Equity & Excellence in Education

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Counteracting Victimization in Unequal

Educational Contexts: Latin American Migrants’
Friendship Dynamics in Chilean Schools

Andrew Webb & Patricio Alvarez

To cite this article: Andrew Webb & Patricio Alvarez (2018) Counteracting Victimization in Unequal
Educational Contexts: Latin American Migrants’ Friendship Dynamics in Chilean Schools, Equity &
Excellence in Education, 51:3-4, 416-430, DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2019.1582377

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2019.1582377

Published online: 27 Mar 2019.

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EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION
2018, VOL. 51, NOS. 3-4, 416–430
https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2019.1582377

Counteracting Victimization in Unequal Educational

Contexts: Latin American Migrants’ Friendship Dynamics
in Chilean Schools
Andrew Webba and Patricio Alvarezb
a
Pontificia Universidad Cat
olica de Chile; bUniversidad Austral

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article addresses the role of friendship dynamics among newcomer migrant youth; Chile;
Latin American migrant youth during their transitions to Chilean secondary educational inequality;
schools. Drawing on qualitative life history interviews, we discuss ethnic victimization; social capital;
school friendship
minority well-being in two high-ethnic mix schools, and how power
inequalities and racial discrimination are managed through social capital in
the courtyard. In particular, we demonstrate the importance of ethnic
diversity for counteracting victimization. We found few instances of
internal segregation (homogenous or bonding forms of friendship groups);
instead cross-ethnic friendships were more common, enabling participants
to navigate gendered and class-based cleavages within the schools.
Although concentrations of ethnic students in low-quality municipal
schools represent deeper social justice issues, the research argues for the
need to move beyond dichotomized notions of integration and segrega-
tion. Creating greater equity in these spaces, we suggest, does not depend
on ethnic mix, but on the opportunities to develop social capital support.

The issue of whether well-mixed schools are beneficial to ethnic minorities’ well-being has been a
matter of contention in international literature for some time. On the one hand, there is evidence
that victimization1 or bullying is likely to increase in schools where ethnic minorities make up a
majority of the school composition, since they represent a visible threat to the dominant group
who seek to defend their status and control of the school environment (Benner & Crosnoe, 2011;
Halpern, 1993). Other studies argue that ethnic youth who are isolated (constituting a small num-
ber in the school) are likely to be singled out and victimized, and do not have the same support
networks to avoid discrimination (Juvonen, Nishina, & Graham, 2001). This amounts to some
uncertainty surrounding what type of school context is conducive toward positive schooling expe-
riences for ethnic minorities (Vervoort, Scholte, & Geertjan, 2010; Thijs & Verkuyten, 2014).
There are some underlying problems to empirical studies that focus on the ethnic composition
of schools. First, it is unclear whether focusing on the ethnic composition of a school can tell us
about well-being, since even where a good ethnic mix exists, students may prefer friendships with
co-ethnic peers (those most like them). Moody (2001), for example, distinguishes between formal
and substantive integration; namely that the latter denotes the quality of interactions between
peers, and not merely the number of possible inter- or intra-ethnic friendships available within a
school. Also, ethnic criteria may not be a salient identity for many of the young people during
their interactions at school, since friendships often operate at the intersections of class, gender,
and age-based interests (Arnett, 2007; Delgado Bernal, 2001). Second, Agirdag, Demanet, van

CONTACT Andrew Webb Andrew.webb@uc.cl Pontificia Universidad Cat

olica de Chile
ß 2019 University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Education
 EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION 417

Houtte, and van Avermaet (2011) note that it is important to distinguish between ethnic minority
composition/concentration (the proportion of ethnic minority students in a school) and ethnic
diversity or heterogeneity (referring to the number of different ethnic minority groups repre-
sented at the school). In some school contexts there may only be two ethnic groups (native and
non-native) interacting whilst in others there may be super-diversity. Finally, the majority of lit-
erature focuses more broadly on ethnic minority status (second-generation), rather than those
who have recently arrived in a country as migrants. All students undergoing transitions to new
schools face cultural shifts, adaptations to unfamiliar surroundings, and the stresses associated
with gaining social acceptance among new peers (Pratt & George, 2005). Yet these challenges are
particularly acute for newcomer migrant youth2, given that they may not be familiar with the
cultural workings of the host-country’s school system, they may stand out more due to certain
linguistic, cultural, or physical traits. Their parents, who face cultural navigations of their own in
other institutional spheres, may likewise be less equipped to support their children (Gibson &
Hidalgo, 2009; Suarez-Orozco, Suarez-Orozco, & Todorova, 2008).
This article provides a conceptual contribution to these empirical questions about victimization
and ethnic school compositions with a qualitative examination of peer friendships in two Chilean
secondary schools with a high ethnic mix of Latin American migrant students (mostly Peruvian,
Bolivian, Venezuelan, Colombian and Haitian). We ask two specific research questions: First,
how do Latin American migrant youth experience heterogeneous ethnic contexts (as referred to
above) in their transitions to Chilean schools? Second, how do friendship dynamics (as social
capital) enable Latin American migrant youth to manage these transitions?
Recent and rapidly growing3 south-south migration from other Latin American and Caribbean
countries such as the Dominican Republic, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and Haiti have contributed
to a changing urban landscape in Santiago, concentrated in a small number of peripheral neigh-
borhoods (Department of Immigration & Migration, 2016). Limited opportunities for equitable
school choice and residential clustering have resulted in similarly disproportionate ethnic school
compositions (Cano & Soffia, 2009). A report by the Education Superintendence in 2016 warned
that the poor distribution of migrant students in Chilean schools would likely to lead to “bullying”
and “ghettoization;” a narrative that was subsequently replicated across the national media4. This
follows a general global tendency for schools with highly concentrated ethnic populations to be
associated with pejorative bonding relationships and potential conflict between groups, and con-
trasted with “well-integrated” schools where bridging can supposedly occur (Agirdag et al., 2011).
We argue that irrespective of the ethnic make-up of a school, it is vital that scholarship move
beyond dominant discourses that reduce ethnic concentrations to “ghettoes.” As noted by R
ıos-
Rojas (2014), political approaches to integration can amount to little more than benign liberal dis-
courses intended to manage the adversity of undesirable others and maintain a sense of national
homogeneity. Despite evidence of victimization and discrimination in our case study schools, we
demonstrate that ethnic diversity does not result in internal segregation (homogenous or bonding
forms of friendship groups), but rather it produces a greater array of interactions across ethnic
groupings that also navigate gendered and class-based cleavages. That is, similarity and support
are constituted momentarily, in different spaces, and according to intersecting identity politics
through the leveraging effects of social capital. These are skillfully navigated by the young people
in our study. Creating greater equity in these spaces, we suggest, does not depend on the ethnic
mix of schools (alone), but on the opportunities to develop this social capital support.
This provides important contributions to understanding migrant education in three ways.
First, recently arrived adolescent migrants (rather than children of migrants or second generation
ethnic minorities) are an under-researched group in the Chilean context since the vast majority
of scholarship has been conducted in primary education (see later section). Second, our focus on
the Chilean context and south-south migrations disrupts an exclusively Western, “developed,”
south-north gaze of migratory transitions (Crivello, 2011; Jeffrey & Dyson, 2008). Third, we
418 A. WEBB AND P. ALVAREZ

