CHILDREN OF IMMIGRANTS IN ARICA AND PARINACOTA, CHILE: METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSAL FOR THE STUDY OF THEIR DAILY LIFE IN SCHOOLS

Chile is today a destination for Latin American and Caribbean migrants who, as it is currently a global trend, in a context of displacement due to political and religious persecutions, wars, natural disasters or poverty, seek to work and improve their lives. However, their reception in this country is complex and full of difficulties, since they must simultaneously face traumatic situations due to their departure: separation from their land, from their family (often from their children), and of their arrival to an unknown country that, in the current context of increasing south-south migrations, offers a problematic welcome. Within this framework of uncertainty, the children of immigrants may face violent treatments. This treatment comes mainly from the migration that characterizes, conditions and racializes their parents, who carry a stigma that marks them negatively. This is an unfavorable situation for the integration of boys and girls, since both the word 'immigration' and the figure of 'immigrant' have acquired in Chile a stigmatizing connotation that portrays immigrants as 'inferior' to Chileans. Understanding that the school is a fundamental space of socialization, where the children of the immigrants construct part of their existence, this work intends to deliver, from a research project conducted in eight urban and rural schools of the Arica and Parinacota Region, some methodological approaches that contribute to understanding their daily school lives from the interactions that they weave with peers and adults of the school.