Indigenous schooling grants in Chile: the impacts of an integrationist affirmative action policy among Mapuche pupils

Abstract

This article assesses the extent to which indigenous grants administered to school pupils and university students in Chile can be considered affirmative action towards social justice. Drawing on Fraser’s framework for parity of participation, I question whether the grants are able to provide both redistribution and recognition for indigenous pupils. I provide a historical policy analysis of education reform in regards to indigenous populations, and a discussion of secondary school Mapuche pupils’ responses to governmental compensatory measures. Indigenous grants have long been employed as a strategy for increasing indigenous pupils’ participation in the education system, but when viewed from a critical perspective, do little to alleviate inequalities in a culturally homogenising and strongly neoliberal-led education system. The article demonstrates that by viewing the impact of these policies – ingrained in a structural history of exclusion and discrimination – from the ground up, nuanced effects on pupils’ ethnic identity formation can also be perceived. Drawing on data from 20 focus groups conducted in the Araucanía Region of Chile, I argue that indigenous grants can have adverse effects on family and community relations, whilst also causing negative self and public perception regarding achievement disparities. Without further reform to the education system and the grants themselves, they may only provide an impetus for improving access to a mono-cultural discriminatory schooling system.

Keywords:

• ethnic identity
• education policy
• indigenous grants
• multiculturalism
• Chilean education

Notes

1. Although other indigenous grants exist, such as housing benefits for indigenous university students, I use the term to refer to the Beca Indigena throughout the article.

2. http://www.origenes.cl/images/Pdf/primera_fase/intro.pdf, p. 17

3. http://www.junaeb.cl/prontus_junaeb/site/artic/20120302/pags/20120302115127.html

4. For more extensive evidence of these inequalities see Matear (2006, 2007a, 2007b).

5. 11.4% of Mapuche living in the Araucania Region were illiterate in 2009, compared with 6.9% of the Araucania’s overall population, and 6.6% of Mapuche in Chile are illiterate compared with 3.5% of the nation.

6. Data for secondary schooling are absent in these studies.

7. The national census from 2012 cites Mapuche population as being 9.9% of the national population.

8. Owing to the Anti-terrorist law legislated under the Pinochet dictatorship.

9. Sources: Figures for 1991, 1995 and 1996 cited in Bello et al. 1997; figures for 2008 cited in Williamson 2008 and for 2012 www.JUNAEB.cl. Conversion rates for US$ given in current prices from each year.

10. Information offered by a CONADI official, 4th September 2012, Temuco.

11. http://www.junaeb.cl/prontus_junaeb/site/artic/20,100,115/pags/20100115125722.html

12. As one pupil commented: ‘In my house they even avoid speaking about it [Mapuche language and culture] because they do not want me to be like them, they want me to be different’ (Focus Group 2, Urban School 1).