One million immigrants approximately have entered Greek frontiers throughout 1990s, resulting in the transformation of social and cultural landscape. This migratory wave yielded crucial changes in the educational institutions, after having increased at a phenomenal rate the total student population; after having altered its ethno-cultural composition and raised new dilemmas and challenges for the educational system as regards its constitutionally laid democratic pillars and the educational policy imperative of inclusion. The legislative shift in Greece towards an ‘intercultural pedagogy’ has been marked by notional struggles and contradictions. Important landmark of the educational policy enacted in this specific field is the Law 2413 of 1996 on “Greek education abroad and Intercultural Education”. As it is stated in Article 34 (124/17.6.1996, vol.A) ‘1.The goal of intercultural education is the organization and functioning of schololing units at primary and secondary level that provide education to young people with educational, social and cultural particularities.2.In intercultural schools are implemented the curricula of respective public schools, which are adapted to meet the particular educational, social and cultural needs of their students.’ The main focus of this paper is twofold: firstly, it attempts to analyze the legislative texts which constitute the intentional political discourse; and secondly, it examines the micro-political discourses of social agents, articulated by Greek youths and youths with migrational background. Political discourses and youths’ discourses are analyzed within a post-Marxist and post-structuralist framework using Critical Discourse Analysis in order to examine the macro and micro dimensions of the material under scrutiny. According to Armstrong (1999, p.81) legislation constitutes a political mechanism through which exclusion is ordered. Critical Discourse Analysis as an analytical emancipatory tool has the capacity to enable us understand the centrality of language in the constitution of subjectivity and power relations but also the governance of nation-state and the subsequent forms of domination and exclusion (Luke, 1995, p.99).

The paper draws upon an ethnographic study that was conducted in one Comprehensive Lyceum and one Vocational situated in Northern Greece and lasted for one year. Material has been collected through 48 in-depth interviews with 24 students (12 Greek, 3 Georgian, 8 Albanian and 1 Palestinian) and 3 group discussions. Furthermore, observation of out-classroom activities, informal discussions with the head-teachers, teaching staff and other students, enriched and deepened researchers’ understanding about the specificities of the institutions under study.

It is argued that legislative documents under the banner of imputed ‘difference’ and ‘needs’ work subtly to naturalize and perpetuate the social marginalization of migrants and their offspring. Drawing upon immigrant and native youths’ accounts, the paper illuminates the intricate and multifaceted nature of their schooling experiences as they experience the everydayness of ethnocentric and exclusionary practices. Research participants seemed acutely aware of the Greek opportunity structure and the “blocked opportunities” that perceive as available to them.The rhetoric question posed by students, “what chances does a foreigner have to find that networks?” illustrates the realistic pessimism that characterizes their dispositions towards the future. Paraphrasing Reay, Davies and Ball (2001) it is argued that minority status functions as “a powerful mediating factor to compound the discriminatory workings of class” (p.866). Migrant youths, despite their struggle to adapt, they are being “stereotyped or discriminated against in majority settings” (p.869).