The Pontian family from the former USSR in Greece : a comparative study

Abstract

The aim of the present comparative study is to find out whether there are any differences in self-esteem between Pontian and Greek students at the 6th Grade level. Pontians are a particular type of immigrant in the sense that they are in fact ‘re-patriated’: they are Greeks whose ancestors lived around Pontos in the Black Sea area during the seventh century before Christ. They moved to the interior of the ex-Soviet Union in 1916, and then returned to Greece in 1986. Although Pontians share a common history, religion, and several cultural elements with the Greeks, ‘natives’ regard them as ‘foreigners’ and as a result they are a marginalized population in Greece. This study set out to analyse the self-concept of a total sample of 1558 students attending 6th Grade. 552 of these students were Pontian immigrants, 864 were native Greeks while 172 were Pontian natives. The results of the present research lead us to conclude that there is a statistically significant difference in the self-concept between the Pontian and Greek population. It also seems that the marginalized immigrant family, whether belonging to the same ethnic group or not, comprises a population at risk as far as the self-concept of the children is concerned.