Social inequality as exclusion in a rural school

ABSTRACT The present paper highlights that social inequality in some rural regions can substantially and harshly affect school coexistence. The present study is carried out in a Spanish rural school, and it aimed to understand which factors affected coexistence and generated situations of exclusion. Participant observation and the different voices in contrast – students and teachers – reveal how the environment has generated a situation of exclusion in some families who have recently settled in the village. Furthermore, the unfair socioeconomic situation of the outsiders, legitimated at school by a punitive model of coexistence, turns teachers and students into approving actors of structural violence resulting in the rejection and isolation of some students. Together with the value of ethnography, these results are discussed to transform the teachers’ beliefs and perceptions about coexistence.