Citizenship education policies and immigration in Chile. A dispositive analysis

Abstract

In several countries where immigration influxes have changed or increased, citizenship education policies have been strengthened as a way to build social cohesion. In this paper, I took the case of Chile to explore citizenship education policies throughout their references towards immigration. Methodologically, I use the Foucauldian notion of dispositive as an analytical tool to explore the knowledge-power network that shapes citizenship education. I took samples of public opinions, educational documents and reports, and legal documents as part of the heterogeneity that shape the dispositive. These samples come from Chilean magazines, newspapers, and documents released by educational institutions as well as laws. Findings indicate that, if viewed from how it references immigration, the dispositive of citizen education in Chile works as a managerial dispositive of cultural differences; one that places immigrants themselves as commodities. In current neoliberal times, where capitalism multiplies differences and produces cultural commodities, citizenship education works as a technique of governing at a distance to administrate such differences.

Introduction

Neoliberal discourses have reconfigured citizenship education. Traditional citizenship education approaches maintain an image of citizens circumscribed to a classical nation-state framework (Zembylas and Bozalek, 2011). Under such approaches, those who do not belong to the national community would challenge social cohesion. Moreover, citizenship education is viewed as a socialization process that corrects the “civic deficit” of those who are not naturally citizens (Biesta, 2016). However, population influx and the setting of transnational migrant communities fractured the equivalence between States, nations, communities, and cultures. In such a context, neoliberal criteria have been established to allocate the so-called citizen rights (Ong, 2006) and, thus, citizens became consumers (Nordensvärd, 2014). Therefore, by encouraging desired and undesired subjectivities, citizenship education clashes with students’ experiences (e.g., migrants) that do not fit within traditional definitions of nation-state citizens (Fischman and Haas, 2014).

The case of Chile could be illustrative to understand current neoliberal reconfigurations of citizenship education through its entanglements with immigration. In 2016, Chile’s National Congress enacted law 20.911 that established the national study plans for citizen’s formation within schools. The core purpose of such a law was to reverse political mistrust as well as strengthen democracy and political engagement. The law coincided with a growing concern over immigration influxes, which have steadily increased during the last decade (Chile, 2018). Increasing immigration would challenge citizen’s understandings. A document released by the Chilean Ministry of Education (MINEDUC, 2018: 4) states: “[i]t is urgent to assume the challenges of a new reality within our country, one which has come to stay and which has repercussions for the ongoing development of citizens”.

Instead of the binary nationalism-exclusionary/assimilationism-inclusive, I suggest that citizenship education works as a managerial dispositive of cultural differences; one that places immigrants themselves as commodities. Inspired by Foucault’s (1991, 1999b) inquiries, I deploy a dispositive analysis to understand how citizenship education works as a power-knowledge network (Bührmann, 2005). This kind of analysis seeks to disentangle the productive power-knowledge grid at particular historical conjunctures (Rabinow and Rose, 2003). The analysis identifies the urgency to which the dispositive should answer to; describes the procedures of regulation of the dispositive; and explores strategies that allow the dispositive to operate. Given its heterogeneity, data was collected from diverse sources like public opinions, educational documents, and reports as well as legal documents.

This article is structured as follows: in the next section, I provide a brief overview of Chile’s public policies for citizenship education and immigration. Then, I present the study’s theoretical stands. Thirdly, I describe the methodological path followed. Subsequently, I detail the analysis, which is subdivided into three sections; these bear witness to Chile’s discomfort concerning immigration, the procedures of regulation that citizenship education employs to answer to such a discomfort, and the strategy that allows a particular configuration of the dispositive. Lastly, I discuss the implications of these findings.

Citizenship education and immigration in Chile

Since Chile returned to a democratically elected government, citizenship has been a growing concern for education policies. The 1998 national curricular reform, the first one after the Chilean dictatorship (1973–1990), replaced the compulsory “civic education” course set forth during 1981. The 1998 reform disseminated citizenship learning goals throughout the entire curriculum. Thereafter, the curricular reform that began in 2012 placed citizenship as a thematic axis within Social Studies' courses from 1^st to 10^th grade (MINEDUC, 2015). In 2016, during the left-center government of Michele Bachelet, law 20.911 of citizenship education was enacted. It mandated that each school had to design and implement, in an autonomous manner, a “Citizenship Education Plan”. These plans should offer students both curricular and extracurricular opportunities so that they could develop citizenship. Also, law 20.911 reinstated a compulsory course called “Citizenship Education” within 11^th and 12^th grades. The course was to begin during the 2020 school year.

