Latin America is characterized by enormous socio-ethnic and linguistic diversity. At the same time, there are significant migration flows between the countries of the region. In educational settings, this population diversity is often addressed through the labeling of students who belong to or identify as Indigenous and as migrants.

This is largely because, historically, nation-states constructed these "others" as representatives of population diversity, with whom they maintained different relationships. Particularly in school settings, this link was and continues to be expressed in a specific way: there, individuals from different communities converge, all of whom have been addressed by the state as "different." As mentioned, this seems to especially describe the treatment of Indigenous and migrant populations from Latin American countries. In this sense, it is important to note the role that the school has historically played, as a state institution, in consolidating narratives about national identity and in the ways of classifying the population that is included and excluded from what is considered common. Here, it is worth noting the crucial way in which population dynamics, the unfolding of a national project, and the hegemonic way in which individuals are named and categorized are articulated in identity policies that both enable and curtail rights. Indigenous peoples and migrant populations have been the targets of successive policies characterized by both their invisibility and their singling out, by the denial or overemphasis of difference. Paraphrasing Bhabha (2010), in reference to cultural processes in postcolonial nation-states, the nation expresses itself as a laboratory of cultural differences, which is always unstable and ambivalent. In any case, the formation of educational systems led by political elites generated regional proposals in which the languages, knowledge, historiographies, and models of interpreting reality of the elites hegemonized the discourse and constructed national models.

More recently, and as a counterpoint to that perspective, we find that alongside the recognition of the presence of Indigenous and migrant populations in the urban and rural contexts of different Latin American countries, interculturality has positioned itself as a key concept in the discussions and interventions of specialists, educational policy managers, and leaders of Indigenous and migrant organizations. Interculturality thus emerges as part of an ongoing response to traditional homogenizing models. Over the last few decades, it has been configured as a political and social perspective in the face of a scenario that has historically been addressed through notions such as extermination, invisibility, acculturation, and/or assimilation. That is to say, it presents itself as the key concept and approach from which to interpret and manage the relationships between social groups categorized by their "otherness."

Interculturality in general, and bilingual intercultural education in particular, is a proposal that is not only pedagogical but also methodological and political. However, its development has not been completed, so it is always present as a great challenge to overcome. Indigenous peoples and migrant populations find themselves in contexts of subordination and subalternity, so the pedagogical development of interculturality sometimes encounters the pitfalls of that context. Educational experiences often turn out to be actions that do not go beyond cultural assimilation, or mere folklore, and in others, a recovery of the intracultural, which clings to the considered "traditional/ancestral" culture, without dialogue with its own variations or with other cultures. The above indicates a great advance in terms of rights; many more steps are needed to achieve intercultural understanding and for education to contribute to the development of the much-debated identities. A society that considers itself intercultural would develop general interventions aimed at disseminating the cultures that comprise it, analyzing their intersections and their mutual relationships, which are often unequal, rather than specific programs focused on certain sectors that it considers bearers of ethnic markers. In this sense, interculturality remains a horizon to be achieved for America. However, the work has not been in vain, as there have been interesting pedagogical and curricular advances in the field of training and in the reflection on the pedagogical and political implications of interculturality. In the last two decades, research on Intercultural Bilingual Education in America can be framed within different trends. On the one hand, there has been an increase in publications that warn about the processes of substitution and loss of indigenous American languages ​​in favor of other more powerful languages, in the current political and economic contexts. On the other hand, the educational benefits and opportunities that indigenous and migrant children and youth have accessed in recent years, as well as the quality of bilingual and intercultural educational proposals, are still being questioned. There has also been a proliferation of debates about the implications of school designs that are based on decolonial approaches to education in Latin America. Finally, many studies question the complex articulation between the educational experiences of indigenous and migrant children, youth and adults in school and extracurricular activities. Advances regarding the role of domestic, religious, recreational, etc. spheres. The formation of intercultural knowledge and skills, defined as formative experiences, allows for expanding the repertoire of questions related to the articulation between state institutions, families and community.

Professors, academics, specialists, and leaders of Indigenous and migrant movements have worked extensively to achieve the progress made so far in bilingual and intercultural education. To foster interdisciplinary and international dialogue, this Working Group brings together researchers from various countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Spain, Peru, Paraguay, and the United States) who have been exploring the scope and limitations of this issue, studying diverse educational experiences in intercultural contexts. Most of these researchers are social scientists who have long been conducting research in the fields of childhood, Indigenous and migrant children, schooling, and education in contexts of diversity and inequality in Latin America. In the 2016-2019 edition of our working group, we have made significant progress in sharing our research, building a substantial body of information and knowledge on the subject. Our focus will remain on the diverse formative experiences of Indigenous and migrant children and youth: experiences of political participation, religious practices, and socioeconomic production, within contexts of linguistic socialization and intergenerational transmission of knowledge. It will be essential to connect these family and community-based formative situations with school contexts, analyzing, in turn, the aspects shared regionally and globally, as well as the specificities of national formations of otherness. In other words, in this new cycle, we specifically aim to advance the development of a systematically comparative perspective.

The (re)emergence of identity movements throughout Latin America is a highly relevant topic. It is evident that Indigenous and migrant populations are experiencing a process of increased visibility and growth. The hegemonic model in which educational systems develop without regard for the sociocultural particularities of society is in retreat, or at least its basic principles are being debated. In diverse ways across the Americas, the last few decades have been marked by more or less successful processes of incorporating the languages, knowledge, and ideologies of Indigenous and migrant populations into the realms of formal education. This impetus allows everything that was produced, reinterpreted, and reinvented in the development of countless intercultural educational experiences in the domestic and everyday settings of children and adults to begin to be made visible. Thus, Indigenous voices, along with Indigenous men and women, are entering intercultural schools from their homes.

In this context, various issues concerning the treatment of ethnic and linguistic diversity have been debated for decades with the aim of promoting equitable and egalitarian relationships among different sociocultural groups. Focusing on processes of recognition and redistribution, efforts are being made to overcome problems related to discrimination and social, economic, cultural, and political exclusion. In these debates, models for the schooling of Indigenous populations, Indigenous migrants, and migrants have been a central focus of discussion. However, this is a matter of contention and recent implementation, depending on each national context. In this sense, although since the 1980s, seventeen Latin American countries (Guatemala, Honduras, Suriname, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Guyana, Brazil, Paraguay, Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador, and Argentina) have been implementing Intercultural Bilingual Education programs, many unresolved problems remain in this field. Among these, the following stand out: how to include Indigenous languages ​​in the curriculum, how to articulate different forms of knowledge, how to design intercultural models that are attentive to diversity and attempt to reverse traditional conditions of inequality, how to produce pluralistic core content, how to account for the complexity of the educational experiences of Indigenous and migrant groups in contemporary contexts, and how to strengthen inclusive policies within the framework of Latin American and Central American nation-states, among many other dilemmas and challenges. Furthermore, multilingual populations, especially those whose first language is an Indigenous language, are the most disadvantaged in their interactions with various state institutions, across all countries of the region.

It is important to emphasize that the existence of Intercultural Bilingual Education is a relevant fact in each of the aforementioned countries, but its mere proclamation has not been enough to meet the demands of these social groups. Rather, it is an important first step that has established a new common ground of rights and agreements. Indigenous and migrant populations, as well as researchers on these topics, have debated and reflected on the potential and risks of these school models. Systematic and comparative research on these processes, such as that which we aim to carry out in this Working Group, can contribute to the improved development of programs that address these issues in various areas of work.