Social Change and Education in Greece

A Study in Class Struggle Dynamics

S. Themelis

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780230338227
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137108616
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Education General
• Index: Social Sciences

Aims to inform students, scholars, and educators about the complex processes and factors that promote or impede education's potential to enhance individual advancement within the socioeconomic structure of a late-industrialized country within the context of modern capitalism. 

Appendix 1: The Major Political, Economic, and Social Events in Greece, 1936–2011

Appendix 2: The Register

Each unit on the Register consists of a household. New entries are created only when a male becomes the head of a household, that is, upon marriage. Married females are registered in their husband’s unit, while those individuals who emigrate remain on the Register for as long as they are registered to vote in the national and local elections in Protopi (instead of them registering in their new place of residence). Immigrants from other parts of Greece who do not vote in Protopi (that is to say, those who live in Protopi but vote in their place of origin) are not included in the Register. This is crucial as the size of the electorate determines the amount of money a municipality receives from the central government. Some of the immigrants from other countries, such as ethnic Greeks from Albania, were only granted voting rights in the mid- or late nineties; hence, they were not included in the Register at the time of data collection (except for a few females who were married to a man who lives and votes in Protopi). The first entries date back to the early twentieth century. As of 2007, an estimated 2,000–3,000 individuals lived permanently in Protopi but voted in other places. As such, they were not included in the Register, leaving approximately 5,000 individuals in its records. For most of the twentieth century, the Register was not regularly updated, and the information it contained was elementary and often imprecise. While the Register was more or less an accurate source of information about birth dates, family names, and size, it was less reliable in respect of occupations, as it only provided the occupation of the male, head of the household at the time of registration, which was fairly out of date. Moreover, information about geographical mobility was limited, and usually restricted to emigration abroad, leaving information on emigration to other parts of Greece an unknown. Multiple movements were not recorded and information about all members of the household was insufficient and outdated, compromising further the accuracy of the data set. Finally, educational attainment was not recorded nor was ethnic identity. While the information acquired from the Register was invaluable in forming a directory of the residents in Protopi, the shortcomings identified above, namely insufficient or inaccurate information on occupation, education, ethnic group membership, and migration, could seriously inhibit the conduct of the survey.

As a result, alternative sources were utilized in order to fill in these gaps. As is the case with most conventional surveys, the methods of data collection for this one were contingent upon the resources available. Unlike conventional surveys, though, this study relied for a large part of its data collection on “key informants” who are embedded in the local community. This somewhat “unconventional” approach was preferable to more traditional ones within the given context, for multiple reasons. First, because a small number of key informants, who knew the area and its people well, could provide more information than a much larger number of individuals. Second, my understanding of the cultural context of Protopi offered me insights into how best to approach respondents and collect data. In this vein, it would have been inappropriate to contact a large number of individuals in a traditional “survey-like” manner, which typically relies on the administering of questionnaires. This conventional approach does not allow for rapport to be established between researcher and participants and treats individuals as mere information providers. Such detachment clashes both with the values of the transformative–emancipatory approach and with the cultural context in Protopi. More specifically, the process of data collection for the survey was part of the overall research process, which invested a lot in establishing contacts and “learning” the local codes and values. Although, administering questionnaires could have been less time consuming than obtaining the essential information through the Register and key informants, it would have sat at odds with the local codes and values. Hence, in the local context, people are accustomed to one-to-one, personalized contacts in a way that collecting data through survey questionnaires on behalf of someone else does not allow. In addition, standardized questionnaires are easier to code and analyze, thus are more sensitive and effective to the needs of the researcher. By contrast, my approach needed to be more sensitive to the needs of the community and the informants. Third, giving to some selected individuals the role of the key informant was similar to granting them with some special role, with special recognition. This recognition derives from their role in the community and was not arbitrarily attributed by me. At the feasibility stage of the research, various residents pointed me to “important others,” who were widely perceived as the most knowledgeable and suitable contacts for my research. This allowed them to talk to me about many community issues, with the “unspoken” albeit warranted consent of the community. Given the large interplay between the private and public sphere in such communities, I was fully aware that my interactions with key informants could become known to other locals. Hence, in order to preclude any possibility of upsetting any individuals by unauthorized disclosure of their personal information by someone else, I adhered to two further principles. First, key informants were only asked about people with whom they had a close relationship, especially about their family members and people they had close ties with in their residential communities. Given the key role of family, generally, in Greece and, specifically, in Protopi (see chapters 7–9), providing information on one’s relatives is not perceived as a violation of data protection, but a legitimate practice in contexts where “dense networks” and personalized relations prevail. Second, I asked key informants to provide information that was in the “public domain,” that is to say about occupation, education, and emigration, rather than strictly personal information. In particular, I made it clear to them that I was interested in the occupations their relatives had and not in the reasons for changing them. Similarly, I left as little room for ambiguity as possible about my interests. For example, that I was interested in the level of education of people they knew and not their educational performance, and so on.

Despite this reciprocal trust between me and the key informants, the accuracy of the information obtained and potential bias in the data collected (either with the aim to distort or to conceal information from the researcher) had yet to be determined. Hence, although different key informants approached the issues at hand in a different manner, the responses they gave could not suffice to classify any of them as unreliable or biased. In other words, while all of them engaged with the research process in different ways, the overall “pattern” of their responses was consistent, thus not raising issues of reliability of the information obtained. It was thus noticed that where information was missing, this had to do with the informants’ lack of knowledge rather than any intention on their part to misinform me. In other words, there was no evidence of distortion of the data collected nor any systematic bias.

