Multiculturalism in education: Representations of the young immigrant children in text of Greek youth literature

Abstract

The huge political and socioeconomic transformations, which have taken place in recent years in Europe and in the wider Mediterranean area, resulted in immigration. Immigration caused a challenge to the host countries, since they had to face the problem of integration of the immigrants in their societies. However, the stereotypes and the prejudices that exist in each society, along with the wider historical, political, economic and social environment, constitute sometimes barriers towards this direction. Within this context, literature is important, since literature texts reflect this environment and represent the images of ‘Other’ in their stories. At the same time, the literature texts can shape ideologies, behaviours and attitudes, especially when they refer to young children. Therefore, literature has a twofold scope: to depict the stereotypes that exist in a society regarding the ‘Other’ and to cause a change in people’s behaviour and attitudes towards people from other racial, religious and cultural backgrounds. The present research tried to explore the image of “Others” through two literature books: ‘The Last Black Cat’ by Evgenios Trivizas and ‘Gasment the Fugitive with the Flute’ by Katerina Mouriki. The analysis of these books took place using the iconological approach. The central issues of these two books are social stigmatization of immigrants based on the prejudices and social stereotypes that can result even to genocide, the social exclusion, and the intolerance of the “Other”.