Interculturalidad: un modelo para la gestión de la diversidad en la escuela producto de los procesos migratorios.Análisis desde la práctica etnográfica

Abstract

This doctoral thesis encompasses ethnographic research and establishes the theoretical study objective of demonstrating the construction processes of difference and the implementation of public policies for diversity management in schools that state they are intercultural. Within the framework of this ethnographic research, fieldwork has been undertaken in a formal educational setting, using research techniques such as participant observation, semi-structured interviews, discussion groups and personal accounts. The implementation of these research techniques based on interview and observation protocols, in addition to a field journal, has given rise to the production of different experimental materials. The data produced in this way, together with the narrative-type theoretical review undertaken within the framework of this text, have constituted the basis for developing different analyses and discussions with reference to the study aims proposed. The aforementioned theoretical review has been undertaken based on the concept of interculturality, its theoretical foundations, educational models stated as intercultural, and the rhetoric from which this concept has been defined. The review has given rise to the definition of a context in which ‘interculturality’, ‘education’ and ‘migrations’ are closely intertwined terms, as far as public policies are concerned. In relation to this, this doctoral thesis studies how the intercultural paradigm arises in Spain, in which areas it has been useful for the production of public policies, and in relation to which social phenomena. The work undertaken regarding these methodological and theoretical questions serves as a means by which to propose an investigation of the ways in which interculturality has been implemented in Spain, as a model for managing diversity in schools resulting from migratory processes. This question leads us to propose how interculturality, as a paradigm, acts as an assimilationist educational model on the margins of modernity, and whose function is to integrate the migrant population by way of schooling, into an idea of a nationally homogeneous State, principally in terms of linguistic matters. We can therefore state that interculturality in Spain is defined in terms of functional interculturality.