When school meets the Other: intercultural policies in the Basque inclusive school

ABSTRACT

Gatti, Irazuzta and Martinez address the intercultural public policies implemented in the education system of the Autonomous Region of the Basque Country (Spain). Focusing on the education system allows them to reconstruct the historicity of identity-alterity production in a region in which language has been central for the establishment of ethnic frontiers. More specifically, they examine the implementation of these policies in three pre-school and primary educational institutions in a multicultural neighbourhood of the city of Bilbao. They look at Euskara—the Basque language—as a key element of the us-them distinction. The various education models regarding language and the teaching in/of Euskara or Spanish pave the way for the specialization and spatialization of the schools analysed. ‘Integration’ policies are implemented in ethnically marked schools only, based on a rhetoric of interculturality that assumes that any ‘racial or ethnic discrimination’ can be overcome through knowledge of the Other. Moreover, the assessment of public policies through ‘interculturality figures and best practice’ developed to address the so-called ‘immigration issue’ promotes a protectionist intervention on behalf of the assumed social vulnerabilities of immigrant schoolchildren and their families, which are read as ‘problematic characteristics’. The article argues that, as a result of the approach based on the social conditions of immigrant children and their families in the Basque Country, the race issue evaporates.

KEYWORDS:

• alterity
• Basque Country
• Euskara
• identity
• integration and intercultural policies
• Other
• school

Notes

1 Alfonso Pérez-Agote, El nacionalismo vasco a la salida del franquismo (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas 1987).

2 Although, under the nationalist ideology of the region, the ‘internal’ nature of this migration is debatable, the term ‘internal migrations’ refers to migrant flows from other regions within the Spanish territory arriving in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, primarily Bilbao and its surrounding area, from 1950 to 1975. Almost half a million migrants arrived in the Basque Country during the region’s industrial development period. Marta Luxán, ‘Demographic growth and migration’, in Gabriel Gatti, Ignacio Irazuzta and Iñaki Martínez de Albeniz (eds), Basque Society: Structures, Institutions, and Contemporary Life, trans. from the Spanish by Cameron J. Watson (Reno, NV: Centre for Basque Studies, University of Nevada 2005), 58–73.

3 François Dubet, ‘Crisis de la transmisión y declive de la institución’, Política y Sociedad, vol. 47, no. 2, 2010, 15–25; Ander Gurrutxaga Abad and Alfonso Unceta Satrústegui, ‘La función distributiva de la educación: Un análisis aplicado al País Vasco’, Política y Sociedad, vol. 47, no. 2, 2010, 103–20.

4 Gabriel Gatti, Identidades débiles: Una propuesta teórica aplicada al estudio de la identidad en el País Vasco (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas 2007); Ignacio Irazuzta and María Martínez, ‘Presentación. De la identidad a la vulnerabilidad: La cuestión de la inmigración y las irrupciones en el nosotros’, in Ignacio Irazuzta and María Martínez (eds), De la identidad a la vulnerabilidad: Alteridad e integración en el País Vasco contemporáneo (Barcelona: Bellaterra 2014), 9–37.

5 Ander Gurrutxaga Abad, La producción de la idea de nosotros: Somos porque estamos (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Servicio Central de Publicaciones del Gobierno Vasco 2005).

6 Gatti, Identidades débiles.

7 Gabriel Gatti and Daniel Muriel, ‘Historicity of the semantics and the discourse about ethnicity, nation-state and racism in the Basque Country’, in Centro de Estudios Sociais (CES) (ed.), Conceptual Guide: The Historicity of Grammars of Difference, Tolerance and (Anti)racism (Coimbra: CES 2010), 1–15.

8 Fredrik Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget 1969).

9 Eugenia Ramírez Goicoechea, De jóvenes y sus identidades: Socioantropología de la etnicidad en Euskadi (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas 1991), 124.

10 Irazuzta and Martínez, ‘Presentación. De la identidad a la vulnerabilidad’, 18–19. All translations, unless otherwise stated, are by the authors.

11 Gatti, Identidades débiles.

12 Begoña Abad, Javier Cerrato, Gabriel Gatti, Iñaki Martínez de Albéniz, Alfonso Pérez-Agote and Benjamín Tejerina, Institucionalización política y reencantamiento de la sociedad: Las transformaciones en el mundo nacionalista (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Servicio Central de Publicaciones del Gobierno Vasco 1999).

