With increased globalisation and changing demographics, if Europe wants to remain socially stable, it will need to successfully integrate migrants into its society. Immigration is a growing and permanent part of the EU future: thus integration of immigrants into society has become a major concern for policy-makers in Europe. Education emerges as a key aspect in integration policies – both at the EU and at the national level – and it needs to be managed fairly for everyone who lives in the EU. Even as a result of the refugee crisis, issues of educational provision for students with an immigrant background have come more strongly to the fore in these years.

Some reports highlight the still existing gap between native-born and foreign-born students when it comes to “educational poverty”. Even as regard economic outlooks, many expectations could be directed towards the educational system, which could boost future life chances of second-generation immigrants. In this sense, it is crucial that the EU Member States need to provide a comprehensive cultural integration to all the people who they have accepted: integration of migrants is beneficial both receiving states and for migrants itself.

European countries have differing views on the most appropriate strategies to achieve the so-called cultural integration. This aspect has a direct effect on the behavior of immigrants towards the new country, in particular on how these immigrants want to be integrated. We can say that immigrants often have a relationship with at least two cultures,  their ethnic cultural background and the majority culture in the country where they decide to live: certain countries consider it to be a successful integration policy when immigrants leave their cultural background and are “assimilated” into the new culture; other countries consider that a successful “direct” integration policy is that immigrants can keep their original culture while also accepting the new culture.

We can consider that accepting a new culture is an aspect strictly connected with the concept of migration and does not mean that migrants and refugees have to water down their culture. Thus, the challenge of  a concrete intercultural approach in the European school systems lies in a clear education policy – at the state or at the EU level –  establishing which are the values and the fundamental principles that need to be transferred at schools as they represent  the key foundation of a society. In doing this, some issues of cultural conflict could arise, but the right approach should be the enriching one, with migrants keeping their original culture while respecting and learning the new culture. Integration through the educational system is a crucial task on which both national politicians and  migrants have to work in a constructive manner.

Investing in education seems to be an effective and efficient strategy to prevent future social risks: essential to integration is the access to gainful employment  and avoiding the risk of social exclusion, which is one of the biggest threats for the EU, even at security level. Unfortunately, in this regard, Europe’s power to integrate and eventually assimilate its immigrants is nowadays weakened by a weak job market.