Abstract:

European societies are increasingly diverse: in 2015, 76.1 million international migrants were living within Europe (UNICEF, 2016). Of these, about 7%, 5.4 million, are children, presenting different integration challenges to also different European countries. Education represents a key institution in the integration process of the children of immigrants (and refugees) and their families. Portugal is no exception, and the integration of a growing number of children and young people coming from migratory movements into its education system has been one of the many, and profound, changes experienced over recent decades. On the one hand, the average performance of the foreigner students stands below those of the nationals and, on the other hand, foreign students are over-forwarded to alternative routes of education rather than regular education (Seabra et al., 2018). Our purpose in this presentation is to discuss children of Brazilian immigrant’s experiences in Portuguese schools, in particular their family conditions, school paths, and future orientations. The discussion is based on data from a quantitative research involving 500 children with a Brazilian background. The aim is to acknowledge the experience and the school paths of the Brazilian origin children who attend the Portuguese basic education, and to assess specific challenges, representations and discriminatory practices relating to this group. The Brazilians’ migration to Portugal consolidated during the 1990s. By 2017 they were the group of immigrant citizens with the largest contingent accounting for 20.3 per cent of total immigrants (SEF, 2017). The situation at Portuguese schools has reflected this evolution: 13 077 students of Brazilian nationality were recorded in 2016-17, corresponding to 26.5 per cent of foreign students. This preponderance has been upheld since 2008, having replaced the previous prevalence of children and young people from Angola and Cape Verde. In order to gain a better understanding of the school experience of immigrant children from Brazil, a survey was conducted by applying a questionnaire to Brazilian students who attended the 3rd cycle of basic education (7th, 8th and 9th grade). It was part of the project Brazilians at Portuguese schools: trajectories and experiences, whose main objective were to know the overall school experience of students with Brazilian origin, considering a broad set of sociodemographic variables (gender, birth place of students and parents' education and occupation...). The survey was carried out in 21 schools of eight municipalities of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area in 2012, and covering 397 Brazilian students. The analysed survey is the first study done in Portugal to understand their school experiences. The survey results, including sociodemographic variables corroborate that the probability of achieving school success increases when the child is a girl and the parents have high educational levels. Despite the behavioural problems reported in the school context (63,3 per cent had these problems) and the fact that they feel some negative discrimination by the school community (fellow students, teachers and non-teaching staffs) (41per cent), Brazilian pupils reveal a reasonable degree of integration in Portuguese schools.

Keywords:

Migrant children, Brazilian, education, integration.