Seminar talk: Educational Aspects of Integration of Bulgarian Immigrants' Children into the Greek Society

The integration of Bulgarian immigrants and their children into Greek society may be achieved easily through the continuing cultural interaction of neighboring peoples. This presentation will introduce a current research aiming at building a cultural integration model for children based on the similarities between Greek and Bulgarian verbal folklore. The popular folk-tales, proverbs and sayings of Bulgaria and Greece could play a unifying part; because of many factors (mostly having to do with the geographical proximity of the two countries), there are lots of similarities to be found in the above folk genres. Additionally, because of their short size and ease of use, proverbs and sayings remain in use during everyday speech even when people have moved outside their home country.

Dr. Rozalina Engels-Kritidis is an assistant professor of pedagogy at the Faculty of Primary and Pre-school Education of Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski". Her scientific interests are mainly in the field of pre-school education theory, as well as language acquisitino and speech development. Her current research is in the field of cultural integration of Bulgarian immigrants’ children into the accepting societies. Presently she is at CEU as a visiting research fellow.