National-Ethnic Identifications and Education: Achievements and Dilemmas of the Intercultural Perspective in Argentina

• In Event: 64.022 - Education and Interculturality Across the Americas: Achievements and Challenges in an Ongoing Conversation

Abstract

I share a panoramic view from Argentina and illustrate the debate from the research I carry out, making visible the contributions of ethnography to the pedagogical field.
Research has shown multiple meanings with which interculturality is appropriate, as well as obvious or subtle obstacles in the construction of a democratizing position. This becomes visible in the restricted form of conceiving diversity and ethnic and national identifications; in the difficulties to respond to demands linked to processes of ethnogenesis, mobility and transnationality; in the coexistence of contradictory school mandates; in the limits to revert subordinate forms of inclusion of indigenous and migrant population, which affect the drop in enrollment between educational levels and hinder long school trajectories; in the unequal relationship between school knowledge and other formative experiences.
I return to some of those concerns, from field work with migrant population from rural regions of Bolivia, in a popular neighborhood of Buenos Aires.
The notion of intercultural life experiences is recovered, with the intention of critically revising the culturalist practices that tend to enclose the subjects in the partiality of some attributes. I seek to discuss the conceptual frameworks inscribed in public policies that shape state forms of identity regulation, making visible the daily dilemmas and new challenges in local school spaces.

Author

• María Laura Diez, Conicet/UBA/Unipe, GT Educación e Interculturalidad CLACSO