Abstract
To move from one's native country to another and sometimes very faraway country is an experience that has many aspects to it that will be unfamiliar to and oftentimes hard to imagine for the majority population. Children who go through this process often suffer because they have been torn from their social background and taken away from their wider family and friends and then arrive in an environment in which it is diffi cult for them to orientate themselves at fi rst and where they moreover have to learn the language of their host country, as not knowing the language can pose a major barrier to their integration process.
A very important role in the process of integrating migrant children into society is played by schools, not only in the sense of their role as mediators of knowledge but also as the institutions in which our attitudes towards other people are shaped and the norms, values, traditions, and customs of our society are formed. We need to ask, however, how students from a non-Czech background attending Czech basic schools feel.
How do they experience the psycho-social climate of the classrooms in which they are being integrated? Does their position in the hierarchy of the classroom differ from that occupied by Czech students? In this study we attempt to fi nd answers to these and other questions. This publication can be regarded as one of the fi rst attempts to analyze the position of students from a foreign background in classrooms in the Czech educational system.