Case Studies

Immigration has impacted widely on European societies and will continue to do so. Europe has diversified culturally. This has led to the development of new forms of dealing with discrimination, social exclusion, racism and xenophobia. The project represents an opportunity for students and teachers in participating countries to collaborate and communicate in order to develop the knowledge and understanding of the differences between our cultures and to place a greater value on diversity.

The main goals are:
- to develop more tolerance and respect that each culture deserves in the new European context
- to fight racism, xenophobia and discrimination.
- to enhance the European dimension by promoting knowledge of different cultures, practice of foreign languages, cooperation and mobility.

The work was organised through meetings and mixed workshops (pupils and teachers of the various countries). The activities were directed at synthesizing all the contents about exile and migrations dealt with till now, selecting materials for the final products, learning about the culture and history of the host country.
1) First workshop: watching the French movie "Welcome” which tells about the adventures of a swimming coach who decides to help a young emigrant from Iraq to reach the United Kingdom. Then in every group, the pupils and the teachers answer a questionnaire analyzing the situations described in the movie.
2) Second workshop: the students are asked to put themselves in the skin of an illegal worker and to produce a text in the form they preferred (a diary page, a poem, a short-story, etc.)
3) Finally, in order to think about how we can favor and contribute to the integration of migrants, four workshops were organised with representatives of associations working in this direction: Cimade, Human Rights League, and RESF.

The following results were achieved, among others:
- The film raised a large interest of the students, which developed into further questions
and discussions.
- The students produced creative products in mixed pairs or groups. The answers given by the students show that they have increased their knowledge about migrations, they have learned to respect other cultures, they gained a better understanding of migration issues. The students appreciated the opportunity the project gave them to meet their foreign fellows to start new relationships and to make new friends.
- A blog was developed which plays the role of an online journal of the project (http://comeniusonexile.blogspot.com/)

Comenius project is focused on the issue of immigrants. The main aim was to extend the language culture of the students and present English not only as the school subject but as thecommunication tool. Students of the participating schools together tried to solve the issue of prejudice as the source of distrust, which raises the fear of the unknown. They met with the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. The school promotes active learning of living languages, and the project fully corresponds to the learning strategies of the school.The project meets the priorities: Language education in the Community, Using ICT in Language Teaching.