The purpose of the symposium “Exploring intersectional oppressions in education: challenges for Europe and Latin America regarding children with disabilities” is addressing topics pertaining to students with dis/abilities and the challenges for more inclusive educational systems, from critical or intersectional theoretical perspectives. We explore the effects that living in a “risk society” has on three different educational systems: Chile, Italy and Cyprus. Commonly, in each country, experiences such as access to healthcare services, diagnosis, or certifications; (which validate/indicate children´s conditions) impact the relations between families, students, and schools (Bagley & Wood, 2001). 

Paradoxically, the more globalised education systems become – through technologies of ranking and classification - the more the norm is reworked locally. This phenomenon is creating new forms of marginalisation of those students that are considered 'more at risk'. In the same vein, crucial topics in relation to disabilities and education emerge from the tensions towards “normality” (Vincent & Evans, 2005), such as the preferences of some schools for students entering with a stronger academic background, projections in standardized tests (Bagley & Woods, 1998), and segregating pedagogical practices.

Moreover, intersectionality plays a role in defining disability in educational spheres. The intersection between school experiences and other factors such as social class, gender, nationalities and ethnicity, among others (Crenshaw, 1989) has a crucial impact on the shaping of educational experiences, producing new subjectivities, new normalities and new practices.

Exploring students and families’ experience in various educational systems such as in Italy, Chile and Cyprus allows their 'voice' to be heard and for the commonly taken-for-granted assumptions involved in the design and implementation of inclusive educational policies/practices. 

In this symposium, the first topic addressed relates to school choice, which is presented through the study “Intersections and emotions in school choice processes: the case of mothers of children with disabilities”. This work focuses on the diagnosis and school choice itineraries of students with “special” learning needs through the lens of their mothers, based on gendered social-class experiences, along with mothers’ affections. 

Secondly, the work: “Withdrawal support as a means of promoting inclusive education for the students with mild learning difficulties in the public mainstream secondary schools of Cyprus”highlights the risk for the students with MLD of being stigmatized and discriminated by receiving academic support ‘outside’ the mainstream classrooms. The difficulty in abandoning well-established segregating practices, seems to reinforce stereotypes constructed around the ‘undesirables’ characteristics of these students, labelling them as having “lower academic abilities”. 

Third, in “Italian inclusion of disabled refugee children between welfare, neoliberal and populist reasons”, the authors explore how the productive nature of power reworks practices of inclusion of disabled refugee children through the intersection of three governmental reasoning, welfarist, neoliberal and populist. By investigating the policy reform “Buona Scuola” and interviewing educators, the authors show how disability and race intersect in the production of new marginalised neoliberal subjectivities. 

And finally, the presentation “Before & after a Special Educational Need: who is/can be a child? Tensions between diagnosis and politics”addresses the practice of diagnosis on historically damaged groups, as an ontologization of their “social incompetence” at schooling. With an intersectional theoretical framework, the work presents an interesting analysis about how race, undesired social deployments and disability are mutually produced. 

 In conclusion, the symposium aims to contribute to the debate by framing intersectional and marginalising experiences of children with disabilities in these times of uncertainty and risk. In an increasingly interconnected and complex world, in which new barriers and new discriminations are emerging, inter- and intra-national debate can spur new forms of democratic inclusion through confrontation and building on new developments. 

Bagley, C., & Woods, P. A. (1998). School choice, markets and special educational needs. Disability & Society, 13(5), 763-783. Bagley, C., Woods, P. A., & Woods, G. (2001). Implementation of school choice policy: interpretation and response by parents of students with special educational needs. British Educational Research Journal, 27(3), 287-311. Crenshaw, K (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. Bartlett, K & Kennedy, R (Eds.) (1991). “Feminist Legal Theory. Readings in Law and Gender”. New York: Westview Press. Pp. 139-167. Vincent, C., & Evans, J. (2005). Parental choice and special education. In Choice and Diversity in Schooling (pp. 115-128). Routledge.