The question whether education leads to social participation and change or is only reproducing the actual societal order, is high on the agenda since the emancipatory movements of the sixties (cf. Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970, Bowles, 1972). Globalisation with its growing migration tendencies brought up the question of equal opportunities for all in a more explicit way. In Flanders, Belgium, plenty of initiatives were taken by the government to ‘care’ for children (mainly of immigrants) who were excluded (such as the ‘onderwijsvoorrangsbeleid’ [educational preference policy], the ‘zorgverbredingsbeleid’ [broadening care policy], and the ‘gelijke onderwijskansenbeleid’ [equal educational opportunities policy]) all in place since the non-discrimination act (1993). However, the results of the PISA research (OECD, 2006a, 2006b) gave evidence that the difference in school results between ’native’ Belgian and immigrant children is nowhere as large as it is in Flanders. In this paper we start with an overview of the existing initiatives by the government to realize equality of opportunities in education. Thus a clearer view on how this concept is brought into practice by policy makers is obtained. We question the way migrant children are considered to be a homogenous group within educational settings through government initiatives. Indeed, research shows that the absence of equal opportunity and the deplorable school results are wrongfully connected with their ethnicity (among others Duru-Bellat, 2002, Hirtt, 2005, Duquet a.e., 2006, Jacobs a.e., 2007). More specifically we focus on children of illegal refugees. Educational research about this recently fast-growing group of children is hard to find, in spite of its very particular character compared to ‘legal’ migrants or Belgian people. We search an answer for the following questions: How does the government take this group of people into account in the measures and interventions it takes? What are equal educational opportunities supposed to mean for illegal refugees? To what extent do government initiatives take into account the perceptions and needs of illegal refugees? The theoretical discussion between education as initiation in an existing culture on the one hand and ‘doing justice to the other’ on the other hand is helpful to understand what is going on. Following neither the conservative tenor of initiating children in a fixed culture (a view of education that lacks, in my opinion critical distance), nor the relativist position of learning as a merely personal construction process, we take the stance that education is always about initiation in some kind of a ‘practice’. Considering the ideas of MacIntyre (1981), Taylor (1985), Winch (1958) and Wittgenstein (1953) on this concept, Smeyers and Burbules (2006) developed an amended initiation model that gives attention to the way a practice is interwoven with the ‘self’ (identity), to the relationships and ways of interacting with others and how we involve others in what is valuable to us, and to a critical-reflexive attitude towards what we are initiating into. Thus they focus on how a practice is learned and enacted. Looking at government initiatives and interventions from this perspective, the earlier mentioned questions are dealt with. Thus the paper concludes by reformulating the way equal opportunity in education is conceptualized. Shouldn’t our attempts to realize equal learning opportunities for ‘all’ be based on who those ‘all’ are and what their everyday life practices look like? – And, if we do so, can we still speak about ‘immigrants’ as a homogeneous group that is ‘the’ object of these initiatives?

The paper concludes by reformulating the way equal opportunity in education is conceptualized. Shouldn’t our attempts to realize equal learning opportunities for ‘all’ be based on who those ‘all’ are and what their everyday life practices look like? – And, if we do so, can we still speak about ‘immigrants’ as a homogeneous group that is ‘the’ object of these initiatives?