Potentials and challenges for refugee/ immigrants inclusion through participating in musicking in educational context

This paper will address the potential and challenges for/to social and cultural inclusion that emerges from the implementation of a music-educational programme in a refugee camp and an urban facility involving refugees and immigrants as students and cultural mediators, and Greek and Europeans as teachers and managers of the programme. The specific programme is informed by the international experience circulated among its branches, and its collaborations with music-educational institutions, as well as the participants’ active agency and constant negotiations. Moreover, aiming at the refugees’ and immigrants “inclusion” and “integration” in Greek/ European society, it deals with a crucial and urgent social and humanitarian issue. In order for the alleged goal to be achieved, certain appropriations in the repertory and the teaching process are employed, challenging our understandings of embedded power-relationships, encounters, (potential for) inclusion. The discussion is based on the short-term fieldwork research for my MA Thesis. It draws on DeNora’s arguing for the potential of music to form the aesthetic dimension of human agency (2004), Turino’s arguing for the fostering of a common identity to the participants in a collective music performance (2008), as well as Small’s perception of musicking as embedded in the real and ideal relationships (1998).