Lausanne’s first “classes d’accueil” were created in 1988. Until then, non-French-speaking students, mainly Italian, Portuguese or Spanish, had the opportunity to take intensive French courses in an attempt to catch up with Swiss students. But with the diversification of the migrant population and the influx of asylum seekers, the public education system realized that the problem of foreigners was no longer limited to language. On the one hand, the level of education of the pupils was getting lower and lower (some children had never even been to school before coming to Switzerland), and on the other, they had sometimes suffered such traumas that it was necessary to be able to heal their wounds before teaching them grammar.

A melting pot of cultures, these classes bring together children of very different languages, faiths, ages and levels of education. As a result, class sizes rarely exceed a dozen, and teaching is slower, more personalized, and more focused on the study of French. What’s more – as crises and conflicts inevitably do – new students are introduced to the class during the year, adding to the teachers’ workload. For Bernard Courvoisier, dean of Lausanne’s thirteen reception classes, “teachers willing to take on this work must realize that it goes far beyond pedagogy. It’s social work.

In principle, the child stays in the reception class for at least a year before being able to return to a “normal” class. Students who arrive in Switzerland at the age of 13 or 14 often don’t have time to catch up with the level of a “terminale” before the end of their compulsory schooling. Their integration into the educational system proves extremely difficult. In an increasingly selective school system, access to higher education or suitable vocational training seems almost impossible. So, in the best of cases, they hope to find, with the support of their teacher, a quick and precarious internship that will enable them to work for a miserable wage at jobs that are not highly prized by the Swiss.

In “Classe d’accueil”, filmmaker Fernand Melgar succeeds in conveying a nuanced picture of the inner and outer insecurities of these young “immigrants”; he does so without commentary, by giving a voice to those concerned. It captures both happy and melancholy moments in the lives of these young people, touching on the register of emotions; it raises many questions, notably about the identity of young people, Switzerland as a land of asylum, and xenophobia. The people interviewed in the film express themselves freely on often delicate themes. This is also true of the local resident who, herself French, complains about the large number of foreigners in her town. Her comments are representative for many Swiss people, who have different attitudes depending on the origin of the refugees. Bruno, the young Portuguese, finds it easier to be accepted than Amir from Bosnia, but the fears about the future are the same for both.