demonstrate how the participants’ experiences are at odds with much existing social capital litera-
ture, since they rarely experience bonding or bridging as mutually exclusive forms of capital.

Social capital and newcomer migrant students

Bourdieu’s concept of social capital (1977, 1986) has been widely adopted in order to understand
educational outcomes among different social groupings. Though defined more broadly in other
contexts, we take social capital to refer to the quantity and quality of relationships available to
individuals (as sources of social capital) in institutional settings, and their potential or actual
transmission of key resources, information, shared interests, or social support embedded within
societal structures (as benefits of social capital) (Stanton-Salazar, 2011). Social capital differs from
human and cultural capital in that it is not located in the individual (personal forms of capital)
but is captured and generated in social relations.
In educational settings, two different effects of social capital have been researched. The most
common are educational outcomes; the ways parent and teacher interventions can impact student
retention, achievement, and expectations regarding higher education (Dika & Singh, 2002). We
argue that this type of social capital best expresses the more formal aspects of school life. A
second aspect of social capital in schools refers to relationships that enable student well-being
and sense of belonging (Morrow, 1999). Positive attitudes towards education depend on establish-
ing good relationships in the school context, feeling at ease there, and gaining access to informa-
tion and symbolic understandings of how the establishment functions in more informal ways
(Holland, Reynolds, & Weller, 2007). These processes are essential to enabling newcomers to
settle into school life and “get on” in the host country and with their education (Lauglo, 2000).
Friendship dynamics are, of course, complex social interactions in their own right; involving
carefully managed instances of inclusion and exclusion, that may determine an individual’s will-
ingness to stay in school (Ream & Rumberger, 2008). These relationships can open lines of com-
munication and participation that might otherwise be inaccessible to individuals with less
symbolic, cultural, or material capital. However, Portes and Landolt (2000) have warned against
an overly-integrationist application of social capital. That is, ideas put forward by Coleman and
Putnam theorize solely in neutral or consensual terms of networks, norms, reciprocity, and trust.
Integrationist discourses have tended to vilify “overly-cohesive” same-ethnic communities, thereby
overlooking the unequal conditions that these groupings face in their day-to-day lives. In this
regard, Putnam’s rather pejorative understanding of bonding social capital—as closed, tight-knit,
inward looking interactions between homogenous social groupings—risks ignoring the different
fields or spaces in which power differentials can be subverted or ameliorated by ethnic commun-
ities (Anthias & Cederberg, 2009; Reynolds, 2007).
Following Ryan (2011) we propose that it is crucial to move beyond bonding or bridging
dichotomies and toward more expansive typologies that acknowledge contextual fluidity, and the
multifaceted and fluid nature of ethnic identities. Anthias (2007), for example, argues that an
emphasis on the solidarity within an ethnic community overlooks internal diversity. Differential
power relations operate in these groups, meaning other social status such as gender or class may
be more salient or relevant to social interaction. In this regard, greater similarity may be found
across social groupings. Yosso’s (2005) work also demonstrates how ethnic youth’s intersecting
identities can draw on a wealth of different resources (linguistic, social, family, and aspirational
capital) to resist social injustice in school settings. Drawing on LatCrit studies, the author argues
that racialized subordination always occurs within layers of sexism and classism, but those who
suffer this oppression have recourse to cultural and linguistic skills and knowledge to empower
them as individuals and to challenge or struggle against institutional inequalities. We provide evi-
dence of similar processes; of how young people’s friendship dynamics switch between bonding
(same ethnic group)5, cross-ethnic (inter-ethnic, with other ethnic minority groups), and bridging
 EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION 419