Parallelly, immigration concerns arose. By the end of the 1990s, the national press spotlighted stories about a (supposed) migratory avalanche, mainly from neighboring countries such as Peru and Bolivia (Stefoni, 2001). These public concerns gradually declined. However, and approximately from the 2010s and onward, immigration rates steadily increased; first mainly from Colombia and, then, from Venezuela and Haiti (Chile, 2018). The right-wing government of Sebastián Piñera (2010–2014) and the center-left government of Michelle Bachelet (2014–2018) presented different bills to “modernize” Chile’s immigration law, which dated back to 1975. During Piñera’s first term (2010–2014), his proposal did not thrive, but debates continued. By tweaking Piñera’s proposal, Bachelet, during her second term (2014–2018), also proposed reforming the law. Finally, the new immigration law was enacted in 2021, during Piñera’s second presidential term (2018–2022). Both Bachelet’s and Piñera’s governments also released educational documents concerning immigration (MINEDUC, 2017, 2018). While the first ones focused on interculturality and immigrants’ rights, the second ones highlighted the juridical framework that norm migration in Chile.

Currently, both citizenship and immigration are issues that are within the scope of Chile’s educational system, which is characterized by its neoliberal structure. Chilean education shifted toward neoliberalism with the 1981 reform—a reform enacted by Pinochet’s military dictatorship. Such a curricular reform weakened State public education and privileged private companies and private individuals who wished to foray into the educational field (Cabalin, 2012). The 1981 reform combined free-market administration, by following Milton Friedman’s proposals, with conservative and nationalist learning goals (Ruiz, 2010). In this article, I understand neoliberalism from a Foucauldian standpoint.

Neoliberal governmentality and changes in citizenship education

From a Foucauldian standpoint, neoliberalism is not an ideology but a specific governmentality, that is, an “art of governing,” that extrapolates the “entrepreneurial form” to social bodies through new government techniques of power (Foucault, 2016). Governmentality is the conjunct of institutions, procedures, calculations, and tactics through which power is exerted (Foucault, 1999c). Instead of controlling the territory (sovereign power) or normalizing individuals (disciplinary power), governmentality exerts power to regulate life processes at the population level (biopower) (Foucault, 2000). In that sense, (both liberal and) neoliberal governmental techniques of power work in the name of freedom (Rose et al., 2006). To such an end, governmentality uses dispositives of security as mechanisms of power to arrange things (Foucault, 1999c). For instance, liberal-humanist curricula for citizenship education would be part of those dispositives of security, since they build national borders that legitimize fear toward those non-national “Others” all while excluding them (Zembylas, 2010). However, neoliberal governmentality goes beyond excluding population and subjectivities. Christiaens (2019) states that financial neoliberalism produces differentiated access to different forms of capital and offers differentiated positions that any subject can occupy. As Braidotti (2015) asserts, advanced capitalism produces commodified differences, as in the case of fusion cuisine or world music.

Within this neoliberal frame, citizenship education excludes those non-nationals while it also shapes them so that they can be integrated into the market. Traditional citizenship education operates according to enlightenment logic. Modern citizen education came to be a response to the necessity to extend political participation to other members of society so that industrial capitalism could function (Castels, 2004). However, these other members were still envisioned in nationalistic terms. Such a liberal-assimilationist understanding of citizen education assumes that minorities within a society (e.g., immigrants) must abandon their cultural heritage to be included within the national culture (Banks, 2014). In such a way, citizen education plays an important role in constructing a nation and its legitimate citizens (Staeheli and Hammett, 2010). Research maintains that assimilationist and Eurocentric understandings are still widespread within national curriculums and study programs pertaining to citizenship education; and, furthermore, that such programs and curriculums fashion immigrants as subjects who pose a risk (Bonet, 2018; Faas, 2011; Gholami, 2017; O’Connor and Faas, 2012; Ríos-Rojas, 2018).

