ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which children of immigrants experienced belonging and Otherness in French and English primary schools and the ways in which they drew on this experience in their identity narratives. It examines the complex relationship between immigration, integration, and education by situating the singularity of children's experiences and narratives within the wider 'totality' of socio-political discourses, global imaginaries, youth culture and language, local environments, institutional structures, pedagogical practices, and relationships with teachers, peers, and families. The role and the place of school in the experience of children of immigrants thus need to be understood in relation to both wider historical and contemporary social and political discourses of racism, xenophobia, securitisation, and a general climate of hostility towards the ‘threatening immigrant Other’, nationally and globally.