ties (with those from the dominant Chilean culture). These friendship ties are flexible, temporal,
applicable to certain spaces of school life, and based on multiple sources of capital (musical inter-
ests, sporting abilities, academic abilities, protection). They operate across multiple fissures and
identities that transcend ideas of bonding as based solely on ethnic similarity.
Beyond an adult-centered or institution-focused approach to social capital and wellbeing
(Morrow, 1999), we examine the community-building capacities and cultural agency of ethnically
diverse migrant youth in school courtyards. This prioritizes an understanding of young people as
“as active social motivators of network building” (Offer & Schneider, 2007, 1125) in contexts where
adults are not acting as empowering institutional agents (Stanton-Salazar, 2011). Acknowledging
cross-ethnic friendship dynamics among these young people is crucial to understanding how they
adapt to new country contexts and school environments; mobilizing resources (such as sporting,
academic or musical interests and abilities) through social support to offset power inequalities.
Our conceptualization of social capital therefore looks to challenge the pathologizing of low-status
students in these unequal school contexts. Instead it focuses on the links between individual agency
and social relationships or networks to derive benefits that may be absent due to structural
inequalities (Morrow, 1999). The young people re-shape these environments by drawing on the
diversity of its population, across ethnic groupings, to create new communities of emotional sup-
port, social connectedness and popularity (Reynolds, 2007). Like Stanton-Salazar’s (1995, 2011)
and Yosso’s (2005) research, we find that ethnic minority youth are socially pro-active in generat-
ing their own wellbeing and sense of belonging, mitigating the disadvantages of social exclusion
(gendered and class-based) and ethnic discrimination. These experiences also point to the inad-
equacies of branding these schools as segregated or ghettoized, whilst simultaneously underscoring
the lack of adult support made available to combat victimization.

Inequalities and racism in Chilean education

Chile has undergone decades of civic protest regarding the reproduction of unequal educational
opportunities and outcomes. Traditionally, this was connected to socioeconomic segregation
(Valenzuela, Bellei, & de los R
ıos, 2014), and also unequal access for indigenous populations
(Webb & Radcliffe, 2015). However, sharply rising immigration levels from neighboring Latin
American countries over the last decade have seen these populations filtered into similarly mar-
ginal schools. A presidential decree issued in 2009 (Instructivo Presidencial N 9) to improve
school access allows immigrant children to be registered in schools, regardless of their parents’
legal status. This has been criticized as an example of the country’s outdated approach to immi-
gration with a technocratic approach to security and managing numbers (Do~ na Reveco &
Mullan, 2014). A lack of support programs and insufficient sources of information about human
rights and school selection for migrant families also have prevented more equitable access policies
(Stefoni, 2011). As noted by R
ıos-Rojas (2011), state responses to regulating different (unwanted)
bodies occurs within a hierarchy of desirability; that is, diversity is managed to ensure the bound-
ary between the “us” of the nation and the “them” of the periphery is maintained.
This is consistent with scholarship’s critical assessment of Chile’s nation-building project, as
one founded on a social imaginary of whitened homogeneity since its independence (Gott, 2007).
Opening its borders to European migrants during the nineteenth century, political leaders sought
to develop a western model of modernization and state building. Neoliberal reforms to the econ-
omy, health, pensions, and education during the Pinochet dictatorship, and the country’s later
inclusion as a member of the OECD consolidated this social ideal of modernization, despite com-
pounding inequalities along class and ethnic lines (Burton, 2012). Maintaining the status quo of
this self-made image requires that south-south migrations from other less-economically developed
and ethnically othered Latin American countries be managed via selective integration.
420 A. WEBB AND P. ALVAREZ

Pavez Soto (2012) and Tijoux (2013) note how migrant children in primary education are hier-
archically ordered according to the prestige of their country of origin via teachers and peers’ def-
icit narratives, maintaining Chilean as the normative intellectual and cultural category by which
all else is measured. To date only Riedemann and Stefoni (2015) have researched migrant youths’
education experiences in secondary school contexts. They describe similar racialized hierarchies
that are established among Chilean, Peruvian, and Haitian students, and the systemic denial of
racism by adults in these institutions. Teaching staff, they suggest, tend to reduce bullying to indi-
vidualized cases, or to minimize the gravity of racial slurs as joking typical of that age cohort.
Our intention is to contribute to these existing studies by providing a nuanced account of how
students experience and respond to deeply unequal educational conditions through social capital.
We acknowledge the racism and difficult transitions faced by students, confirming findings from
these previous studies, but argue that a one-dimensional portrayal of migrant students’ educa-
tional experiences risks silencing these young people’s voices. In particular we query whether so-
called segregated schools are sites of ghettoization, showing that cross-ethnic friendships are com-
mon. We therefore give equal weight to their narratives regarding the strategies (agency), inter-
secting identities, and relationships that help these students get by in everyday school life so as to
demonstrate their adaptability to these sometimes-hostile conditions. This is a significant finding
since it requires that attention be drawn away from a singular-focus on structural issues related
to integration or segregation, and re-directed toward addressing the inequalities that newcomer
migrant youth face, and how to better support their educational experiences.