Citizenship education has also incorporated market logic. Literature indicates that newer understandings of citizen education bolster neoliberal discourses. It is not odd, then, that “active citizenship” and “democratic citizenship” strive to fashion neoliberal subjects who are not committed with political participation (Kennelly and Llewellyn, 2011) while endeavoring to develop entrepreneurial abilities that would foster competition (Ververi, 2017). Such a desire to depoliticize subjects underpins global citizenship education. This form of citizenship education privileges reaching consensus and adaptation when it comes to fitting individuals within specific political schemes (Merry, 2018). Global citizenship facilitates the articulation of neoliberal discourses with democratic discourses all while managing to operate as an empty signifier (Pais and Costa, 2020). In such a way, it allows for the development of a neoliberal agenda that is infused with nationalistic rhetoric (Choi and Kim, 2018).

Findings from works like the ones previously cited support the idea that citizen education is a technology of government that “conducts the conduct,” regulates populations, and produces subjectivities (Fairbrother, 2005; Garratt, 2011; Pykett, 2007; Weninger and Kho, 2014). Adhering to such an idea, I maintain that citizenship education does not only exclude those non-national citizens, nor does it only form neoliberal subjects; it manages cultural differences and fixes immigrants as commodities. To argue my point, I will employ the Foucauldian analytical tool known as dispositive.

Dispositive analysis as mode of inquiry

Foucault (1991) defined dispositive as a heterogeneous arrangement shaped by discourses and power relationships that addresses a perceived urgency and produces subjectivities. Among others, he identified legal, disciplinary, and securitarian dispositives (Castro, 2018). Thus, dispositives work as “regulatory ensembles” with specific purposes (Rabinow and Rose, 2003). In that sense, dispositives connect discourses and power (Bührmann, 2005) since power operates “through discourses, given that discourse itself is an element in a strategic dispositive of power relationships” (Foucault, 1999a: p.59). The dispositive, as a power-knowledge grid, allows one to see new relations between different elements within a field (Rabinow and Rose, 2003).

In this article, I followed part of Bührmann’s proposal for dispositive analysis. Bührmann (2005) suggests a four-level analysis, which includes the “area of reference,” the “authority of regulation,” the “procedure of regulation,” and the “strategic imperative”. Given that my point of departure is that immigration became an object of knowledge within the field of citizenship education, I do not analyze “the area of reference”. Therefore, I probed the citizenship education’s “authority of regulation,” “procedures of regulation,” and “strategic imperative”. As Bührmann (2005) suggests, the “authority of regulation” is concerned with “enunciative modalities” and the reasons that allowed particular structures of power relationships to come to be. At this level, one can ask how discourses refer to immigration, who authorizes the modes of enunciation regarding it, and why it was deemed necessary to elaborate new strategies to deal with immigration. Regarding “procedures of regulation,” the focus is on the connections between the logic underlying discourses’ terminology and the techniques of power through which such a terminology circulates. Analysis at this level tries to respond to how the dispositive speaks about immigration and the techniques of power it deploys. Finally, concerning the “strategic imperative,” it connects “the strategic choice” with “strategies of power”. At this level, the analysis focuses on strategic goals sought by the discourse and the reasons that allow power technologies to function without friction. Here, one probes the strategic function of the discourse and how it is possible that power technologies come to work.

I carried out a Foucauldian inspired analysis of documents by using theory as a deductive tool and worked inductively with empirical material. At the deductive level, my focus was to design questions that I could then pose to existing discourses. By means of such an interrogation, I was able to establish three levels of dispositive analysis. To identify the “authority of regulation,” I analyzed public opinions to probe the ways in which discourse spoke about immigration and the empirical reasons that made immigration an unavoidable issue that demanded government intervention. To understand the “procedures of regulation” of the dispositive, I studied documents pertaining to citizenship education. While examining such documents, I looked for the underlying logic that gives ground to the employed terminology when referencing immigration; concepts employed when speaking about immigration; locations from where such concepts come from; and for the power tactics through which such logics are performed. Finally, I tried to explain the “strategic imperative” by tracing political debates regarding citizenship education as well as its juridical support. At this last level, I probed the strategic objective of citizen education and the conditions that would allow it to operate.

