UC San Diego

Spain has recently become one of Europe's new countries of immigration. Ethnic diversity in Spain has traditionally referred to cultural minorities within the country's Autonomous Communities. The presence of economic migrants and their children is further diversifying the country's ethnic landscape. This thesis focuses on how one set of public institutions, the country's schools, are responding to increased ethnic heterogeneity among their student populations as the result of immigration. Specifically, I examine how five primary public schools in the district of Tetuán in Madrid have responded to the increased presence of Latin American immigrant students. This thesis shows that the recent introduction of Latin American immigrant students in Tetuán has only prompted a minimal response in the neighborhood's schools. While national discourse disseminated by policymakers and scholars advocates an intercultural approach to immigrant education, Tetuán's schools struggle to implement this educational model in practice. Instead of taking a broad approach to ethnic recognition, schools relegate questions of ethnic diversity to peripheral spheres of the school, such as pull-out programs for linguistic minority students and compensatory programs for students with academic deficiencies. This thesis attempts to explain why this minimalist approach to ethnic diversity prevails in Tetuán. To accomplish this task, I examine national and local policy frameworks attending to diversity, and educator and immigrant parent attitudes towards ethnic recognition in the schools. I demonstrate that the minimal approach to diversity in Tetuán can be attributed to the absence of an institutional framework for implementing intercultural education and the lack of a political constituency among both teachers and parents supporting intercultural reform in the schools. I conclude that Tetuán's current approach to diversity is consistent with other European contexts where robust ethnic recognition through multiculturalism is retreating