Conducting the research

The schools
El Bosque School (pseudonym) is a public vocational high school, in the western periphery of the
capital where approximately 48% of newcomer Haitians reside (DEM, 2016). Enrolments of migrant
students increased substantially between 2015 and 2016, rising from 4.6% of the total school popula-
tions, to 9.2%, among which there were nine nationalities represented. The school is a vocational
institution, training students in accountancy, administration, mechanics, and electricity. In recent
years, the establishment has been stigmatized in the national media owing to its poor test results
and to a number of its students being linked to high-profile gang membership in the local area.
Montenegro School (pseudonym), offering education from pre-K (preschool) up to eighth
grade, is located in the central district of Santiago and has 1488 enrolled students of which 308
are migrants (20.7%). The school has students from more than 13 countries. Founded in 1933, it
is one of the oldest schools in the capital, and is located in central Santiago.
Most of the students in both schools are from lower-middle or low income families, many of
whom reside in the older quarters of central Santiago in tenement housing. In both case studies,
the schools’ municipal status ensures that the state allocates newcomer students to these institu-
tions as a first option. Neither school operated any support programs or teacher training for
migrant populations at the time of the research.

Methods
The researchers conducted the study over the course of six months in these two schools in
Santiago, which we chose on account of having a higher-than-average ethnic mix.6 We adopted a
case study approach to understand young migrants’ navigation of these institutional settings (Yin,
2003). We assumed a constructivist-interpretivist approach to these contexts, in as much as we
sought to observe phenomenon occurring in the “natural” setting of the schools, whilst
 EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION 421

Table 1. Participant details.

Name (pseudonym) Time in Chile Age Gender Nationality/Ethnic origin School Grade School
Pedro 1 year 8 months 15 Male Dominican Republic 9th grade Montenegro School
Judeline 2 years 17 Female Haitian 10th grade El Bosque School
Sebasti
an 4 1=2 years 15 Male Ecuadorian 8th grade Montenegro School
Nicol
as 5 years 14 Male Peruvian 8th grade Montenegro School
Jackson 3 years 18 Male Haitian 12th grade El Bosque School
Victoria 2 years 14 Female Colombian 8th grade Montenegro School
Julia 2 years 17 Female Peruvian 12th grade El Bosque School
Li Wei 3 years 16 Male Chinese 10th grade El Bosque School
Leslie 6 months 15 Female Colombian 8th grade Montenegro School
Miguel 3 years 14 Male Peruvian 8th grade Montenegro School

acknowledging that social realities are multiply interpreted and constructed by social actors.
Therefore, we opted to conduct interviews to compliment our observational data
(Creswell, 2007).
We negotiated access and entry to the schools by agreeing to provide each establishment with
a report of the research findings, and obtained informed consent from the schools, the migrant
students, and their parents prior to commencing our study. We spent at least 1 day per week at
each school, observing friendship dynamics and activities in recreational spaces during recess,
lunch, and afterschool hours, culminating in approximately 24 visits to each school. We recorded
these activities in field notes, and held some informal conversations with migrant youth at the
schools to gauge their interest in participating in the research. Fifteen students7 consented to par-
ticipate and we added them to our Facebook and Whatsapp contacts in order to share more fre-
quent communications, and to acquaint ourselves with the young people’s online identities,
contacts, and activities (not discussed in this article). Details about the students are included in
Table 1 and pseudonyms are used for all the participants.
Having established a certain familiarity and confidence with each participant, the second
author carried out life history interviews on the school grounds (in quiet spaces, such as empty
classrooms, and outside class hours so as to ensure greater privacy and freedom to talk openly)
in Spanish. We organized questions into three key moments; the first oriented toward their expe-
riences of education in their countries of origin, the second requesting that they “story-tell” their
transitions (first weeks) to the Chilean school, and their most memorable moments or experien-
ces during that time, and finally about their friendships and any negative instances of bullying or
victimization. The interviews lasted an average of 45–60 min, and were transcribed and analyzed
in Spanish before fragments were translated for publication. In addition, the second author visited
some of the participants’ homes so as to better visualize their neighborhood and enhance our
understanding when listening to their stories of arriving in Chile. The participants spent an after-
noon at the researchers’ university campus to help establish mutual trust.
The first author took responsibility for data analysis and consulted with the second author
about complimentary data from field notes. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was used
to draw out those aspects most central and important to the young people as they reflected upon
their educational and migratory pathways. In accordance with other youth studies literature, the
young people’s narratives and stories take a central place in the findings, complemented—rather
than defined—by scholarly analysis, that enables a conversation between both worlds (see Jeffrey
& Dyson, 2008). However, we acknowledge that all forms of analysis are interpretative construc-
tions that never simply let the subjects “speak for themselves” (Pillow, 2003).

Researcher positionality
Facing the difficulties of establishing trust and being sensitive toward asymmetries of privilege
and power between the researchers and participants were of paramount importance from the
422 A. WEBB AND P. ALVAREZ

beginning of the research. The first author is white British, and given existing binaries in Chile
between foreigners (usually of European origin) and migrants (usually of Latin American origin),
we decided the second author (Chilean) would conduct the fieldwork related to conversations
with migrant students. The second author is much closer in age to the participants, is a native
Spanish-speaker, has experience working in marginal neighborhood schools, is well-versed in glo-
bal youth culture, and his tattoos (though not considered a reason for conducting the fieldwork)
were a source of intrigue for some of the participants. By sharing a cigarette outside the school
gates, and chatting about music with the young people, he quickly differentiated himself from
teachers. Whilst finding points of common ground may do little to mitigate power asymmetries
with participants (particularly ethnic and class), we believe they certainly helped establish a more
credible view of the research relationship from the participants’ perspectives so as to enhance
mutual trust (Bengry-Howell & Griffin, 2012).

