Situations of poverty have been rising in Europe for some time, with the risk of widening inequalities (digital divide, school dropout, employment). With the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation has only deteriorated (European Commission, 2021). Among the families most at risk from increased living costs and social exclusion are those of people from a migrant background. As reports from several European countries indicate (Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain – Eurochild 2022), young people from a migrant background are among those at greatest risk of poverty/social exclusion (alongside young Roma people and children of single-parent households – StC, 2021). In these groups, we find many of the traits that characterise at-risk families: large families, (under)employment in low-paying work, minority. Intersectional theory (Cho et al., 2013) posits that the presence of multiple forms of diversity amplifies the experience of exclusion and subordination faced by certain categories.

Alongside childcare, healthcare and housing, education and school are key battlegrounds in the fight against the increasing risk of social exclusion and poverty among youth. Indeed, “education is one of the key deliverables expected under the NRRP, in 2022/2023. The plan calls for comprehensive reforms and substantial investments to strengthen education and improve primary and secondary education outcomes” (Eurochild, 2022, 70).

While the EU’s Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan recognises the value of education in promoting inclusion (“everyone has the right to quality and inclusive education” – European Commission, 2021, 44) young people’s school experiences remain a “mixed bag”. The school is an arena for mutual recognition, empowerment, and capacitation, but also one in which students can experience discrimination, isolation, and negative forms of selection. With the perpetuation of cultural stereotypes that underpin hierarchical relationships between social groups, the socioeconomic inequalities of the outside world are frequently reproduced within the school system.  Children from a migrant background, in particular, are overrepresented among school dropouts and under-achievers (Eurochild 2022, 52).

Students from minorities encounter numerous difficulties in Western education that are often comprehended through the lens of deficit thinking (Yosso, 2005).  Students whose strengths differ from those recognised by the curriculum and in society are considered in terms of what they do not know, relative to the education system’s established standards (Levinson, 2011).

Deficit thinking provided a theoretical-scholarly underpinning to a compensatory (and assimilationist) approach to practice involving students from “different” social or cultural situations. In earlier days, in Europe, it was this compensatory approach that characterised the relationship between the school institution and students from a migratory background.

Despite the fact that, at a legislative-policy level, the compensatory mindset was superseded decades ago by an intercultural approach, day-to-day experiences of school and real-life socio-cultural contexts present a more complex, multi-faceted reality. Lacking training in the hidden dimensions of culture (Hall, 1990), well-meaning teachers often regard such students – with their “different” competences, socioeconomic status, and family background – as somehow “lacking”, and end up contributing to the reproduction of existing inequalities.

Drawing on authors working from a decolonial standpoint  (Quijano, 1992; Dussel, 2000; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018), the present contribution seeks to set out a theoretical explanation of the academic difficulties faced by these students (author, 2022), and to re-examine the theoretical underpinning of the deficit thinking that characterises the encounter with students from minority and low-socioeconomic-status backgrounds across the Global West (see Anzaldua, 2012; Dei et al., 2000; Zoric, 2014). 

Inspired by the concept of the “coloniality of knowledge” developed by Anibal Quijano (1992), which is central to the decolonial literature, is our guiding research question: is there a connection between the deficit-thinking approach to education and the "coloniality of knowledge"?

The theoretical contribution we present here is based on a traditional literature review (Pope, Mays, Popay, 2007), which we understand as a survey of material published in a particular field of study or line of research that seeks to derive an understanding of that which emerges from the literature relative to a given topic, though without any claim of exhaustiveness. In this case, we have sought to examine the principal characteristics of decolonial writing through a critical, intercultural lens, beginning with the work of Catherine Walsh and working back to the writings of the “modernity/coloniality collective” (Ballestrin, 2013), which champion the autonomy of Latin-American thought relative to Europe- and America-centric traditions. Central to the decolonial literature is the concept of the “coloniality of power and knowledge” developed by Anibal Quijano (1992). A traditional literature review has various limitations: – no consideration is given to evaluating the quality and methodology of the material surveyed; – the search for contributions with relevance to the subject under consideration is not systematic; – the review is not guided by a specific review question, leading inevitably to a biased selection. For this reason, many authors describe this as a “narrative review” (Popay et al., 2006). These limits notwithstanding, despite its non-systematic character, a traditional literature review can contribute to new understandings and conceptualisations. In our case, it enabled the development of an explanatory theory that may help us to understand the persistence of deficit thinking in Western school contexts, more specifically those in Europe. The principal search terms used to identify contributions were: decolonial approach, coloniality of power, deficit thinking in school. Further to this, the bibliography considered was expanded as we analysed the bibliographies of the contributions that, over the course of our research, emerged as being pertinent or significant relative to our research question.

The decolonial approach offers a key for re-examining deficit-thinking theory, enabling some understanding of why – despite the work of academics and teacher-education initiatives – deficit thinking remains so pervasive in contemporary imaginations, habits, and school systems. We hypothesise that the “coloniality of knowledge” (Quijano, 1992) provided fertile ground for its development and spread. According to coloniality theory, the domination of culture, subjective experience, and knowledge was a key part of the European project of global domination. The “non-white” Other and his/her knowledge were studied, classified, and presented to the white world through “scholarly” research by which they were “judged to be less civilized”, such research being part of colonizing strategies (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008,). This theory shines a light on the absolutism of Western rationalism, which casts positivist science as the sole, valid knowledge form for distinguishing “true” from “false”. We argue that scientific absolutism continues to provide the epistemological foundation of school, education, and teacher-training systems. The knowledge schools offer is therefore the expression of a privileged viewpoint that is ultimately contemptuous of other epistemological perspectives. The influx of “modern abyssal thinking” (Santos, 2014, 190) has had significant repercussions in terms of both the “marginal” position assigned within the school institution to students presenting multiple forms of diversity, how they are perceived, and their chances of academic success. Even now, the strengths possessed by these students and their families in areas that are not valued by the dominant culture and curricula are neither recognised nor encouraged in the school. Adhering to pre-established norms, the school views this linguistic, cultural, and epistemological difference in terms of deficit, without giving space and opportunities to students from non-traditional backgrounds (Dei, Doyle-Wood, 2006). This theoretical work could bring additional insights useful for rethinking both school curricula and teacher education.

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