The phenomenon of migration in Europe have drastically changed in recent years, specially because of the inequality of life conditions among countries and the risen of international conflicts. This situation forced 1.3 million people to ask for asylum in other countries in 2016 (EASO, 2016) and more than 2.3 million people to illegally cross the European Union borders. A consequence of this phenomenon is that ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity and socioeconomic inequalities are also growing in different countries (Currie, 2016). Children and young people are also affected by these circumstances, being 398.255 the number of children younger than 18 who applied for asylum in 2016 (EASO, 2016). For this reason, it urges to review and reorient integration policies in the European Union, specially to address the conditions of children.
The research project “MiCreate. Migrant Children and Communities in a Transforming Europe” (H2020-SC6-MIGRATION-2018) aims to understand the limits and potentials of current integration policies and educational systems from a children-centred approach, in order to stimulate their social integration at educational and policy level. This involves the analysis of current measures for the integration of migrant children (12-17 years old) in European countries -including children of refugees, asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors-, the identification of social impacts of these integration programmes through case studies in 6 countries (Slovenia, Austria, Denmark, United Kingdom, Poland and Spain) and the design of integration measures with a cross-national and local perspective.
The specifics objectives of the research project are: (a) to examine the characteristics of reception communities, (b) to improve knowledge about children’s experiences of life in new social environments, (c) to get an insight into school peer dynamics in view of the integration process, (d) to build on the capacity of educational staff for diversity managing, (e) to implement cross-national comparative analysis, (f) to develop child-centred tools for stimulating migrant integration, (g) to design child-centred integration policy recommendations.
In this paper we will present part of the results of the first specific objective, which corresponds with the Work Package 2 (WP2) and consists on creating a State of the Art on migration and integration of children through a cross-disciplinary approach. This WP implies the accomplishment of five central tasks, which are: (a) Review of literature on migration and integration; (b) Examination of child-centred approach across disciplines; (c) Identification of good practices; (d) Identification of innovative approaches for the integration of migrant children; and (e) EU policy analysis. Both tasks 3 and 4 will be developed in each of the 6 countries participating in the case studies.
From the empirical work of this initial phase of the project, we propose to define and problematize the notion of "Good practices" in each of the dimensions of the project. For this, we have searched for different key aspects that allow their analysis in educational contexts. In general terms, "good practice" is understood as a model or example of an activity carried out with satisfactory results that respond to a shared vision of "wanting to advance" and constitute the product of the identity of a specific context where they are carried out (Chickering & Gamson, 1987). An inherent aspect of the concept is the character of transferability and exportability (Benavente, 2007). According to Biesta (2015) for a good practice to be considered as such it is necessary to overcome difficulties and have the capacity to implement them in contexts, thus enabling its application to new situations. Therefore, a good practice would entail a transformation in the forms and processes of action that can suppose the beginning of a positive change in the traditional methods of action.