Navigating well-being in school through social Capital

Managing victimization
Many of the young participants we spoke to indicated that they had been victims of ethnic dis-
crimination during their first year at school, during which they came to believe that educators
would too often ignore or refuse to see victimization. As we go on to describe, most participants
eventually found ways of offsetting these experiences through peer friendships, but during their
first months at school, some had taken matters “into their own hands.” Nicol
as (Peruvian) sug-
gested that taunts from Chilean peers were commonplace: “Peruvians eat pigeon, that was the
most common insult, but I didn’t rise to that, what’s the point? It went on for about two years
until I fit in better.” Silence, in this instance was a form of resistance (Pollock, 2005) but clearly
did not have an empowering effect. However, Nicol
as took another incident more seriously and
complained to his teacher when two students in his classroom insulted his mother using racially
inciting language. Nicol
as noted that his teacher had played down his experience: “He said that it
was just a game—he couldn’t understand that it affected me.” Nicol
as’ response was to resolve
the situation himself, and he was suspended for three days for punching one of the boys at the
school gates.
A similar response was narrated by Sebasti
an (Ecuadorian) who complained about his teachers’
inability to see the true instigator of conflict he was experiencing:
I think what I had to live through was pretty bad. I got on with some. … But the teachers, like, always
tried to make me out to be the bad guy, always, and that made me really angry, so I started to fight and all
that … the teachers did nothing. (Sebastian)

Although physical retribution was penalized by the school hierarchy as an inappropriate

response, it is a common resource drawn upon in school settings when victimized students lack
social status and support networks (Wright & Fitzpatrick, 2006). In Nicol
as’ case, the conflict
resolved the power struggle, stating that, “Now we get on fine … we talked after and now it’s
sorted.” However, it still leaves marginalized and isolated youth in precarious scenarios that are
best met by friendship support—regardless of whether it follows a classically bridging or bond-
ing typology.
Jackson’s case provides an example of a bridging tie. He had moved to Chile following the
2010 earthquake in Haiti, but his transition to Chilean schooling was initially complicated by hav-
ing to adapt to new classroom dynamics and feeling discriminated against:
Education in Haiti was much stricter, but out of the 28 students in my new class, only 14 finished the
school year. They would shout at the teacher and pay no attention. It was hard at first, I missed home, my
girlfriend, I wanted to go back because people discriminated against me. I’m an easygoing guy, I had lots of
friends back home but here they insulted me a lot during recess, told me I was here to steal jobs, and gave
me weird looks.
 EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION 423

Jackson only had one Chilean friend at the time, but this friendship proved vital to dramatic-
ally reversing his fortunes in school well-being:
I had a friend in my class who was a rapper … he made these beatbox sounds with his mouth and was
good at rapping, too. He was called Alex, and I started to join in with him and he taught me how to make
a track, how to rap with rhythm, in acapella style too … and when he started freestyling in the yard, I
would always go with him. He told me that I had to insert some lyrics even just a few and from then on,
bit by bit I learnt and got good at it too … From then on, everyone got to know me, and no one treated
me like a Haitian anymore. (Jackson)

Based on our interactions with Jackson, it was clear that not being treated “as Haitian anymore”
referred to relief at accomplishing a new primary or master status—as a rapper—rather than any
desire to deny his ethnic identity. Whilst Jackson embodies the blackness that challenges the whit-
ened ideal of Chilean society (and the school), and the otherness of “a migrant who steals jobs,”
rapping allowed him to simultaneously embody cultural similarity and a shared global youth iden-
tity, transforming his social status and well-being in his new school. Although this represents a
successful case of bridging and offsetting ethnic criteria for inclusion, it is crucial to note that
Jackson’s “integration” was always tenuously balanced, since his status was both temporal (he
experienced discrimination in other moments) and contextual (delimited to the courtyard).
For other participants, safety in numbers was key to well-being; especially in cross-ethnic and
intra-ethnic (bonding-type) friendship groups. Miguel (Peruvian), for example, said that his
friendship groups were ethnically mixed, but that his preferences for bonding-type relationships
were a means of safety from these more aggressive peers, and on account of offering greater qual-
ity of mutual empathy:
Those who think they are so tough [choro] are all Chileans, they try to get under our skin … I have a
Bolivian friend who just arrived this year, he’d just arrived this year and they started to get at him. … One
day there was a fight, here at the back of the courtyard and we protected him, stood up for him. The
majority of my friends are Peruvian; I have ten Chilean friends and five Peruvians but I get together with
the Peruvians much more because they understand me better. (Miguel)

Supposedly insular forms of bonding social capital (intra-ethnic) are often an outcome of
negative and systemically racialized conditions, rather than individual choices (Hallinan &
Williams, 1989). Even so, the young migrants involved in the research suggest that intra-ethnic
and cross-ethnic friendships can offer protection and a sense of being culturally understood that
challenge the negative connotations of more “segregated” affinities. In Miguel’s case, far from
producing ethnic enclaves or ghettoization, the friendship group comprising Peruvian youth pro-
vide the young man from Bolivia with a type of “defensively orientated” capital that usurps the
dominant peer group’s attempt to victimize or bully him (Anthias, 2007; Reynolds, 2007).
In the two examples provided, victimization is managed by migrant youth through bridging
and bonding/cross-ethnic types of friendship ties. However, similarity to, or difference from
others, also must take account of social factors such as socioeconomic status, gender, religion, or
delinquent/conformist behavior (Moody, 2001). To this end, in the next section we draw atten-
tion to structurally conditioning aspects of friendships in both bridging and bonding forms, as
well as their potential to open up new avenues for social capital support.