13 Gatti and Muriel, ‘Historicity of the semantics and the discourse about ethnicity, nation-state and racism in the Basque Country’; Gabriel Gatti and Daniel Muriel, ‘The management of Otherness beyond the state: integration policies and inclusive citizenship as a government paradigm in the Basque Country’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 37, no. 9, 2014, 1646–63; Daniel Muriel, ‘El gobierno de los “otros” en el País Vasco: Ciudadanía inclusiva y políticas de integración’, in Irazuzta and Martínez (eds), De la identidad a la vulnerabilidad, 39–69.

14 Gatti and Muriel, ‘The management of Otherness beyond the state’.

15 Abad, Cerrato, Gatti, Martínez de Albéniz, Pérez-Agote and Tejerina, Institucionalización política y reencantamiento de la sociedad.

16 Irazuzta and Martínez, ‘Presentación. De la identidad a la vulnerabilidad’, 20–1.

17 Most notable among these studies were the social statistics works by José Ignacio Ruiz de Olabuenaga, La lucha del euskara. Una encuesta básica: Conocimiento, uso, actitudes (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Gabinete de Prospecciones Sociológicas 1983), and by SIADECO, Conflicto lingüístico en Euskadi (Bilbao: Euskaltzaindia 1979); see also more theoretical works on nationalist identity as a construct, both in general—Alfonso Pérez-Agote, La reproducción del nacionalismo: El caso vasco (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas 1984); Pérez-Agote, El nacionalismo vasco a la salida del franquismo; Alfonso Pérez-Agote (ed.), Sociología del nacionalismo (Bilbao: Servicio Editorial de la Universidad del País Vasco 1989); and Ander Gurrutxaga, El código nacionalista vasco durante el franquismo (Barcelona: Anthropos 1985)—and on specific subjects, including language: Benjamín Tejerina Montaña, Nacionalismo y lengua: Los procesos de cambio lingüístico en el País Vasco (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas 1992); the education system: Jesús Arpal Poblador, Begoña Asúa and Pauli Dávila Balsera, Educación y sociedad en el País Vasco (San Sebastián: Txertoa 1983); and the Euskaldunization of adults: Gatti, Identidades débiles.

18 Gatti and Muriel, ‘Historicity of the semantics and the discourse about ethnicity, nation-state and racism in the Basque Country’, 7.

19 In 2013, 6.8 per cent of the population in the Basque Country was foreign, compared to 0.7 per cent in 1998, according to data from the Basque Immigration Observatory (see note 23).

20 The legacy of the race-based model of identity, which viewed community as homogeneous within borders defined by race, is thus reflected.

21 Departamento de Vivienda y Asuntos Sociales, Plan Vasco de Inmigración (2003–2005) (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Gobierno Vasco 2003), 21, available on the Ikuspegi–Observatorio Vasco de Inmigració website at www.ikuspegi.eus/documentos/legislacion/PLANVASCOINMIGRACION.pdf. Spain's Plan estratégico de ciudadanía e integración, 2007–2010 (Strategic Citizenship and Integration Plan 2007–10) similarly states: ‘As of the final decade of the twentieth century, with the arrival of more than three million foreign citizens in Spain, an intense process of change has materialized, turning a relatively homogeneous society into a diverse society, in which there is room for people of all origins, religions, cultures, and races’: Gobierno de España, Plan estratégico de ciudadanía e integración, 2007–2010 (Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales 2007), 11, available on the governmental Portal de Inmigración website at http://extranjeros.empleo.gob.es/es/Programas_Integracion/Plan_estrategico/pdf/PECIDEF180407.pdf (both sites viewed 8 December 2016).

22 For a critical view of racism as a more or less normalized expression of the arrival of immigrant populations, see the excellent study by Enrique Santamaría, La incógnita del extraño: Una aproximación a la significación sociológica de la ‘inmigración no comunitaria’ (Barcelona: Anthropos 2002).

23 An example is the creation in 2003 of the Ikuspegi, or Basque Immigration Observatory, the result of a collaboration between the University of the Basque Country and the Basque government. In addition, between 2002 and 2003, the following programmes or services were created in the Basque Country the Immigration Forum; the Heldu programme, a legal aid service; and Biltzen, an intercultural mediation service.

24 Miguel Pajares, ‘Discriminación racial y políticas antidiscriminatorias’, in Sixto Garganté, Miguel Pajares, Lorenzo Cachón and Vera Egenberger, La discriminación racial: Propuestas para una legislación antidiscriminatoria en España (Barcelona: Icaria-Política 2005), 13–38 (13).

