La atención a la diversidad cultural en Cataluña: exclusión, segregación e interculturalidad

Authors

Jordi Garreta BochacaSalto de línea Universidad de Lleida. Departamento de Geografía y Sociología. Lleida, España.

DOI

10.4438/1988-592X-RE-2011-355-022

Abstract

Attention to cultural diversity in Catalonia: exclusion, segregation and inter-culturality

Cultural diversity has increased notably in Spanish schools thanks to the arrival of immigrantorigin pupils. This, plus the recommendations of the European Union and Spain’s regional governments to take cultural differences into consideration, has contributed to the appearance of the inter-cultural discourse. This article presents the evolution that has led to the current dominant discourse, based on an empirical study and analysis of the documentation published by the Catalan government (the Generalitat) on integration policies and the schooling of immigrants and in-depth interviews with politicians and experts from the different levels of the Catalan administration. From this, the conclusion has been drawn that there have been three stages in the integration policy for immigrants in Catalonia: a first moment of mere observation of the phenomenon; a second stage in which, without abandoning this observation, emphasis is placed on the administration’s vertical and horizontal organization in order to work in a co-ordinated manner on a phenomenon that is beginning to arouse concern; and a third, in which, without abandoning the necessary observation and organization, emphasis is placed on intervention. These phases form the framework of what has taken place at an educational level in which we observe the difficulty of translating the inter-cultural discourse into everyday practice in schools, the dominance of the belief that intercultural education (in contrast to what this implies) is a question to be worked on by the centres with immigrant children and, given the pressure in the classroom (due to the rise in pupil numbers, ongoing enrolment, etc.), a return to potentially segregationist practices that remind us of policies implemented years ago to school gypsies. Without denying the progress made since the mid 1990s, it is necessary to increase efforts to incorporate immigrant-origin pupils into schools and classrooms in Catalonia.

Keywords

Cultural diversity, immigration, gypsies, policies to incorporate immigration, inter-cultural education, pupil segregation, Autonomous Region of Catalonia.