The Inclusion of Recent Migrant Students in the Chilean School Context: Discursive Construction of Different Social Actors in Five Chilean Public Schools

Abstract

This study aims to explore the discursive construction of the recent migrant students’ inclusion through different social actors interviewed in five Chilean public schools. The qualitative methodology incorporates the analytical tools of the ‘Appraisal Model’, the ‘Affiliation Environment’ concept of the ‘Affiliation Theory’, and the categories of strategies and representation of social actors taken from ‘Critical Discourse Studies’. The corpus comprises 17 interviews, and the analysis was conducted in two phases. A first descriptive phase that included a microanalysis of resources with which different social actors have constructed their respective points of view. Then an interpretative phase where alignment and misalignment were evaluated as social practices in the inclusion of recent immigrants in the Chilean school system. Preliminary results show that migrants are represented through ‘collectivization’, while teachers and sociocultural mediators are represented by an ‘expert authority’. In addition, the findings reveal different perspectives of alignment or misalignment of social actors regarding migrant students and their parents, considering them as something beneficial or as objects of negative discrimination. All social actors in the different schools legitimize the work of sociocultural mediators and the enrichment of intercultural dialogue. The findings of this study could be complemented with other studies and may prove useful to create the basis for drawing out guidelines for migrant policy.