Searching for an educational shelter: classification, racialisation and genderisation during migrant families’ school-choice experiences in Chile

Latin families moving to a different Latin American country are placed in a dominated position by what is called ‘coloniality’. In this sense, we argue that the processes of classification (in terms of social class), racialisation and genderisation that migrant Latin families experience when choosing schools for their children in the Chilean context can be a form of this coloniality. To make our case, we use narratives from in-depth interviews conducted in Valparaíso with migrant families who applied to schools under the new admission system. In this sense, narratives show that the processes of classification, racialisation and genderisation, as socio-cultural productions, intersect with migrant families’ school-choice experiences. These intersections emerge when families match school choices with an shelter search, as they manifest their interests to protect their children, avoiding schools with ‘marginal children’ or racial bullying and safeguarding gender expectations.