With regard to the inductive approach, I looked for and selected statements from a diverse pool of sources. All statements had to offer an answer to one or more of the previously mentioned queries. By analyzing public opinions regarding immigration, I was able to define the characteristics of the urgency to which the dispositive answers to. The analysis of educational documents and reports allowed me to pinpoint the strategies through which the dispositive of citizen education regulates those experiences related with immigration. Furthermore, by tracing political debates regarding citizenship education as well as their juridical support, I could establish new relationships to understand how citizenship education can operate within Chile.

For this study, a total of 30 documents were analyzed. I selected nine statements regarding immigration as disseminated through mainstream national media between the years 2015 and 2019. In the same vein, I selected three statements regarding citizenship education law enacted during the year 2015. Likewise, I included two statements made in 1981 and 1985 from an influential politician with respect to civil society’s political participation. Moreover, I chose four curricular documents pertaining to the national curriculum between the years 1998 and 2019 and two pedagogical guidelines meant to tackle citizenship and immigration within schools. These were published during the years 2016 and 2017. These six documents were released by the MINEDUC. Furthermore, I took samples from four reports (that span the years from 2016 to 2019) that detail how schools with high immigration rates implemented citizenship education plans. Lastly, I incorporated three national laws that regulate education, including two national laws of education (enacted in 1981 and 2009) and the citizenship education law of 2016. Likewise, I took samples from the current Chilean political constitution. Because this study understands citizen education as a government dispositive, all selected data deal with governmental aspirations, debates, and decisions. As such, data is inherently partial; which could be considered a limitation of this research endeavor. However, given the scarcity of research at the intersection of citizenship education and immigration in Chile, I deemed it important to first explore the governmental perspective.

In the next section, I detail the three levels of the dispositive analysis.

Security and inclusion as an urgency

In Chile, immigration has become an unavoidable social concern. The above-described shifts in rates, as well as the diversification in countries from where immigrants come from, have made discourses regarding immigration more visible. Furthermore, public opinion has sketched such shifts as a turning point. For instance, the national press stated that Chile became “the new ‘El Dorado’ of Latin America immigration” (Abramovich, 2015) and defined the year 2018 as “the year of immigration” (Pasa, 2018). In a context where immigration increased and gained visibility, mainly from Latin American poor countries, two modes of speaking about it can be identified.

Within public opinion, immigration is generally enunciated as either a risk that should be excluded or (and sometimes or/and) as a contribution that should be included. On the one hand, immigrants would be threats to national security and sovereignty. Some samples of this mode of speaking about immigration stem from right-wing politicians. For instance, as a presidential candidate, Piñera stated that “many of the current street gangs in Chile are made up of foreigners” (Carreño, 2016). Once in government, Piñera’s Ministry of the Interior and Public Security advocated for an immigration policy that guaranteed safety: “having a stringent policy is beneficial for the country because in that manner we can avoid the entrance of delinquents [...]” (Catena, 2019). As president, Piñera (2018, 3–4) refused to sign the 2018 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM) by arguing that the GCM “limited the sovereign right of States to decide how to safeguard its boundaries, as well as limiting States’ rights to decide who, and under what conditions, can enter the national territory”.

On the other hand, immigrants would be contributors to the economy and culture. Economists, business people, and immigrant advocates argue, throughout public debates in newspapers, in favor of including immigrants into society. Entrepreneurs and company chairmen argue that “Chile is a country in need of manpower” and that “immigrants are, in fact, dividends for our economy” (Tele 13, 2016; Forni, 2019). For their part, immigrant advocates, generally associated to NGOs, defend immigration for humanitarian reasons and from a perspective of rights. This last discourse gives rise to the humane façade of integration so as to end discrimination, by fostering “an intercultural society where all people would be subjects of rights” (Vicuña, 2019). How do the above-mentioned modes of speaking about immigration link with shifts in immigration trends?

