Is Intercultural School Mediation in Crisis? A Longitudinal Study from a Sociological Perspective

Abstract

Intercultural mediation is a resource that has aimed at serving as a bridge between “cultures” in order to favour their approach and under standing. This intervention practice owns already a historical trajectory that allow us to analyse the retrospective of its practices. By this ethnographic work we aim at showing how intercultural mediation has been built in a concrete social intervention field. That is to say, the school institutions of the Granada province since its inception in 2008. The follow-up of the resource, done during the period between 2013 and 2017 in this province, has demonstrated that the fulfilment of the initial expectations has been far from being achieved. The implementation of the school intercultural mediation has lost its formal aims sight of, and has contributed to creating “differences”, ending up channelling assimilation processes, ethnification and stigmatisation of the immigrant group. Therefore, we can affirm that the school management of the intercultural mediation has wasted all of its potential, leading it both to its devaluation and a lack of institutional support. Hence, we can talk about a crisis stage of the intercultural mediation that goes beyond the decrease of active professionals due to the economic crisis that diminishes economic resources in different social areas.