role of work

The role of work. The IES Pla d’en Boet, the school where our participants learn, is located in the suburbs; most families whose children come to this school are attached to the area because of their work. Some came to live here in their hope for work.

Finding workplace is primarily economic demand, but at the same time there are social or psychological expectations and effects attached to it. The jobs attained, adapting yourself to the community of your new workplace result in a new type of identity and gives you a chance for respect and integration.

Kids and the city

The kids and the city. “Our kids” know the city, and they are starting to use it. By all means, they gave a detailed description of it and enlightened us about the differences between certain parts of the town. They seemed to know the town quite well (it is quickly discoverable indeed), so their parents supposedly consider its different parts safe as they let their children get about alone, and with us. Coming from a big city Mataró seamed rather safe. The kids moved comfortably in the town, they acted as confident hosts, who “rule” the place, some of them showed us also their homes.

At the first conversation, we marked the places that children labelled as “good” and “bad” places as the possible scenes of the shots. The bad ones were the Cerdanyola and Rocafonda districts, the good ones were the centre, the main park the beach and the shopping centre (the last was not used in the film.) In the Rocafonda immigrants, prostitutes, drug addicts, and thieves live, therefore it is bad – told us the kids, who do not live in Rocafonda.

IES Pla d'en Boet 2

...According to Elvira, a lot of children come from rather poor families. The school – respectively the state – supports their education in various ways like offering grants, social support, or a programme for borrowing school-books. At the same time, her experience is that some families do not have the motivation, skills, know-how to go for this support. Many of the parents - who, in their new homes are left without the economical and emotional help of their wider families - work until 8 o’clock and therefore are not able to care enough about their children’s education, everyday problems outside the family. According to Elvira, many children are left alone, especially in terms of their promotion at school as parents are unable to pay attention to their development.
Only one third of parents attend the parent-teacher meetings.There are several schools in Mataró, the IES Pla d’en Boet is attended by a relatively larger number of immigrant children. As it is practically on the outskirts of the town, some children commute to the school from settlements in the neighbourhood.

Immigrant families come to the region especially because of work, but it happens that parents remain without job for a longer period of time. Children’s placement to schools is arranged by the local council, they distribute children registered at the council between schools keeping in mind that the proportion of children of diverse origin should be similar in each school. Newcomer immigrant children attend a “catch-up” class at least for a year to learn Catalan language. Children of Latin-American origin are integrated earlier to normal classes. The integration of Chinese children is the most difficult. According to Elvira, they need at least six years to learn the language.

Out of the thirteen children we chose, one was born in the Dominican Republic, one in Valencia and there were three or four who were born in Mataró but of non-Catalan origin. We did not asked children directly who saw themselves as Catalans, two of them mentioned it spontaneously. Being Catalan is an important element of identity even at this age – much more than data of origin. „I am much more Catalan than Spanish” – told us one of our participants, who proved to be of Andalusian origin, although (partly because of the large number of his hairdresser father) he is deeply integrated to the local community.

IES Pla d'en Boet

IES Pla d’en Boet. The fact that there were so many children interested in the project was due to the kids’ openness, the nature of the school and not least to Elvira Carrió, the enthusiastic teacher who introduced us in the classes. Elvira is organising drama classes in the after school hours, therefore she has a position a similar position in relation to the kids as we have, and knows them through personal relations.

The school our group is coming from is a public high school. According to locals, the level of public education in Catalonia is usually high. We made interviews with the mothers of two boys (Dani and Quim) in September, they were both satisfied with the school, although they were aware of the fact that the quality of the education in there is not very high. In their opinion – and the opinion of the teacher - this was partly due to the large number of pupils coming from non Catalan speaking, immigrant families, and their integration “pulls down” this level. The active fluctuation is also moderates development. Many immigrants look at Mataró, as a gate, where they start a new life. Later they leave to other places or back home. The subjective critique and the objective content might seem controversial, but there is no mistake: the newcomer families do not want to win anything, but to gain stability, to get on in life in confidence. The public school helps this process, gives a bases for the kids – not more. It is not a segregated school, only one that gives enough to all youngsters to start life, find a job, although does not make further studies easy. Only less than the half of the children go on to higher education. Most families are interested in sending their children to work, therefore after finishing school most of them attends a vocational training or a course that is financed by the state.