Given that immigration would be a turning point for Chilean society, binary logic of exclusion and inclusion shifted into a dialectic logic. Both modes of speaking about immigration link up and allow for the exclusion on behalf of inclusion. Between 2018 and 2019, the right-wing Chilean government implemented the “Plan for a Humanitarian Return”. It was designed to repatriate immigrants back to their homelands, with a special interest in the Hattian population within Chile. One of the conditions to apply for that “humanitarian” plan was that immigrants had to agree not to return to Chile for at least 9 years. The top official within the Office for Immigration, under Piñera’s government, asserted that reasons for immigrants wanting to leave Chile were “job inclusion, the weather as well as family matters” (Navarrete, 2019). And the Migration Advisor of the Ministry of the Interior stated: “when you enter a country you have the capacity of integration within such country, in order to safeguard the country’s security [...] Inclusion refers to a person that has the tools to participate within the Chilean society” (Fernández, 2018). Therefore, those who cannot contribute to or fit safely into society were “conduced” (not forced) to leave Chile.

In the next section, the analysis explains ways through which citizenship education, as a dispositive, answers to immigration by dealing with above-described discourses.

Difference and commodification

The dispositive of citizenship education deploys, at least, three procedures of regulation: omitting existing links between citizenship and immigration, reaffirming that national culture is “neutral,” and the folklorization of immigrants. These three procedures control discourses and modulate behaviors by producing immigration experiences as a cultural commodity.

Silence. Analyzed citizenship education documents, in general, tend to overlook migratory phenomena. Although concerns regarding immigration run parallelly to the enactment of law 20.911, citizenship education policies vaguely enunciate immigration as an issue of particular interest. While some pedagogical documents for immigrant’s inclusion refer to them as “subjects of rights” and argue for a wider understanding of citizenship (MINEDUC, 2017), citizenship education documents classify them only as “expressions of cultural diversity” (MINEDUC, 2009, 2015). Such a general disregard is important because the dispositive is also composed by that which is not said (Foucault, 1991).

National cultural neutrality. Few references to immigration as “expression of cultural diversity” came from a multicultural logic, imported from other curricular subjects, that acknowledges diversity based on an assumed national cultural neutrality. In the Chilean curriculum, multiculturalism appeared for the first time with the 1998 curricular reform. The word “multicultural” was used to refer to folkloric expressions defined as diverse. Specifically, music courses promoted “musical values and identities and how these related to individuals and their communities; as well as understanding the diversity of expressions (multiculturalism)” (MINEDUC, 1998). Here, multiculturalism corresponds to the diversity. But, who belongs to the diversity? The current curriculum provides some clues. The citizenship axis of Social Studies for students of 3^rd grade encourages citizen virtues like “to respect expressions of diversity as different customs, beliefs, ethnic origin, nationality, etc.” (MINEDUC, 2015: p.162). In the same vein, Physical Education and Health courses, between 7^th and 10^th grade, define as “multicultural games” only those played by the indigenous population (Rapa Nui and Mapuche) (MINEDUC, 2015). Thus, foreigners and indigenous population belong to the diversity. This idea is reinforced by the citizenship curriculum, which suggests, as part of a class session, debating access to justice by having students reenact different scenarios. Teachers should encourage students to play the role of “immigrants, members of native groups, people of different racial and sexual preferences, homeless individuals, and others of the like” (MINEDUC, 2019: 65). Quoted groups would be expression of cultural diversity. But, diverse with respect to what? Defining some groups as belonging to the diversity implies, in this case, to have a point of reference to pinpoint them as diverse. Such points of references could be nationality, cultural heritage, or sexual preferences. Immigrants are examples of the “cultural diversity” viewed from a national culture standpoint. However, the national culture is not part of that cultural diversity since it is the point of reference; the condition to speak about the diversity.

This logic assumes that the national “population is ethnically neutral” (Schinkel, 2018) and defines immigrants by its opposition to that assumed neutrality. Immigrants, as well as other groups that do not fit the norm, are diverse because they are not that which is not diverse (i.e., the Chilean national culture). This multiculturalist logic works as a way to remark those who do not belong to a nation from an ethnocentric logic (Pinzani, 2010) and to tolerate the pluralism of ways of life by including the other as “folkloric other” (Žižek, 1998).

