Educación y migración transfronteriza en el norte de Chile: Procesos de inclusión y exclusión de estudiantes migrantes peruanos y bolivianos en las escuelas de la región de Arica y Parinacota

In the context of cultural diversity of the school system of the region of Arica and Parinacota, Northern Chile, the present research has as general objectives to analyze and explore the processes of inclusion and exclusion that Peruvian and Bolivian migrant students live in urban and rural schools. rural It is inferred that the school system is still conceived under the assumption of the existence of an imagined community sustained in historical Chileanizing models, emphasizing stereotypes of war and economic superiority. Regarding this, little attention is paid to the learning needs of non-national students from public policy, excluding culturally distinct students, by assimilating all and all into classrooms saturated with nationalist symbols and content.

In methodological terms, we adopted a qualitative strategy that raised in-depth interviews with teachers, parents and families. Having as preliminary results the suggestion of a curricular approach that can transmit contents and forms of knowledge that help to displace ethnic and cultural prejudices, which have caused that several generations of Chileans consider immigrants as inferior. There lies the importance of the school to generate an intercultural educational project that promotes processes of exchange, interaction and cooperation between the different cultural identities present in the school.

In general, the results show aspects that are observed in the national and international literature, the processes of arrival of migrants to school are conditioned by the situation of labor segregation of their parents who see in the public school the opportunity for their children they are educated and they see aspects of the school that help them pay for their living expenses such as lunch and materials provided by the State. Given their socio-economic status, their salaries are low because they preferentially work in agriculture, services or construction. Peruvians mostly locate their children in marginal urban schools and Bolivians in rural schools. This is manifested in a personal and family integration that is basically conditioned by family ties and where their relationship with the school is limited to participating only in proxy meetings, so the inclusion processes have practical results excluding their situation of foreigners.

Regarding public policies in teachers, these are observed in a fairly elaborate discourse of inclusion that in practice is not observed in schools, which determines that the processes of exclusion start from the institutional framework, although teachers do everything to integrate them, recognize their deficiencies in terms of attention to diversity, both empowered and teachers deny that there are discriminations that stress the school environment, however students say that fundamentally there is racism for skin color and discrimination for nationality and for being indigenous , which leads to teasing, insults and even beatings by their Chilean counterparts.