25 Émile Durkheim, Moral Education: A Study in the Theory and Application of the Sociology of Education, trans. from the French by Everett K. Wilson and Herman Schnurer (New York: Free Press 1961).

26 Dubet, ‘Crisis de la transmisión y declive de la institución’.

27 Gabriel Gatti, ‘The education system’, in Gatti, Irazuzta and Martínez de Albéniz (eds), Basque Society, 114–28.

28 Ibid.

29 ‘The concept of inclusive school involves, in practice, shifting the focal point of the educational response from focusing on students alone to focusing on the regular school context. In this way, the approach to education that was traditionally characterized by a separate and specialized methodology moves increasingly closer to regular education and challenges teachers by forcing them to adapt to the actual school conditions with their different educational needs. A change in school structure and organization must be implemented, as defined in international documents such as UNESCO's Inclusive School Handbook’: Departamento de Educación, Universidades e Investigación, Plan de acción para el desarrollo de una escuela vasca inclusiva: Eliminando barreras al aprendizaje y la participación. Documento de consulta (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Gobierno Vasco 2009), 14–15.

30 As segments of the interviews conducted are quoted throughout the text, for the purpose of clarity interviewees are coded according to the typology established. Thus, interviewees who work directly in schools are identified with the code ‘EEce’; government actors are identified with the code ‘EEg’; and intermediate respondents are identified with the code ‘EEi’.

31 There is a double typology applied across Spain that divides places of education into public and private institutions. A large number of private schools—whether state or regional—have established an agreement with the government to guarantee cost-free schooling based on the right to education. This is a uniquely private scheme, as almost 100 per cent of private schools operate under such an agreement, and nearly half of all Basque students are enrolled in these schools. Gurrutxaga and Unceta, ‘La función distributiva de la educación’, 110.

32 ‘Decreto 175/2007, de 16 de octubre, por el que se establece el currículo de la Educación Básica y se implanta en la Comunidad Autónoma del País Vasco’, Article 8, 4f, available on the Noticias Juridicas website at http://noticias.juridicas.com/base_datos/CCAA/pv-d175-2007.html#a8 (viewed 10 December 2016).

33 Gatti, ‘The education system’, 126.

34 Gurrutxaga and Unceta, ‘La función distributiva de la educación’.

35 See Michele Grigolo, Constanza Hermanin and Mathias Möschel, ‘Introduction: how does race “count” in fighting discrimination in Europe?’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 34, no. 10, 2011, 1635–47.

36 Beatriz Cavia, Gabriel Gatti, Iñaki Martínez de Albeniz and Andrés G. Seguel, ‘Crisis of the social and emergence of sociality in the new scenarios of identity: the San Francisco district of Bilbao’, Papeles del CEIC, no. 39, 2008, available on the CEIC (Centro de Estudios sobre la Identidad Colectiva) website at www.identidadcolectiva.es/pdf/39.pdf (accessed 10 December 2016).

37 Quoted in Alfonso Pérez-Agote, Benjamín Tejerina and Margarita Barañano (eds), Barrios multiculturales: Relaciones interétnicas en los barrios de San Francisco (Bilbao) y Embajadores/Lavapiés (Madrid) (Madrid: Trotta 2010).

38 Population censuses in Spain do not gather data according to ethnic origin, so it is not possible to establish precise figures for this group. Their ‘numbers’ in this neighbourhood, and in society in general, are more a social representation than an aggregate statistic.

39 According to data provided by the schools themselves, in the 2009–10 school year, foreign students amounted to 47.1 per cent of the student body in S1, 36.6 per cent in S2, and only 3.6 per cent in S3.

40 For instance, there are no official statistics for the Roma population in Spain and the Basque Country. Thus, the assertion that S1 has a high percentage of Roma students is based on accounts by interviewees, as well as on observations by the research team. The question of racial and ethnic quantification and its problems in Europe is addressed in three articles in the same special issue: Costanza Hermanin, ‘“Counts” in the Italian “nomad camps”: an incautious ethnic census of Roma’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 34, no. 10, 2011, 1731–50; Julie Ringelheim, ‘Ethnic categories and European human rights law’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 34, no. 10, 2011, 1682–96; and John Wrench, ‘Data on discrimination in EU countries: statistics, research and the drive for comparability’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 34, no. 10, 2011, 1715–30.

