In the mid-1970s a spectacular process of social change started in Northern Europe. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Northern European countries developed policies to recruit foreign labour from several Southern European and Mediterranean countries. Covenants were signed to bring ‘guest workers’ from Greece, Portugal, and Spain, but also from Morocco and Turkey. In response to the recession that followed the oil crisis in 1973, most governments abruptly decided to stop recruiting. Diverse incentives were offered to encourage guest workers to return to their home countries. However, most guest workers decided to stay and bring along their families, turning what...

This study sets out to explain schools’ practices of ‘educational reception’ in a comparative way. From a political sociology perspective, the study aims to achieve a better understanding of implementation practices in the field of reception, that is, how schools apply existing policies for the reception of immigrant students. In particular, it tries to discern the extent to which these practices adhere to policies and the extent to which they diverge from them in terms of basic principles.

The present chapter describes the concepts and thehypotheses¹ that structure the study. To introduce the theoretical tools that will be used,...

Despite being conventionally depicted as an example of corporate pluralism, the Netherlands is currently closer to a cultural homogeneity or assimilationist regime (Entzinger 2003, Penninx 2006, Vasta 2007, Duyvendak et al. 2005). The most prominent goals pursued by national policies in the period of this study (2004-2006) were strict migration control, return, and cultural adaptation of immigrants. The three main legislative efforts carried out in that period by Minister Verdonk are a clear illustration of these objectives: the Policy of Return (Terugkeerbeleid 2003), the Policy Proposal on Illegal Migration (Illegalennota 2004), and the modification of the Law of Civic Integration...

Rotterdam can be described as a prototypical industrial city, extended around a port that attracted massive internal migration in the early nineteenth century. As a working-class city characterised by low educational and income levels, Rotterdam has been historically concerned with education (Gemeente Rotterdam 2004, 2006).¹ Consequently, education has traditionally been prioritised in Rotterdam’s political agenda, something fitting the philosophy of the local coalitions with the constant presence of the Labour Party.² Rotterdam is also eminently a migrant city. With a 37% non-autochthonous population in 2005, the city scores more than three times higher than the national average (10%) (CBS 2005).³...

As an old harbour city, Barcelona shares with Rotterdam a past linked to the industrial revolution and a long tradition of labour migration. Together with the Basque Country, Catalonia was one of the main industrial areas that led the economic development of Spain from the nineteenth century onwards. During the 1960s the growth of the industrial sector drew many unskilled workers to Barcelona from other regions of the country, particularly Andalusia and Extremadura. Nowadays the region of Catalonia has the highest percentage of foreigners in the whole country: 21.3% of the total population. Most of them live in the city...

The previous two chapters offered a description of practices of educational reception in schools in Rotterdam and Barcelona. The present chapter sets out to compare the two case studies and explain both their common and particular traits. In this comparison I want to look beyond the practices themselves. In particular, I will compare degrees of institutional influence on school practices, which at the same time means comparing the discrepancies between school practices and official policies. A comparison of the influence of policies on practices and a comparison of the gap between practices and policies; these are the two sides of...

This journey comes to an end. I must now ask myself what I have learned from it. This investigation set out to explain practices of educational reception, that is, the way secondary schools incorporate recently arrived immigrant students. In the preceding pages we have analysed the implementation of reception policies by schools, examining in particular whether practices comply with or deviate from policies. My search has been theoretically grounded in two rival explanations: the national regimes of integration and the implementation gap. I have used a comparison of reception programmes in Rotterdam and Barcelona in order to study the policy-practice...