is often the reluctance to advocacte for specific support for migrants when resources are scarce and other disadvantaged groups may be more numerous. On the other hand, without addressing the changes needed in formal education systems (especially at school level), such as langauge support, it is unlikely that barriers that lead to lower education outcomes for migrants in a number of EU countries will be diminished.