Etapa de comprobación del Sistema de Actividades

The above analysis has identified a number of important issues affecting the schooling experiences of young people in Birmingham. First of all, it has shown that friends and social interactions were a crucial part of how the young people felt at school, and that lack of friends could lead to isolation and loneliness. This was general to all the students, but for migrant students, friendships took on another dimension, mainly because of their language abilities and recent arrival. Secondly, the analysis has shown that having a multi-ethnic school can help facilitate positive interactions between ethnic groups. For some of the minority ethnic students, the multicultural character of the school was furthermore beneficial for their confidence and feelings of ‘fitting in’. Thirdly, the students’ discussion of teachers highlighted that being a good teacher, in their opinion, had a lot to do with the help and care provided. Finally, the analysis has pointed to the important role of family encouragement and support in shaping how young people feel about school.

As the next part of the chapter will show, many of the points brought up by the young people in Birmingham were shared by their peers in Madrid. There were, however, also a number of significant differences, and this highlights the importance of contextualising and comparing the experiences of migrants and minority ethnic groups in different localities.

4. 2. The young people’s schooling experiences in Madrid

Similar to the young people in England, the students in Spain came up with a variety of answers when asked what a normal day in school is like. Some of them talked about a

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normal day in school in terms of how quickly it passed, as for example Nadia (a girl from Ukraine), who said that:

I get up, I don’t want to go to school [laughing]... I want to sleep, I am always tired, I don’t want to go to school. Well, but I have to go. I get up and I go to school. The first hour is always boring, I can’t sit. I want to sleep. But then, the other classes pass more quickly.i

Similarly to Nadia, Ana (a girl from the Dominican Republic) described the school as boring, but Alejandro (a boy from Colombia), whom she was interviewed with, added that the extent, to which a normal day in school was boring varied:

... the most tiring days are Wednesdays, because it has the toughest classes

and depending on the teachers, sometimes they give you a lot of work and you get stressed, depending on the teacher.ii

Mario (a boy from Ecuador) included both boring and fun aspects in his description of a normal day in school:

a normal day - sometimes it is boring, but sometimes it is fun. Because, as it is, with the material that we don’t like, at times we are bored .... But with the material, like... when we participate and that, then we enjoy ourselves a bit. iii

The subjects and the way individual teachers taught the classes, thus, played an important role in the way these young people experienced the different school days. Sometimes the teachers themselves were also mentioned, as for example by Diogo (a boy from Brazil), who was in the bridging class:

Monday I don’t like because we have maths the whole day. I like the teacher Anabel [the teacher in the bridging class], I like the classes with her.iv

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And Rafiq (a boy from Morocco), who was also in the bridging class: Clara: how is a normal day?

Rafiq: A good day, I like it, I like the teachers and the mates38 in my class. The teachers say good things to learn and they don’t insult. v

As these quotes illustrate, the young people in Madrid focused quite a lot on the official school (the classes and the learning). Similarly to the young people in Birmingham, some of them did, however, also talk about the informal school – friends and interaction, as illustrated by Alvaro (from the Dominican Republic), Neculai and Iulian (both from Romania), all three of whom were in the bridging class:

Clara: Can you tell me a bit about how a normal day here at school is? Álvaro: good, I have friends here vi

---

Neculai: I like the school a lot, the kids, I have many friends, the teachers

are better than in Romania. The teachers explain better, we get it.vii ---

Iulian: A normal day... it’s like, for me...it’s not like I don’t like it, but it’s

not like in Romania where the kids were more together. Everyone talked with each other. Not like here, like five there, two there, each one with his... And also the girls, I don’t find them like in Romania. They are not with the boys. There were a lot of girls [in Romania], and you didn’t have to be boyfriends and girlfriends to be together. I had a lot of friends [girls] and all, and we walked home together and that didn’t mean that we were girlfriends and boyfriends. And at break time we were joking and

38 _{The term ‘mate’ is throughout the whole document translated from the word ‘compañero’. The} distinction between ‘mate/compañero’ and the related category ‘friend/amigo’ is an important one and will be discussed in further detail later in the chapter.

159 playing.viii

When talking to the students, who were migrants, the comparison of different aspects of the school or their life in Madrid and their previous experiences in their country of origin was quite common. This was perhaps not surprising, since many of the students had arrived less than a year earlier, and therefore still had very recent memories of the country they had come from. For those who had come from non-Spanish speaking countries, language was also an important part of their narratives, as seen in this quote from Alina (a girl from Romania):

A normal day, I come at 8.30, I go into the class, depending on the one I have, normally it is maths or language. And I talk to my mates, and for example Rafiq, I am always saying something in his languages, Moroccan and Arabic, which I like, and to Neculai I am talking in Romanian, and with the others I am sometimes talking in English, others in… and others I am only talking in Spanish...ix

As this brief outline shows, the young people in the school in Madrid focused on a number of things when describing a normal day in school. Compared to the young people in Birmingham, the students in Madrid talked relatively more about the teachers in the school and the different ways in which the classes were taught. Similar to the pupils in Birmingham, they emphasised social interaction with other students. Due to the larger number of recently arrived migrant students in Spain, friendships were often related to other issues such as language and country comparisons. This shows how the process of making friends and seeing friendship is affected by a number of different influences, including the linguistic and migratory background of students. In the following pages, these

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factors are described more thoroughly and related to the different experiences of Spanish39 students, Spanish-speaking migrant students and non-Spanish speaking migrant students.