The increase of immigration in Latin America has become an unprecedented stressor in most public educational systems in the region, particularly when dealing with students who do not speak the primary language. In Chile, Haitians correspond to the largest immigrant community whose first language is not Spanish (INE, 2020, 12 March) and they are one of the most discriminated communities in terms of their race, culture, language, and socio-economic status. While their integration at (already underfunded and socio-economically vulnerable) schools is a challenge in itself, they also deal with an institutionalized tendency towards cultural and linguistic assimilation (Perez-Arredondo et al., forthcoming) and a language valuation system that positions English as the main secondary language they should learn (Rodríguez-Izquierdo et al., 2020).
In this context, this study sets to analyse how Haitian students' identities are discursively constructed and attributed by their parents, EFL teachers, and their own peer-interactions in the classroom to unveil their attitudes and perceptions of their learning processes and linguistic development in multicultural contexts. To this end, I triangulated three datasets gathered at five different schools in the capital of Chile which concentrate the highest number of enrolled Haitian students in the country. Hence, 5 interviews to EFL teachers, 10 interviews to Haitian parents, and 70 pedagogical hours of classroom observation were collected, transcribed, and analised using Wodak's framework for the analysis of (national) identity (Wodak et al., 2009; Reisigl & Wodak, 2016).
Results evidence that misconceptions about these students tend to be legitimized through fallacies, framing and legitimation strategies (van Leeuwen, 2008) to both maintain and justify their identities and experiences in relation to an outgroup. It is also possible to identify that age is relevant in these narratives as parents and teachers make a distinction between their students/children and the adults. Therefore, results also highlight the importance of undertaking an intersectional approach to this kind of studies to fully appreciate the complex and interdependent semiotic processes at play in mutlicultural educational contexts.
References
INE (2020, 12 Marzo). Según estimaciones, la cantidad de personas extranjeras residentes habituales en Chile bordea los 1,5 millones al 31 de diciembre de 2019. INE. https://bit.ly/3wHB0l1
Perez-Arredondo, C., Calderón-López, M., & Arenas-Torres, F. (Forthcoming). Conceptualizations and enactments of precariousness and interculturality in multicultural schools and educational policies in Chile. Manuscript under review.
Reisigl, M. & Wodak, R. (2016). The discourse-historical approach. En R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Studies (pp. 23-61). Sage.
Rodríguez-Izquierdo, R., González Falcón, I. & Goenechea Permisán, C. (2020). Teacher beliefs and approaches to linguistic diversity. Spanish as a second language in the inclusion of immigrant students. Teaching and Teacher Education, 90, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2020.103035
Wodak, R., de Cillia, R., Reisigl, M. & Liebhart, K. (2009). The discursive construction of national identity (2nd ed.). Edinburgh University Press.
van Leeuwen, T. (2008). Discourse and practice: New tools for critical discourse analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