Commodifying differences. Afore-mentioned logics employed to speak about immigration connect with neoliberal techniques of exerting power. If immigrants are vaguely defined as “expressions of cultural diversity,” then they can be acknowledged by highlighting and commodifying their differences. In that sense, citizenship education plans become a technique of governing at a distance (Rose et al., 2006). The MINEDUC encourages and reports “festivals” that seek to showcase the cultural contribution of other nations, all under the general frame of including cultural diversity. A supplementary document to the Citizenship Education Plans suggests holding an “Intercultural Festival […] where children can present the cultural heritage of native people as well as the heritage of different nations that are in Chile as immigrants” (MINEDUC, 2016). The website www.ciudadaniayescuela.cl, created by the MINEDUC shares examples of how particular citizenship education plans perform such a suggestion. For instance, the website highlights the case of a school that “has been marked by cultural diversity, for several of its students come from different nationalities,” and “organizes Latin-American festivals” where “folk dance and gastronomic samples of different countries are readily offered”. This kind of activity promotes “the value and respect towards cultural diversity” (PNUD/MINEDUC, 2019). This kind of activities are reported by other studies and newspapers, which spotlight “multicultural activities that aim at commemorating Latin-American patriotic holidays” (Agencia de Calidad de la Educación, 2016) or “listening every Monday (after of singing the Chilean national anthem) to a different national anthem selected aleatorily, and encouraging [immigrant] families to present a typical food from their countries” (El Mercurio, 2018). This way to answer to immigration also became part of standardized measurements. For example, school principals report as “indicators of school progress,” in their Citizenship Education Plans, performances like “commemoration of important [Chilean] citizen dates,” “acts of civic formation,” “celebration of the Chilean month,” “intercultural festivals,” “exposition of native people culture,” “celebration of the Mapuche New Year,” and others (PNUD, 2018).

Despite the autonomy given by law 20.911, reported citizenship education plans tend to follow similar ways to address immigration. If we think of citizenship education as part of “political technologies” of neoliberal governmentality, then it would be an effective way to “conduct the conduct” (i.e., to exert power). The purpose of neoliberal political technologies is that desires, hopes, decisions, and ways of life of those that are ruled match with governmental goals (Castro-Gómez, 2010).

Political neutralization and mediating structures

Citizenship education dispositive is crossed by depoliticizing strategies. These strategies were expressed discursively in political debates surrounding the citizenship immigration law and were underpinned by institutional and legal structures based on the notion of mediating structures. During the discussion of the bill, sectors primarily adherent to right-wing political parties criticized the citizenship education law. Opponents to this law were mainly motivated by fear of it becoming a political tool. As experts and representatives of Congress pointed out, law 20.911 threatened with “profoundly politicizing, oversaturating or destabilizing the national curriculum” (Fontaine, 2015). Those who opposed the law feared that it could “be used as a political tool by the incumbent government” (EMOL, 2015). In an attempt to diminish trepidation toward the law, a congresswoman that opposed to the law agreed with the Citizenship education plans with the condition that each school “have complete liberty to fix its course content; and that there shall be no imposition from the MINEDUC” (Von Baer, 2015). Currently, citizenship education law stipulates that Citizenship Education Plans have to uphold the autonomy of each schools’ educative project (Ley No20.911, 2016). Such a condition ties in with the Chilean education laws.

The General Education Law (Ley General de Educación [LGE]) of 2009 was enacted by the government of Michele Bachelet after a period of student protests. This law prefixes individual school choice over the right to education (Cabalin, 2012). The LGE asserts, within its eighth article, that the duty of the state is “to safeguard academic freedom. Parents have the right to choose their children’s school. Academic freedom includes right to open, organize and sustain schools” (Ley No20.370, 2009). The definition of “academic freedom” comes from the previous Constitutional Organic Law of Education (Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Enseñanza [LOCE]) enacted by the Chilean dictatorship just a few days after the dictatorship came to an end. The LOCE also referred to the duty of the state of “specially safeguarding the academic freedom” (third article), which “includes the faculty to open, organize and sustain schools” (80^th article) (Ley No18.962, 1990).