41 María Martínez, ‘La educación de los “otros”: Gestión de la diversidad y políticas interculturales en la escuela inclusiva vasca’, in Irazuzta and Martínez (eds), De la identidad a la vulnerabilidad, 71–111.

42 One of the government actors interviewed expressed this concern as follows: ‘We’re here so that some things don’t become imbalanced. I mean, the schools that are in a neighbourhood that has, for example, a 15 per cent foreign population, so that there is not an overrepresentation in the school’ (EEg-1).

43 Gurrutxaga and Unceta, ‘La función distributiva de la educación’; Nektaria Palaiologou and Daniel Faas, ‘How “intercultural” is education in Greece? Insights from policymakers and educators’, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, vol. 42, no. 4, 2012, 563–84.

44 Gatti and Muriel, ‘The management of otherness beyond the state’.

45 For a critical reflection on integration as a paradigm and interculturality as its strategy for action, see Silvia Maeso and Beatriz Cavia, ‘Esquivando el racismo: El paradigma de la “integración” en las sociedades europeas y vasca contemporáneas’, in Ignacio Irazuzta and María Martínez (eds), De la identidad a la vulnerabilidad, 151–93.

46 This definition of interculturality as ‘learning to live together’ is based on international norms (UNESCO) and state regulations, and is adopted by the Basque Department of Education in several documents, including Departamento de Educación, Universidades e Investigación, Plan estratégico de atención a la diversidad en el marco de una escuela inclusiva 2012–2016 (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Gobierno Vasco 2012), and Plan de atención educativa al alumnado inmigrante en el marco de la escuela inclusiva e intercultural 2012–2015 (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Gobierno Vasco 2012), both available on the Departamento de Educación website at www.hezkuntza.ejgv.euskadi.eus/contenidos/informacion/dig_publicaciones_innovacion/es_escu_inc/adjuntos/16_inklusibitatea_100/100011c_Pub_EJ_Plan_diversidad_c.pdf and www.hezkuntza.ejgv.euskadi.eus/contenidos/informacion/dig1/es_2084/adjuntos/120009c_Pub_EJ_etorkin_plana_c.pdf (both viewed 12 December 2016). For certain academic readings also in line with this usage, see Giovanni Sartori, La sociedad multiétnica: Pluralismo, multiculturalismo y extranjeros (Madrid: Taurus 2001).

47 Santamaría, La incógnita del extraño.

48 Lorenzo Cachón, ‘La precariedad de los inmigrantes en España: La construcción de la fragilidad de un nuevo sujeto’, in Benjamín Tejerina, Beatriz Cavia, Sabine Fortino and José Ángel Calderón (eds), Crisis y precariedad vital: Trabajo, prácticas sociales y modos de vida en Francia y España (Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch 2013), 245–68.

49 Silvia Rodriguez Maeso and Marta Araújo, Understanding the Logics of Racism in Contemporary Europe. TOLERACE Research Project: Booklet Presenting Key Findings and Recommendations (Coimbra: CES 2013).

50 Ima Ortega, María José Eguskiza and Marta Ruiz de Garibay, Orientaciones para la elaboración del plan de acogida del alumnado inmigrante (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Servicio Central de Publicaciones del Gobierno Vasco 2004).

51 The ‘Plan para la Atención Educativa del alumnado inmigrante (2003–2007)’ (Plan for Educative Attention of Immigrant Students’) was part of the First Immigration Plan; the ‘Interculturality and Inclusion Programme for Recently Arrived Students (2007–2012)’ was part of the Second Immigration Plan; and the ‘Educational Attention Plan for Immigrant Students in the Framework of the Inclusive and Intercultural School (2012–2015)’ is part of the current Plan de Inmigración, Ciudadanía y Convivencia Intercultural (Immigration, Citizenship and Intercultural Plan).

52 Rogier van Reekum, Jan Willem Duyvendak and Christophe Bertossi, ‘National models of integration and the crisis of multiculturalism: a critical comparative perspective’, Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 46, no. 5, 2012, 417–26.

53 The conceptual confusion of the terms interculturality and multiculturalism at the international level is reproduced in the Basque Country. See Cheryl Hudson, ‘Introduction: The cultural politics of multiculturalism’, Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 39, no. 4, 2005, 357–60.

54 Departamento de Educación, Universidades e Investigación, Plan de atención educativa al alumnado inmigrante en el marco de la escuela inclusiva e intercultural 2012–2015, 6.

