The topic of the project is migration in Europe. There are many pupils from the participating schools with very different migrant backgrounds. Many of these pupils have eastern European backgrounds, although many of those involved are not familiar with their own family background. Very often this is connected with displacement and “resettlement.” As far as the Polish schools are concerned the problem is more likely to be found amongst those pupils whose parents have to leave their homeland for a longer period of time, to work as geriatric nurses in private households whilst the children have to stay at home. Pupils with a North African background attend Spanish and French schools, whose families in France partly come from former colonies, some of whom also fled. This group is certainly disparate, nevertheless there is probably a lot of common ground and an international exchange is a huge chance for these pupils to better assess and sort out their situation in life. Up to now too little attention has been focused on these groups of pupils in individual schools and there is a distinct need to work for and with these groups of pupils. The project consists of two parts. In the first year an exhibition on migration is planned to be shown in all schools involved and if possible, elsewhere. For this purpose interviews with pupils and their families are planned. If the families agree, these interviews are also planned as part of the exhibition. The exhibition is to be supplemented with historical material, which deals with the topic. Apart from “classical” posters, the exhibition will also include computer-assisted aspects such as Podcasts, as well as excerpts from the interviews and the appropriate English translations. In the second year materials are to be compiled together with the pupils, which can be used in lessons in the schools. The idea is to try out these materials in the five partner schools and in connection with this project make it available to other schools. For this purpose the material will be translated into English. It is thereby guaranteed that the project will be of use in the long run. A total of 400 pupils will be directly involved in the project, and at every partner school a team of three to five colleagues will supervise the project. Extracurricular institutions and experts will also be involved, who have partly been working with migrants for years. To achieve this aim, five project meetings are planned, at which respectively pupils and teachers will work on the project.
The central topic of this project was “Migration in Europe”. The students of the various schools participating in the project (Alba de Tormes in Spain, Tours in France, Tervuren in Belgium, Handrup in Germany and Swiecie in Poland) were affected in different ways by migrations problems and questions (background). At the centre of first year’s work were interviews with those students and their parents who had made experiences with migration over the last two generations in their families. Students also interviewed some people who did not belong to the school community. These interviews were filmed or transliterated afterwards. The various schools dealt with different aspects and forms of migration: In Alba de Tormes students focused on migration from Africa, likewise in Tours, where mainly migration from former colonies was examined. In Tervuren students focused on people who moved to Brussels because of their work for EU or NATO. In Handrup students mainly worked on the historical and present situation of the so called “Russian-Germans”, who amount to a quite big number of students at school, but whose family history was not been noticed appropriately yet. In Swiecie students also dealt with those students who have come to Poland from abroad. Students agreed on a set of questions and afterwards they presented their results in exhibitions that were shown in all five schools. In their work they noticed that it was on great importance that students without migrational backgrounds shard work with those who had made personal experiences with migrational questions and problems to deepen mutual understanding. The interview as a means of communication was very effective. Especially parents praised students’ interests and were ready to talk about their personal family experiences in public. In Handrup, for instance, the famine of 1930s, the deportations during the Stalin regime, but also the difficulties of moving back from Ruissia to Germany were important topics. The aspect of identity was of central relevance e.g. when people said that in Russia they always been the Germans and later in Germany they were always considered to be the Russians. One of the highlights were the opening ceremonies of the exhibitions, because local and regional politicans were invited and up to 400 visitors came to see the films, the presentations and the accompanying cultural programmes (dances and music). In the second year students designed materials that can be used for teaching. These materials were tested in all five schools and are accessible via schools’ websites so that other schools can also use them. This fact guarantees that the project is useful for long term. To sum up, all the participating students who voluntarily shared the project worked very effectively. Altogether there were 150 students involved (one group of 13- to 14 year olds and a group of 16-17 year olds and about 20 teachers). On top of that the events and publications attracted the attention of a wider public. There were an initial meeting in Tours and there were four more meetings (one in each school). Apart from that, students also visited organisations and institutions that deal with migration, e.g. a dairy in Salamanca that works with migrants, a charity centre of migration in Madrid, the European Parliament in Brussels, the Museum of Migration in Bremerhaven, the Red Line Star Museum in Antwerpen and the new Museum of the Second World War in Danzig. The topic will be implemented into the curriculum of the various participating schools.