Due to the recent refugee influxes, the demographical structure of European countries has gone through another rapid change. As expected, this change heated the discussion of integration, language learning, and employability, for which access to education has a vital role. However, despite the long experiences with cultural diversity, educational equity for all is still a challenge for several European countries (Schnell & Azzolini, 2015). Along with the efforts to strengthen the idea of inclusion and to assure that “every learner matters and matters equally” (UNESCO, 2017 p.12), major challenges are to exist due to the embedded exclusion of disadvantaged groups in the education systems. Among the disadvantaged groups, refugees, ethnic minorities and immigrants have an important share. The disproportioned referral of ethnic minorities and pupils with migration background to low promising schools is an equity issue that requires utmost attention. The achievement gap between native pupils and immigrants as well as the high likelihood of ending up in low promising schools for ethnic minorities and students with migration background are still visible especially in a time where steps for inclusion are being taken.

Encouraging inclusion as a response to such educational inequities, marginalization and stigmatization is a step that should not be considered as remedy to exclusion.  As any other policies, inclusive policies are vulnerable to the way of implementation. Putting policies into practice is an interpretation of a policy; and the success of inclusion is up to the ethos of school, support systems, and settings and shared responsibility of staff. Moreover, it is known that, educational processes mainly create their own norms; and there will always be comparison to the implicit norms and usage of difference markers. Hence, new inclusion processes may create new exclusive conditions embedded within inclusive education (Graham & Glee, 2008). Therefore, discussing educational equity for immigrant groups or ethnic minorities will be of great interest even when inclusive education is implemented across nations.

With this symposium, we would like to examine several European countries’ contexts in terms of the overrepresentation of immigrants and ethnic minorities in low achieving schools and to discuss the inclusive education and its meaning for these disadvantaged groups of pupils. To argue how inclusion may defeat such an equity problem, the situation of overrepresentation should be examined. Although, there is a wide range of factors that are held responsible for this overrepresentation of ethnic minorities and immigrant groups in low achieving schools, the research body has struggles to form a comprehensible understanding (Harry, 2014). However, this global phenomenon, also experienced in many European countries, should be studied empirically across countries and cultures so that the relevance of inclusion to this issue can be based on a concrete structure.

Graham, L. & Slee, R. (2008). An illusory interiority: Interrogating the discourses of inclusion. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40(2), 277-293. Harry, B. (2014). The disproportionate placement of ethnic minorities in special education. In Florian, L. (Ed.) The Sage Handbook of Special Education. London: SAGE. Schnell, P. & Azzolini, D. (2015). The academic achievements of immigrant youths in new destination countries: Evidence from southern Europe. Migration Studies, 3 (2), 217-240. UNESCO. (2017). A guide for ensuring inclusion and equity in education. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002482/248254e.pdf