55 Maeso and Araújo, Understanding the Logics of Racism in Contemporary Europe.

56 Ruby Gropas and Anna Triandafyllidou, ‘Greek education policy and the challenge of migration: an “intercultural” view of assimilation’, Race, Ethnicity and Education, vol. 14, no. 3, 2011, 399–419.

57 Ortega, Eguskiza and Ruiz de Garibay, Orientaciones para la elaboración del plan de acogida del alumnado inmigrante.

58 Maeso and Araújo, Understanding the Logics of Racism in Contemporary Europe.

59 Rosalina Alcalde Campos, ‘Los programas de actuación educativa orientados al alumnado de origen extranjero: Modelos de atención a la diversidad cultural o a la igualdad educativa?’, Revista de Educación, no. 345, January–April 2008, 207–28; Paul C. Gorski, ‘Good intentions are not enough: a decolonizing intercultural education’, Intercultural Education, vol. 19, no. 6, 2008, 515–25.

60 Palaiologou and Faas, ‘How “intercultural” is education in Greece?’, 580.

61 Departamento de Educación, Universidades e Investigación, Plan de atención educativa al alumnado inmigrante en el marco de la escuela inclusiva e intercultural 2012–2015, 6.

62 Ortega, Eguskiza and Ruiz de Garibay, Orientaciones para la elaboración del plan de acogida del alumnado inmigrante.

63 Departamento de Empleo y Asuntos Sociales, Guía de buenas prácticas en las relaciones entre familias inmigrantes y escuela (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Gobierno Vasco 2010), 7.

64 It should be noted that the Basque Country's entire integration, immigration and interculturality policy is based on the same premise: as immigration and nationality do not fall within its scope of competence, the Basque government portrays immigrant Others as poor, opening the door to institutional intervention through policies for combating poverty and exclusion that do fall within their scope of competence. For an analysis of Basque immigration plans in this sense, see Gatti and Muriel, ‘The management of Otherness beyond the state’; and Muriel, ‘El gobierno de los “otros” en el País Vasco’.

65 Departamento de Empleo y Asuntos Sociales, Guía de buenas prácticas en las relaciones entre familias inmigrantes y escuela, 8.

66 Robert Castel, Las metamorfosis de la cuestión social: Una crónica del salariado (Buenos Aires: Paidós 2002); Didier Fassin and Éric Fassin (eds), De la question sociale à la question raciale? Représenter la société française (Paris: La Découverte 2006).

67 Maeso and Cavia, ‘Esquivando el racismo’.

68 Madeleine Bunting, ‘The problem with tolerance’, Guardian, 5 September 2011; Sandro Mezzadra, ‘The right to escape’, trans. from the Italian by Taina Rajanti, Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, vol. 4, no. 3, 2004, 267–75, available online at www.ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/4-3mezzadra.pdf (viewed 13 December 2016); Palaiologou and Faas, ‘How “intercultural” is education in Greece?’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gabriel Gatti

Gabriel Gatti is full professor of sociology at the University of the Basque Country. He has been visiting professor at the EHESS of Paris, the IHEAL-Sorbonne (Chaire Pablo Neruda), the CERI-Science Po, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the CES-University of Coimbra, the University of los Andes, UdelaR, among others. Among his most recent publications is the book Surviving Forced Disappearance in Argentina and Uruguay: Identity and Meaning (Palgrave Macmillan 2014). He has coordinated the research project Victims World(s) and was the principal researcher of the Basque Country team of the TOLERACE project. Email: [email protected]. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0435-5074

Ignacio Irazuzta

Ignacio Irazuzta is a sociologist, professor and researcher based at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, campus Monterrey in Mexico. He is also a member of the Mexican National Researcher System and the Collective Identity Studies Center at the University of the Basque Country in Spain. His main research topics are collective identity, migration and diasporas. He edited (with María Martínez) De la identidad a la vulnerabilidad: Alteridad e integración en el País Vasco contemporáneo (Bellaterra 2014). Email: [email protected]. http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8227-9946

María Martínez

María Martínez is currently a postdoctoral fellow of a Basque Country postdoctoral programme at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is also member of the Collective Identity Studies Center at the University of the Basque Country. Her research interests are feminisms, gender, collective mobilizations, identities and vulnerability. She edited (with Ignacio Irazuzta) the volume De la identidad a la vulnerabilidad: Alteridad e integración en el País Vasco contemporáneo (Bellaterra 2014) that included the main findings of the Basque team of the TOLERACE project. Email: [email protected]. http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9337-3225