Abstract

This study analyses how Haitian students’ identities (i.e. gender, class, and race) are constructed, negotiated, and resignified by their parents and EFL teachers to unveil their attitudes and perceptions of their learning processes and linguistic development in multicultural contexts. To this end, five schools across the Chilean Metropolitan region were recruited, which concentrated the largest number of fifth-grade Haitian students in their own cities. Particularly, five EFL teachers and ten Haitian parents were interviewed to explore how they construct, negotiate, and resignify their discourses in terms of the identity attributed to these students, based on their own understanding and perceptions of their life experiences. Following Reisigl and Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach (2016; Wodak et al. 2009), the study examines how issues of gender, race, and class play a crucial role in how these actors understand the experience of these students at school and in the country more generally. Results evidence that, along with a tendency towards cultural and linguistic assimilation, both parents and teachers legitimize their own misconceptions about these students through perspectivization and legitimation strategies .