Abstract:

The Greek debt crisis (2010–2019) was widely experienced by Greek citizens as a profound deterioration of living conditions, attributed to pressures exerted by dominant actors within the European establishment. This interpretation reinforced pre-existing anti-European sentiment and fostered a pronounced tendency toward euroscepticism. These developments coincided with large-scale refugee arrivals beginning in 2015. Public debate in Greece increasingly focused on the reasons refugees left their countries of origin and on the categorization of new arrivals as either refugees or migrants. As refugee children entered the Greek school system, it became essential to consider whether teachers’ understandings of refugee parents’ motives aligned with broader societal narratives—specifically, the view that refugee flows represented covert economic migration under the guise of humanitarian protection. To address this issue, empirical data were collected from a sample of 218 pre-service secondary school teachers. The present study examines the extent of euroscepticism among these future educators and investigates its relationship with their interpretations of refugees’ motives for arriving in Greece. The findings indicate a significant association between levels of euroscepticism and the ways in which teachers conceptualized refugee motives.

Keywords:

Refugee children, intercultural education, euroscepticism, refugee motives, multicultural education, Greek debt crisis.