Self-segregation strategies through school choice in Chile: A middle-class domain?

Abstract

Sociological research has shown that marketized educational systems favour middle-class families’ self-segregation strategies through school choice and, consequently, the reproduction of their social advantage over poorer families. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of capitals, habitus and strategy, we analyse quantitative and ethnographic data on parents’ school choice from Chile to introduce nuances to this argument, evincing more extended and complex mechanisms of self-segregation in the Chilean marketized educational system. We found that not only middle-class parents but also parents from different socioeconomic groups displayed self-segregating school choice strategies. We also found that these strategies were performed both vertically (in relation to other social classes) and horizontally (in relation to other groups within the same social class). These findings unwrap a possible stronger effect of the Chilean school choice system over segregation.

School admissions and educational justice: Parents' moral dilemmas facing the new Chilean school admission system

“…While most parents tend to endorse the inclusive purpose of the reform, this perception is tensioned by the negative consequences they anticipate this may have for their children. The emergence of this tension across the different regions and social groups is coherent with former studies that have shown the conflict between the valuation of social inclusion in parental discursive accounts (e.g., Rinne et al, 2015) and the fear of social mixing, which is spread both within middle and low social classes in Chile (Carrasco et al, 2022). From a social justice perspective, the conflict exposed tends to show the clash between principles of justice -namely sameness and difference (North, 2006), in which parents, despite endorsing a "formal moral equality" in the admission arena, are challenged by the equality of respect and recognition approach (Lynch & Baker, 2005) that the reform demands.…”

Education and the production of inequalities across the Global South and North

“…Education has also become an optical reflection of the social world, both of the exterior as a window – mentioned by Oyarzún et al (2021, this special issue) – and also as a mirror reflecting many of the issues that are ongoing in the wider world. These two optical phenomena can be seen in this special issue where authors place education in dialogue with broader social phenomena such as neoliberalism (Oyarzún et al, 2021); citizenship and belonging (Vincent, 2021); social mobility (Chen, 2021); ableism (Peruzzo, 2021); social reproduction (Verhoeven et al, 2021); migration (Cortés Saavedra, 2021); socioeconomic status (Catalán et al, 2021); and segregation (Carrasco et al, 2021). Furthermore, many of these social issues intersect with each other in the field of education.…”