Based on an ethnographic study with migrant children, Chilean children, and Chilean teachers in a school in northern Chile, this presentation explores the process of intercultural conviviality among children in a "diverse school". Additionally, it aims to identify and analyze teachers' discourses on school conviviality, examine how social differences are constructed and reinforced in the school context, and explore the broader meanings that shape understandings of migrant children's encounters, negotiations, and processes of belonging.

In the international context, where discourses on border security and protection have intensified, Chile serves as a key case for understanding the processes of conviviality among children of different origins. In particular, the regional context in Latin America has centered concerns on the so-called Venezuelan emigration crisis (Margheritis, 2022), which has challenged migration governance and contributed to public discourses that hierarchize migration based on the perceived desirability of new migrants arriving in Chile. Despite being a mestizo country—historically shaped by migration and continuous cultural exchange with neighbouring nations—Chilean national discourses have often denied mestizaje (Tijoux, 2013). European migrants, in particular, have been framed as contributors to Chilean growth, while social difference has been constructed as a problem when migrants' origins are non-European. Indigenous and Latin American "others" are racialised and positioned as a disadvantaged group in Chile. This scenario emphasises the importance of examining how conviviality between Latin American and Caribbean children is experienced in Chile and how the construction of otherness is shaped by global securitization discourses, the framing of migration as a crisis, and the colonial legacy in producing social hierarchies.

The theoretical framework of this paper draws on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capitals as explanatory tools that help recognise the intertwining of different social positions in which children’s subjectivities are constructed. Additionally, I situate these concepts within Archer's Critical Realism, specifically her theory of Analytic Dualism, to expand the scope of Bourdieu’s theory. This approach aims to capture how broader social inequalities are reproduced and how social structures, historical narratives, colonial legacies, and intergenerational hierarchies are embodied in everyday interactions among children in Chilean schools.

In terms of micro-theory, I use the concept of conviviality to understand how intercultural interactions occur in school, thereby accounting for the “micro-social geographies of conviviality” (Neal et al., 2016, p. 464) in a school located in northern Chile, in a region which shares border with Bolivia. In the international and European context, the notion of conviviality has been widely studied in super-diversity contexts (Vertovec, 2007) and in multicultural cities (Gilroy, 2004), thus, in my study the use of conviviality is productive because it allows capturing the dynamics of encounters in a diverse school.

This article draws on 35 semi-structured interviews and numerous informal conversations with school staff and children at a primary school in northern Chile. The study was conducted in a school in Iquique, a northern Chilean city that serves as the regional capital and has the highest proportion of migrants relative to the Chilean population. The region also shares a border with Bolivia. I carried out a focused ethnographic study during the second academic semester in Chile, from July to December 2019, over six months. Focused ethnography, a refinement of short-term ethnographic approaches, was pioneered by sociologist Knoblauch (2005). During my fieldwork, I was present at the school daily from approximately 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. While living in Iquique, I resided in three different neighborhoods, allowing me to gain a broader perspective of the city’s diverse environments. The initial phase of the ethnographic inquiry involved observations and informal conversations. In the second phase, I conducted interviews with various school personnel, including teachers, psychologists, speech therapists, social workers, administrative staff, and children. In my first weeks, I observed three different classes and student interactions in various school areas, such as the playground, refectory, and entrance. Towards the latter months of fieldwork, I conducted interviews in Spanish, each lasting between 40 minutes and 1 hour 40 minutes.

One of the main findings of this study is the production of a stratified and racialized school conviviality, where migrant students often question their real possibilities for inclusion if they do not conform to behaviors associated with an idealized Chilean identity. However, the narratives of both students and teachers revealed contradictions. On the one hand, teachers expressed an appreciation for diversity in the school, as they believed it provided "convivial tools" (Les Back & Sinha, 2016) that facilitated harmonious coexistence within the school community. Some teachers also valued the multicultural character of northern Chile, where migration has long been a permanent feature of local life. On the other hand, some teachers ranked migration hierarchically, placing recently arrived Caribbean migrant students in a lower category, as they were perceived as not yet having assimilated into Chilean society. I argue that both teachers' subjectivities and the school habitus shape how children are received in the northern school community, where hierarchies are influenced by the region’s migration history. Long-standing Peruvian and Bolivian migration tends to be more readily accepted in schools and is even incorporated into the multicultural identity of the northern region. Therefore, I claim that the institutional habitus is deeply shaped by the history of northern Chile, where interculturality is acknowledged only when migrants have already assimilated into Chilean identity.

References Gilroy, P., 2004. After empire: melancholia or convivial culture. Abingdon: Routledge Les Back & Shamser Sinha (2016) Multicultural Conviviality in the Midst of Racism’s Ruins, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 37:5, 517-532, DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2016.1211625 Margheritis, A. (2024). Migration governance evolution amidst a nested crisis: The case of South America. International Migration, 62(4), 132–144. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.13109 Sarah Neal, Carol Vincent & Humera Iqbal (2016) Extended Encounters in Primary School Worlds: Shared Social Resource, Connective Spaces and Sustained Conviviality in Socially and Ethnically Complex Urban Geographies, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 37:5, 464-480, DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2016.1211626 Tijoux, M. E. (2013). Las escuelas de la inmigración en la ciudad de Santiago: Elementos para una educación contra el racismo. Polis (Santiago, Chile : 2001). https://doi.org/10.4067/S0718-65682013000200013