I suggest that this discourse of academic freedom fits within the neoconservative version of mediating structures developed by thinkers such as Michael Novak. Jaime Guzmán, an influential right-wing politician and advisor to Chile’s dictatorship, was an avid propagator of Novak’s ideas. Novak defended a neoconservative vision of “mediating structures” as “non-State social agents” (e.g., schools and churches) to promote a sense of solidarity and social belonging (Quezada, 2008). However, with neoconservatism, “mediating structures” would end up substituting political practices with “elements of cultural order” (Quezada, 2008: 221). Guzmán (1985) highlighted how Novak, in his book “The spirit of democratic capitalism,” connected capitalism with democracy based on the notion of “pluralism” as sociocultural support. Pluralism is accepted but within the framework of “mediating structures,” which should not be political instruments. Guzmán (2014 [1981], p.65–66) stated that mediating structures are “entities that do not have political purposes, like labor unions, student groups or professional bodies”. Even the first article of the current Chilean political constitution, that was highly influenced by Jaime Guzmán, states that “the state acknowledges and protects mediating structures through which society organizes and structures, and also guarantees an adequate autonomy to accomplish their specific purposes” (Constitución Política De Chile, 1980).

Further remarks

In Chile, immigration has been presented in mainstream public discourses as a turning point. Immigration would represent a risk that should be excluded and as a contribution that should be included. To answer to such requirements, citizenship education tends to overlook immigration based on a multicultural logic all while acknowledging it as an “expression of cultural diversity”. Citizenship education documents and reports, hence, highlight immigration as a kind of folkloric commodity. Immigrants’ food, music, and dance would be the main focus of school festivals; and these would, in turn, contribute to the inclusion of “pluralistic way of life”. In the case of Chile, these discourse and power relationships entanglements are possible because of depoliticizing strategies. Citizenship education is crossed by juridical prescription and some right-wing political discourses that reject or block political purposes. Therefore, immigration seems to be confined to a cultural market.

I argue that citizenship education works as a managerial dispositive of cultural differences; one that turns immigrants into commodities. It is true that several studies maintain that citizenship education implies exclusionary processes against immigrants based on assimilationist and Eurocentric approaches. Also true is the fact that, from a Foucauldian perspective, studies have shown that citizen education is a technology of government, one that excludes and produces subjectivities within the frame of neoliberalism. However, what I maintain adds to such findings. From my analysis of Chilean policy, I suggest that immigrants become articulated as commodities through the dispositive of citizenship education. It is not only making them consumers, they are made folklore, their cultural heritage is made folklore, and they become acceptable commodities that can be traded within a cultural market. In current neoliberal times where capitalism multiplies differences and produces cultural commodities, citizenship education seems to have lost its political aims. Thus, it has become a technique of governing at distance to administrate cultural differences. For Brown (2016), neoliberal rationality shifts governments into governance and management. But not just governments. I could add that there are other dispositives, as citizenship education, with administrative purposes. As Vera et al. (2018) assert, neoliberalism operates by managing cultural differences. In that sense, citizenship education would contribute to shape a market-based approach to understand immigration.

Findings from this study have both methodological and political value. On the one hand, the notion of dispositive could be a fertile analytical tool to see reality in other ways. As the dispositive connects different elements and establishes new relations (Rabinow and Rose, 2003), immigration is not an issue of inclusion or exclusion. Rather, the dispositive of citizenship education includes immigration but from a neoliberal stand. Likewise, citizenship education is configured by elements that are not easily visible (e.g., the neoconservative notion of mediating structures). In that sense, dispositive analysis is productive given that it makes new connections that help understand social phenomena. On the other hand, this study suggests that policy analysis is not (only) an issue of correctly implementing policies. As I tried to show, discourses of citizenship education and immigration are entangled with power relationships in order to “conduct the conduct”. Citizenship education regulates our experiences regarding immigration. The problem is not correctly implementing the law or the curriculum, but how our experiences are produced. Perhaps, we should abandon the problem-solving logic and rethink the underlying assumptions of citizenship.

Finally, findings from this study are circumscribed to some practices that shape the dispositive of citizenship education. It is also important to study other practices that could be fissuring it. Dispositives are never closed systems. Fissures are inherent parts of dispositives. After all, dispositives are constantly being rearranged and allow for the existence of contradictory practices even within themselves (Foucault, 1991). There are, for example, discourses that address immigration from an intercultural politically engaged position, like the “Technical Guidelines for the Inclusion of Foreign Students” (MINEDUC, 2017). This document seems an oddity within the selected corpus of texts. It beckons one to reflect upon political asymmetries, the construction of that which is different and possible links with domination. What should be interesting is not to seek coherence between practices, but rather comprehend how intercultural discourse could be modifying the dispositive of citizen education and producing new subjectivities.