Education in Dispute: Migration, Racialization, and Gender in Santiago, Chile

Abstract

In a context of growing sociocultural, migration, and gender and sexual diversity in Santiago, Chile, schools face the challenge of addressing inequalities linked to racism, xenophobia, and patriarchy, which are often rendered invisible in school life. Recent studies have warned that discourses of inclusion coexist with practices that reproduce hierarchies and everyday forms of exclusion. The article describes school practices, experiences, and discourses to examine how the curriculum, regulations, and pedagogical relations reproduce inequalities linked to nationality, racialization, and gender in two public elementary schools. The study adopted a qualitative methodology with an ethnography-in-education research design. Institutional documents were analyzed and observations were carried out in classrooms and other school settings, in addition to 33 in-depth interviews with administrative staff, teachers, and support professionals during 2024-2025. The analysis used thematic coding. The findings revealed that the official and hidden curriculum, institutional norms, and interpersonal relationships reproduce hierarchies that regulate legitimacy and belonging in schools. At the same time, teacher and student strategies emerged that open up spaces of resistance. The study provides empirical evidence and a critical analysis of schools as contested spaces, offering insights to advance toward antiracist, intersectional feminist, and decolonial approaches.