Managing gendered and class-based friendship dynamics

In the courtyard—where friendship dynamics are perhaps most freely expressed in the school
context—we were able to observe internally-complex aspects of bonding and bridging-type rela-
tionships that operate within both gendered and class-based intersections (see Anthias, 2007;
Devine, 2009). Many group dynamics at recess obeyed spatially designated routines and patterns:
The courtyard is divided into very marked groupings. The Chilean group with a more aggressive attitude
[los choros] meet to smoke in the bathrooms and have clearly designated spaces that others avoid. The
424 A. WEBB AND P. ALVAREZ

Chilean young women occupy the rear end of the courtyard with benches, which often receives the
afternoon sunshine, but they roam around the edge of the basketball court and frequently go to the school
kiosk. The Haitian young women chat on the stairways, whilst the central basketball court is divided in two
for soccer and basketball players—all young men of mixed nationalities. Other small groupings are more
statically positioned at the margins of the courtyard, but do not obey strictly intra-ethnic bonds. (Field
notes March 03, El Bosque)

As can be observed from the field notes, female friendship dynamics were relatively fixed, and
proved particularly difficult for recently-arrived migrant young women to negotiate. A lack of
cultural capital in regard to slang, cultural references to fashion, inferences, and sexual innuendos
were repeatedly cited as impediments to gaining recognition from their Chilean peers. After some
months at the Montenegro school, Leslie (Colombian) began to settle in by establishing some
friendships with male (Chilean) peers, but this had resulted in jealousies and misunderstandings
with Chilean young women:
It was a hard experience starting here [at school]. I didn’t know anyone, people stared at me, I felt odd,
uncomfortable, and emotional because of all that was going on. Their way of talking was so different. It’s
still hard for me to understand. I couldn’t understand it when they insulted me—I knew they were saying
something bad, but not the specific words … with the guys we hang out and talk, but the girls keep you at
a distance. When I got here, I, you know, we had fights, conflicts and then after, we made up and
everything but we hardly talked … I started to chat to this guy and all that but as friends, he was the ex of
one of them [Chilean young woman], and she started to say that I was with him and that I was eating her
leftovers and that I was involved with him and all that. That wasn
t true but that’s where the fight began. I
quickly realized she was after me and told the school inspector, who summoned us to the headmaster. He
told us to make peace. (Leslie)

For Leslie, bridging-type friendships with male peers were more easily achievable but less
desirable than bonding-types with female fellow-migrants, since they brought more problems
than solutions. She clarified that whilst in the classroom, Chilean male peers were amicable, but
outside she would stick together with her Peruvian female friends. Leslie was not alone in finding
friendships with Chilean young women difficult—Victoria (Colombian) also preferred bonding
type relationships on account of the emotional stability that they provided:
They [female Chilean peers] are very, very bipolar, it’s like you talk to them today, and they say hi, and the
next day they’re already angry with you for no reason … and I was like “how weird!” In Colombia you
realize if a person is getting angry with you or what you did, you know exactly what you did, and every day
people greet you there in Colombia. (Victoria)

However, not all difficulties experienced by young women in our research resulted in ethnic-
ally and gendered bonding-forms of friendship. Julia’s story highlights the role of shared interests
and afterschool activities as potential sites for more diverse social capital.
Julia came to Chile from Peru at the age of 15, having experienced a number of earlier disrup-
tions to her schooling, changing schools three times due to her mother requiring cancer treat-
ment. Her mother was unable to find a school with places for both her children, and eventually
settled on sending them to different establishments. Julia was enrolled late, and as a result, was
obliged to specialize in electricity at El Bosque. Julia was the only female in the course and ini-
tially experienced difficulties forming friendships with male peers: “It was weird for me to join a
group of men and I didn’t have much to say to them either.” During recess, Julia attempted to
make Chilean female friends among those studying to be Pre-K (preschool) teachers, but found
personality clashes to be too great and after a week, resorted to isolating herself. According to
Julia, everything changed when she discovered afterschool activities:
I sat in the classrooms at recess listening to music, and used to go from home to school and back, just
studying, I didn’t do much else. Outside school I didn’t have friends, and my classmates thought I was so
shy and kept asking, “Got any friends yet?” I kept saying “no.” Then I got involved with the school
workshops: football, basketball, volleyball, and I got to know others from first and second grade [Chileans
 EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION 425

and migrants]. I made friends, now I have lots. I started music workshops too … Before I could hardly say
a word to others, now I’m more sociable. (Julia)

