Conceptualizations and Enactments of Precariousness and Interculturality in Multicultural Schools and Educational Policies in Chile

Abstract

ABSTRACT There is an increasing demand to address interculturality in schools due to increasing global mobility at an institutional and practical levels. However, issues of identity and language commodification seem to hinder these processes in communities that have been historically and precariously minoritized such as indigenous and immigrant children. Hence, this embedded mixed-methods study analyses how interculturality is conceptualized, implemented, and experienced 1) in the National Policy for Foreign Students (2018-2022) (PNM); and 2) by six EFL teachers working in vulnerable multicultural educational contexts in Chile. First, the PNM document is analyzed following a corpus-assisted approach to critical discourse analysis. Then, the interviews were analyzed following a grounded approach to thematic coding. Results show a clear dichotomy between ontological and epistemological understanding of interculturality in which schools attempt to promote the critical coexistence of various cultures among their students and communities despite the precariousness they face and the lack of an intersectional understating of interculturality in the PNM.

Keywords

• Interculturality
• immigration
• social exclusion
• language commodification
• education