Latin America is characterized by enormous socio-ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity, resulting from both the historical presence of numerous Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples and from migration processes. In educational settings, these population dynamics are often addressed through the identification—and frequently the problematization—of certain student groups, particularly those who are labeled or self-identify as Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and migrants. However, this approach tends to focus more on the differences attributed to these individuals than on a deep and relational understanding of the historical, sociolinguistic, and political processes that produce and shape this diversity.

Recently, in the contemporary Latin American and Caribbean political context, the reemergence and consolidation of right-wing forces—including openly conservative, nationalist, and, in some cases, neocolonial expressions—introduces new tensions for the education of these groups. These governments often reinstate discourses that reinforce homogenizing and nationalist narratives of the nation and relativize the frameworks of rights won by Indigenous peoples, and in some contexts, those related to Afro-descendant and migrant communities. In several countries, budget cuts, institutional deprioritization of areas linked to cultural and linguistic diversity, and a growing criminalization of mobilizations seeking to defend the rights of Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and migrants are observed. This scenario directly affects the sustainability of intercultural policies and the capacity of educational institutions to support approaches that promote plurality, linguistic justice, and equal rights.

These trends deepen the structural inequality faced by historically racialized groups, affecting not only community life but also the conditions for knowledge production. In this context, comparative analyses that allow us to understand how these political reconfigurations impact intercultural bilingual education and the educational experiences of Indigenous, migrant, and Afro-descendant children and youth will become even more relevant. Understanding the effects of these global and regional disputes on cultural and linguistic rights becomes key to strengthening strategies of resistance and the collective construction of truly intercultural horizons.

In Latin America, historically, nation-states consolidated themselves by constructing these "others" as representatives of population diversity, with whom they maintained different relationships. In school settings, this link was and continues to be expressed in a particular way: there, individuals from different communities converge, all of whom have been addressed by the state as "different." 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, Afro-descendants, and migrant populations have been the targets of successive policies, characterized both by their invisibility and by their singling out, by the denial or the overemphasis on difference. The formation of educational systems led by political elites generated proposals at the regional level in which the languages, knowledge, historiographies and models of interpretation of reality of the elites hegemonized the discourse and built national models.

As a counterpoint to this perspective, interculturality has positioned itself in the region as a key concept in the discussions and interventions of specialists, educational policymakers, 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 shaped 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.

Interculturality is not only a pedagogical proposal but also a methodological and political one. Its development is ongoing, and therefore it remains a significant challenge. Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and migrant populations find themselves in contexts of subordination and subalternity, which means that the pedagogical development of interculturality sometimes encounters the pitfalls of this context. While significant progress has been made in terms of rights, many more steps are needed to achieve true interculturality and for this education to contribute to the development of these much-debated identities. There have been interesting pedagogical and curricular advances in the field of teacher training and in reflection on the pedagogical and political implications of interculturality. In the last two decades, research on Intercultural Bilingual Education in the Americas can be framed within different trends. On the one hand, there has been an increase in publications that warn about the processes of replacement and loss of Indigenous American languages ​​in favor of other, more powerful languages. On the other hand, the benefits and educational possibilities, as well as the quality of bilingual and intercultural educational programs, are still being questioned, and the implications of school designs based on decolonial approaches are debated. Finally, many studies explore the complex relationship between the formal and informal educational experiences of Indigenous and migrant children, youth, and adults. Advances in understanding the role of domestic, religious, and recreational spheres, among others, in shaping intercultural knowledge and understanding—defined as formative experiences—allow for a broader range of questions regarding the relationship between state institutions, families, and the community.

It is worth noting that, with the aim of strengthening interdisciplinary and international dialogue, this Working Group brings together researchers from various countries who have been critically analyzing the scope and limitations of these policies and practices, as well as studying a wide variety of educational and training experiences in intercultural contexts. Most of these researchers are specialists trained in the social sciences who have been conducting research for years on Indigenous and migrant children and youth—particularly Indigenous and migrant children—intergenerational relationships, schooling, and education in contexts marked by sociocultural diversity and structural inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean. Therefore, it will be essential to connect these family and community-based educational situations with contemporary school contexts, analyzing, in turn, the aspects shared regionally and globally, and the specificities of national formations of otherness. That is to say, in this new cycle, we specifically propose to advance in the development of a systematically comparative approach to the so-called perspective of intercultural education, its scope and its limitations in the current disputes for the recognition of the educational rights of indigenous, Afro-descendant and migrant peoples and communities.

The (re)emergence of identity movements throughout Latin America is a highly relevant topic. It is evident that Indigenous, migrant, and Afro-descendant populations are undergoing a process of increased visibility and growth. The hegemonic model in which educational systems develop without regard for the sociocultural diversity of society is being challenged at its core, based on a monocultural foundation. In various 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, Afro-descendant, and migrant populations into formal education. This impetus allows everything that was produced, reinterpreted, and reinvented in the development of countless intercultural educational experiences in domestic, everyday, and community settings for children, youth, and adults to begin to be made visible. Thus, the indigenous word, along with children, women and men, enters from homes and communities into intercultural schools, and also into schools of the general system that in some countries of the region have adopted interculturality for all.

However, this progress coexists with a political and social context marked by significant setbacks in collective rights. In various countries of the region, budget cuts, defunding of intercultural programs, public discourses that revive assimilationist logics, and the growing circulation of denialist narratives that delegitimize the presence of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and migrant languages ​​and cultures in schools are observed. These processes not only seek to limit the inclusive policies achieved in previous decades but also reinstate monocultural visions of the nation-state that jeopardize the progress made and deepen pre-existing inequalities. Within this framework, identity visibility and the production of intercultural knowledge take on an even more strategic character: they become practices of resistance, affirmation of rights, and challenge to projects that seek to restrict the cultural plurality that has historically characterized our societies.

For some time now, within the broad theoretical paradigm of interculturality, various issues concerning the treatment of ethnic and linguistic diversity have been debated in order to promote equitable and egalitarian relationships based on the recognition of the rights of different groups and communities. The aim is 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, Afro-descendants, and migrants with diverse national identities 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, several 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 programs in Intercultural Bilingual and/or Multilingual Education, many unresolved problems remain in this field. Among these, the following stand out: how to include Indigenous languages ​​in the curriculum, how to integrate 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 diverse core content, how to propose and develop educational materials that allow for the identification of children, adolescents, and young people in diverse territories, how to account for the complexity of the educational experiences of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, 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, a situation that holds true in all countries of the region.

While the institutionalization of Intercultural Bilingual and/or Multilingual Education in most countries of the region represents significant progress, this formal recognition falls far short of resolving the multiple demands of Indigenous and migrant communities. Rather, it has established a new common ground of rights that needs to be sustained, expanded, and defended in this particular context. As already mentioned, in the current sociopolitical landscape, it is even more urgent to examine the tensions, potential, and risks inherent in intercultural school models. Within this framework, the systematic and comparative research that this Working Group proposes to pursue takes on a strategic character: it allows for the identification of regional patterns, the documentation of pedagogical innovations, and an understanding of how current transformations affect the exercise of linguistic and cultural rights. In this way, the Working Group's collective work can contribute both to strengthening existing programs and to developing more equitable, relevant, and sustainable policies.