Afterschool activities did not follow the same gendered patterns of the courtyard, and enabled
Julia to establish support networks of both bridging and bonding types with male and female peers
in relation to cultural identities (music and sport). In these spaces, young migrants are afforded
greater opportunities to acquire benefits from counselors, volunteers, or mentors, or simply differ-
ent friendship groups (Stanton-Salazar, 2011) which can ameliorate the imbalances of power or
victimization experienced in the courtyard or in the classroom. Additionally, extracurricular activ-
ities of this nature provide opportunities for fostering greater inter-ethnic/cross-ethnic friendships,
that are often less accessible in formal organizational aspects of the school (Moody, 2001).
For the male participants, bridging forms of social capital with other young men were signifi-
cantly more straightforward in the courtyard, if and when one could demonstrate musical or
sporting competence. As Devine (2009) suggests, “participation in valued social networks derives
from the ability to present oneself as ‘competent’ in the norms governing the social group” (2009,
p. 526). This provided some of those involved in our research the possibility to temporarily offset
ethnic tensions and exclusions. Sports teams were always ethnically mixed, though always male-
dominated, and insults and racist language took on entirely different meanings to those used in
the classrooms or other areas of the courtyard; it was common to hear them used to affirm
acceptance within these temporary networks, which in other contexts might be offensive (Field
Notes, November 17).
For those young men less adept at sports, negotiating bridging relationships was more com-
plex. Some participants (such as Miguel, cited previously) were particularly wary of specific male
Chilean peers described as flaites or choros—categories used to refer to aggressive male working-
class youth culture. The only exception we observed of bridging these closed class-based peer
groups was Li We
ıs (Chinese) strategic relationship with one of the most notorious choro in the
El Bosque school. This was premised on a different type of resource: academic capital. Whilst
accompanying Li Wei on a walk around the courtyard during recess (again obeying specific terri-
tories) the student in question approached him and asked for help with the upcoming math test,
to which Li Wei replied jokingly, “Study harder lazy sod.” Putting his hands together in a plead-
ing, though somewhat sarcastic fashion, the student asked again and Li Wei this time accepted,
adding, “Make sure you copy it right this time” (Field Notes, September 24). Despite clear power
asymmetries between himself and the student in the informal spaces of the courtyard, Li Wei was
assured in dealings with the student knowing that he had the leverage of valuable resources per-
taining to the formal sphere of the school. This reciprocally beneficial relationship—offering Li
Wei guaranteed protection from others in exchange for answers to homework—does not offer the
same benefits as Miguel’s friendship group in terms of mutual understandings and sense of place,
but does offset the emotional tensions surrounding school violence.
The examples in this section allude to somewhat restrictive and sometimes structurally-deter-
mining types of friendship dynamics that inhibit acceptance and well-being within less official
spaces of the school such as the courtyard. Newcomer female migrants may find it difficult to fit
in when their Chilean counterparts see them as a threat to potential sexual relationships, whilst
isolated male newcomers may be subject to threatening behavior from dominant working-class
Chilean groupings. The variability of friendships among the young people involved in the
research runs contrary to the somewhat “over-celebratory” or simplistic dichotomy exaggerating
the positive externalizing and cohesive bridging (usually made in reference to friendships with
the dominant group), in contrast to negative, isolating and inward-looking bonding among
minorities (Nannestad et al., 2008). We have noted some exceptions to these tensions; young
men with either academic or sporting abilities can use this capital to create spaces of inclusion
that offset ethnicity as a primary status, whilst Juli
as focus on sporting and music-based interests
also opened up more opportunities for support that bypassed gendered-tensions.
426 A. WEBB AND P. ALVAREZ

Beyond static friendship ties

Currently little is known about how young migrants entering or already studying secondary edu-
cation in Chile navigate schooling, or about their well-being in ethnically diverse schools.
Although existing Chilean literature suggests teachers tend to belittle racism and victimization
experienced by migrant children and youth (Riedemann & Stefoni, 2015; Tijoux, 2013), we
focused on the agency of the young people, and the value that cross-ethnic friendships play, in
ameliorating these trying moments at the beginning of their time in new schools.
The case study seeks to problematize a static picture of friendship networks among ethnic
minorities (as enclaves or problems for assimilation policies) by emphasizing a flexible and
changeable boundary between bonding and bridging relationships (Anthias, 2007; Reynolds, 2007;
Ryan, 2011). Whilst it is relatively self-evident that friendships bring social benefits to migrants,
so as to produce better school retention, achievement, or well-being, there is a danger in assum-
ing that such dynamics are automatically positive, permanent, or based on one (ethnic) criterion
(Ream & Rumberger, 2008). Instead, young people negotiate their sense of place in schools using
multiple identity positions—whether drawing on global youth culture or existing capital such as
academic or sporting abilities to maximize their acceptance and support in these establishments.
These frequently adhered to cross-ethnic ties are by no means a replacement for bonding or
bridging relationships, but add more nuance to these typologies.
Bonding-type ties were particularly useful during the first months at school, and as a source of
protective capital from potential victimization (Reynolds, 2007). Observations of courtyard behav-
ior suggest bonding ties also are necessary for those students who do not exhibit sporting or
musical talents, helping them occupy a space around the periphery of where these high-status
activities take place. Those able to demonstrate capital (know-how) in football, basketball, or
music are better able to create cross-ethnic ties, and in some instances, bridge with Chilean
youth. Like Walsteth (2008), we found that these sorts of activities are conducive to “social capital
among immigrants across ethnicity” (2008, p. 15 our emphasis). In many of these cases, adoles-
cent identities and global culture are more relevant to their friendship negotiations than ethnicity.
However, all these cross-ethnic and bridging ties require careful management of gendered and
class-based tensions.
To summarize, these high-ethnic mix schools are not sites of internal segregation, and point to
limitations in Putnam’s gender-blind and sometimes ethnocentric ideas about bridging and bond-
ing type social capital (Ryan, 2011). Consequently, the instances of beneficial social capital that
we observed were informally organized by youth themselves, are usually temporal, and context-
ually-specific, fluctuating between bridging, cross-ethnic, and bonding types. Although we found
evidence of victimization and discrimination in our case study schools, ethnic diversity was a key
component of the young migrants’ ability to construct supportive friendship networks based on
intersecting identity politics and shared cultural interests.

