Whitened Geographies and Education Inequalities in Southern Chile

Abstract

In this paper, we draw on critical geographies and sociologies of race and education to explore ways in which the meanings and conducts of whiteness are reproduced in and through Chilean secondary education in an indigenous-majority area. We focus on links between socio-economic, geographical and racial criteria to understand how the privileges of whiteness are naturalised in the region's educational provision and among Mapuche indigenous pupils. Although socio-economic inequalities are widely recognised to structure inequality between young people in Chile, we highlight the pervasiveness and unmarked nature of whiteness in the educational system in relation to the socio-spatial segregation of Mapuche pupils, secondary teachers' attitudes and young peoples' self-positioning in the nation. These combine to marginalise and disempower Mapuche populations across the landscape of rural secondary schools in the Araucanía region of Chile.