The project aims to address a significant lack of evidence-based research on the school attendance and educational outcomes of refugee children and youth. It investigates the risk and protective factors shaping the educational performance of school-aged accompanied and unaccompanied refugees and migrants who arrived in Greece since the peak of the European refugee crisis in 2015. The main objective is to examine the role of resilience in refugee children’s access to the educational system, their enrollment and attendance rates, and their educational achievement. The study is nested at four interrelated levels- individual, family, community and society. At the individual level, we study children’s emotional distress, pre-displacement and post-displacement traumatic and discriminative experiences, and the ways in which these affect school retention and achievement, their coping abilities and developmental competencies. At the family level we examine cohesion and support, while at the community level, we examine the school environment and the interactions with the host communities. At the societal level, we assess the effects of perceived xenophobia and intolerance on poor educational performance and school drop-out.

Host institution: National Centre for Social Research (EKKE) www.ekke.gr

Collaborating organization: Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma https://hprt-cambridge.org