Implications for Chilean educators and future research

Recent governmental initiatives have made positive school climate a priority area of education
policy, including the prevention of ethnic discrimination of recently arrived migrants
(MINEDUC, 2018). From our conversations with the young people involved in this study, there
is evidence that these policies have not filtered down to school practice. Since 2011, when the
School Violence Act came into effect, every Chilean public school is required to form a “School
Climate Committee” to oversee issues related to victimization. Although both schools have com-
plied with this law, the tensions described in the previous sections of this article suggest that
these procedural or top-down interventions are not effective at reaching informal school spaces
such as the courtyard.
 EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION 427

Stanton-Salazar (2011) proposes that schools need institutional agents who can help empower
newcomer students. He names roles such as integrative agent to help guide young people into
participatory networks, cultural guides who can offer advice about new social situations or the
particular cultural outworking of the school, and networking coaches who look to foment relation-
ships with key institutional agents, such as teachers or other school staff. Whilst school climate
committees may be a step toward tackling victimization, it is unclear whether they adhere to
these kinds of empowering roles.
As noted by Anthias (2007), disadvantaged groups’ capacities to build their own social capital,
“should not be seen as a substitute for directly addressing questions of differential and unequal
social location and direct access to social, political and economic resources and power.” (2007,
p. 802). Further attention is therefore needed to consider how the Chilean education system can
empower young migrants who currently rely solely on friendship support networks (where they
have managed to establish them). Beyond the structural issues of segregation, teachers need to
consider culturally-sensitive pedagogies that can incorporate more dialogical and empathetic
approaches to the multi-ethnic students in their classrooms, particularly those facing discrimin-
ation or problems adapting to school, rather than labeling them as troublemakers or as uninter-
ested (see Hopkins, Martinez-Wenzl, Aldana, & G
andara, 2013 on pedagogy of caring). If a more
equitable education system is truly sought, other school staff and potential mentors from support
programs are urgently needed to encourage young migrants who are currently facing these
ambivalent transitions without institutional support.
In sum, victimization is not solely determined by the ethnic mix of the school, or managed by
well-meaning intentions to “integrate” from top-down policies. Educational practitioners in Chile
should recognize the intersecting inequalities and forms of social exclusion (ethnic, gendered,
class-based) that newcomer migrant youth are currently navigating by themselves. We recom-
mend that Chilean education policy—in particular the School Violence Act—revise how school
climate committees can support and empower youth to draw more benefits from the networks of
ethnic diversity in schools. In particular, adults working in these contexts should act as integrative
agents, cultural guides, or networking coaches to support migrant youth, especially during their
first year. Creating greater equity in these spaces depends, then, on improving the opportunities
to develop social capital among the diverse school population, given the multiple identities
around which young people find similarity, well-being, and support.
The research is limited in its analysis of gendered relations since it is restricted to a male/
female category (those expressed by the participants). Other future studies might expand this to
consider a wider representation of non-binary identities. Another limitation of the study is that it
cannot tell us about its conversion (see Anthias, 2007) into cognitive outcomes (school retention,
achievement, or higher education expectations), hence more embedded inequalities may remain
unaffected. This is a goal for future research. This notwithstanding, the value of this social capital
is its everyday, subtler resistance to victimization and inequalities faced in school life.

Notes
1. Victimization in schools is generally understood to take on verbal, physical, social exclusion, and
cybernetic forms (Olweus 1991).
2. Throughout the article we prefer the term migrant to immigrant, since their intentions to remain are not
clear-cut. Trans-migrant in some cases better captures their families’ complex and interconnecting
relationship between the host country and that of origin, but the umbrella term migrant is more suited to
a varied sample. We use the terminology 1.5 generation to describe the young ethnic students, following
Rumbaut (2004), who developed this category (and also 1.25 generation) to describe adolescent migrants.
3. Figures from the national census suggest 710,000 migrants were residing in Chile in 2017, an increase
from 450,000 in 2014 and 209,000 in 2011 (Perticara 2018).
4. See https://www.emol.com/noticias/Nacional/2016/12/06/834383/Ninos-inmigrantes-en-las-escuelas-chilenas-
Estudio-advierte-de-ghetos-folclorizacion-y-bullying.html
428 A. WEBB AND P. ALVAREZ

5. We use bonding, homophilous, and intra-ethnic ties interchangeably in accordance with the traditional
literature on social capital and racial homophily.
6. Migrant school-age youth make up just 1% of the school-age population, and most schools do not have
many nationalities enrolled (DEM 2016).
7. Intentional sampling strategies in qualitative research inevitably lead to other narratives being omitted.
Our concerns are not to generalize findings to all Latin American and Caribbean migrant students in
these schools, but to understand more fully the meanings attributed to daily life in schools by those
willing to contribute to the research narrative.

Funding
This work was supported by Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research (CIIR) under Grant FONDAP
15110006, Millennium Science Initiative of the Ministry of Economy, Development and Tourism grant “Millenium
Nucleus for the Study of the Life Course and Vulnerability” and the Pontificia Universidad Cat

olica de Chile VRI
INICIO N 03/2015.

ORCID
Andrew Webb http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2706-7670

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Notes on contributors
Andrew Webb’s holds a doctorate in Sociology from Cambridge University, UK. He research focuses on intersec-
tions between ethnicity and education, covering issues such as institutional racism, teacher expectations, school
compositions, and the effects of schooling on ethnic identity formation. His publications have focused on indigen-
ous populations and Latin American migrants in Chile.
Patricio Alvarez, is a graduate in Social Anthropology from Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano. He
is a social anthropologist, is currently a doctoral candidate in Culture and Discourse at the Faculty of Philosophy
and Humanities at the Universidad Austral, Valdivia. He has worked as a researcher in popular education and on
issues related to interethnic conflict and health.