Abstract:

The sharp increase in students with an immigrant background in Portugal has led to greater recognition of diversity in schools and the need to implement policy measures that promote inclusion, which aim to enhance access to the curriculum, academic success and ensure a sense of belonging and personal and social appreciation of these students and their families. There is an increase in the hiring of specialized technicians for school teams that intervene for the non-discrimination of migrant students, developing professional practices of inclusion, which aim to respond to the diversity of needs and potential of these students, for their participation in the learning processes and in the life of the educational community.
We tried to identify support measures for inclusion and the resources that social workers mobilize in intervention processes. We carried out semi-structured interviews with social workers who intervene in teams from 11 school groups in the Porto metropolitan area, to assess education policies and culturally competent professional practices, capable of promoting processes of social inclusion.
In intervention processes, social workers value diversity and recognize the sociocultural context in which students are inserted, triggering action strategies that promote intercultural mediation, fostering the construction of the school community around relationships of respect, trust, empathy, and cooperation for changes needed, including building networks and partnerships and building participatory and inclusive environments.
The transactional and ecological models under his intervention highlight the complex contextual factors influencing student development. The diagnostic evaluation and the intervention plan carried out by the social workers highlight linguistic diversity and sociocultural conditions as specific and comprehensive factors that impact biopsychosocial development and the inclusion of students in school and society. They show the complexity of the development process and the need to (re)organize resources and services to address the priorities of students and their families. In addition to the influence of the student's characteristics and the context experienced, it is necessary to consider the combination that exists between the student and his experience. Development is the result of continuous and dynamic interactions between the student and the experiences provided by the family and the sociocultural context. This dynamic and multi-determined approach, which is in line with the practice of inclusive social work, encourages various interventions in the educational field, triggering concerted strategies from different entities that work in the area of migration and that contribute to the implementation of the multilevel and multifactorial process of inclusion of the immigrant community in Portuguese society. These levels of intervention in diversity should favor a model of valuing cultural diversity, guaranteeing the rights of immigrants, by promoting conditions that make their social inclusion real and effective in all areas of their lives, and developing, for this, measures and actions to solve their problems and multiple needs. To this end, the social worker works with interconnected transactional networks understood in their complexity.

Keywords:

Diversity, social inequalities, school inclusion, immigrant students.