Each time new data were collected, existing information was cross-checked again in order to identify any inconsistencies or bias from the information collected from the key informants. It emerged that inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and gaps were no more frequent or important than one would expect. Thus, key informants in the older age-group were not always able to recollect information about people in the youngest generation as the latter had entered different occupational and social groups and were very mobile (both occupationally and geographically). In this way (through the combined use of the Register and the information obtained from the key informants), the educational and occupational information concerning a large number of households was acquired. In the majority of cases, the main occupation was recorded at the age of 35 years. However, for many participants, their secondary, parallel, and supplementary occupations were also recorded. Regarding education, the latest qualification obtained or the completed formal education stage was recorded separately. In terms of geographical movements, it was important to know the duration and the place of emigration (e.g., abroad or within Greece, and, if known, the exact destination). In case individuals did not return to Protopi, they were removed from the data set. While this strategy allowed me to obtain crucial information without risking my relationship with the participants or imperiling the subsequent phases of the research, there was still the issue of ethnic group membership to be resolved.

This type of information was obtained through three key informants with whom a long, faithful relationship preceded the research. Though most of the locals, especially the older ones, knew all the Roma by their surnames and the areas where they lived, it was essential for me to verify that those broadly identified as Roma were indeed members of this group. Therefore, the three key informants were contacted separately, and they all provided the same information. However, this approach is not entirely unproblematic. As Mertens warned (1998, p. 88), “bias can result when the method of determining racial or ethnic identity does not adequately address the complexities of the situation.” This is also echoed in Stanfield’s (1993) query: “How do we conceptualize identity issues in race and ethnicity research that go beyond reified, simplistic stereotyping?”

Although this research did not aim to delve into issues of construction of difference, it nevertheless took pertinent issues to classifying different ethnic identities seriously as they could result in sampling and interpretation bias, and ultimately weaken the research outcome. Thus, I also spoke to Roma informants about the identification of the different ethnic groups. In addition, the qualitative interviews offered testimony to ethnic identification. It is recognized that issues of “hetero-” or “self-” designation are hard to resolve once and for all, in particular with reference to Roma groups, chiefly because they are entrenched in the mode of socioeconomic organization, which produces the prevailing power relations and determines the value, context, and importance of these differences. Nevertheless, “[d]iscontinuing such research based on the rationale that our understanding of race, gender, and disability is limited needs to be weighed against the benefit associated with revealing inequalities in resources and outcomes in education, psychology, and the broader society” (Mertens, 1998, p. 90).

After all the information from the Registry and other sources had been recorded, I sought to verify as much of it as possible. This was achieved through the use of the material obtained from the qualitative interviews given that they elicited information about the main areas of interest of the survey research (e.g., education, occupation, geographical movements). Apart from data validation, this procedure led to a further improvement in the accuracy and breadth of the information obtained from the Electoral Register and the key informants.

Appendix 3: Quantitative Data Analysis

After all necessary information was copied from the Register and it was updated, complemented, and expanded with the assistance of the key informants, I transferred it onto SPSS software for quantitative data analysis (stage one of the data analysis). Initially, I created 15 variables and I input all the cases, 2,318 from a population of approximately 5,000, onto the database. Subsequently, a large number of these cases were removed, which left 1,358 cases.

Once this stage (stage one) of the data analysis was completed I proceeded to the next one, which involved the cleaning of the database (stage two). All cases that did not contain information for a large number of variables were dropped. Furthermore, I checked a large number of cases against the data set to make sure that no error entries were input and, if so, that there was no systematic error during the data entry. This resulted in a further elimination of approximately 50 cases.

The next stage, stage three, consisted of running frequencies and cross-tabulations to determine the characteristics of the sample and to obtain distributions that mattered to the exploration of the research questions (such as, the gender, ethnicity, and age-group distribution) (Table A1).

These 1,248 cases produced a representative sample of Protopi in relation to most key areas of interests. Hence, the proportion of males and females in my sample was similar to that in Protopi (approximately 50 percent in each group). Roma people were overrepresented in my sample (22 percent) in comparison with their actual proportion in Protopi (approximately 10 percent). However, the proportion of the non-Roma people in my sample (78 percent) was similar to that in Protopi, given that other groups, such as Albanian immigrants, were not included in my sample. Finally, 25 percent of the obtained sample were in the older age-group, 45 percent in the middle, and 30 percent in the younger. Although, the middle age-group appears to be more represented than the other two, the latter were large enough to allow for limited sample bias to occur.

Table A1   Survey sample (by gender, generation, and ethnicity) (N = 1,248)

Notes

2 Social Mobility: Issues, Trends, and Critique

1. These are not the only ways of exploring social mobility. Loury et al. (2005) delineate two further approaches both of which come from the field of ethnic minorities studies. The first one “sees social mobility in terms of ‘recognition’ and social citizenship—that is, in the degree to which individuals are affirmed by others as being equal partners in the community” (Loury et al., 2005, p. 2). This approach pays emphasis, on the one hand, to the gap between labor market success and, on the other, social equality. Hence, while the former might be achieved by a specific minority group, the latter might not follow suit. This approach then sees social mobility “less in terms of classes moving in a labor market hierarchy, and more in terms of racially and ethnically defined groups operating within a hierarchical system of social statuses” (Loury et al., 2005, p. 2). The second approach is termed as the “political” school of social mobility study (Loury et al., 2005). Here the focus is on “the capacity of groups to organize for collective action and to significantly influence the institutions that affect them” (Loury et al., 2005, p. 2). Individuals from minority groups are viewed as outsiders to social institutions that are significant in enhancing social mobility and as ha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part   I
• Part   II
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: The Major Political, Economic, and Social Events in Greece, 1936–2011
• Appendix 2: The Register
• Appendix 3: Quantitative Data Analysis
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index