How to integrate Gypsy students in Public School? From recognition of alterity to plurality of discriminatory arrangements

Abstract

Within the European framework of strategic orientation towards increasingly schooled and inclusive societies, the challenge of the presence of different cultures in schools requires the implementation of policies that promote non-discrimination and provide effective means of coordinating diversity. However, the Portuguese Gypsy are still a cultural and ethnic group apparently immune to the aims of these policies, due to the enormous social and historical prejudices which fall upon their members. In this sense, a survey was conducted to test a set of possibilities on how best to integrate Gypsy students in public schools. In this context, 700 non-Gypsy students from three secondary schools in Greater Lisbon were surveyed. In the perspective of an eminently interpretative sociology, closely linked to a theory of semantic action, a scenario-based questionnaire was used to find out among non-gypsy students the most practical way for schools to accommodate discriminated gypsy students in another school. The results show that, for the respondents, the Gypsy population must be socialized through tactical procedures or individualized through moral or functional devices in order to be assimilated.