ABSTRACT

The extremely high rates of school failure among Spanish Roma children are a cause of great concern, and frequently the target of policies and projects both at the local, national and European level. There is still a general perception that the Roma overall lack interest in studies, coherent with the dominant discursive framework that tends to essentialise Roma people and view their practices and choices as primarily motivated by their culture. We challenge this view by offering a more complex account on the educational expectations of Roma families. Based on extensive fieldwork in the Barcelona area in relation to a research project directed by the authors, we found what we defined as a dual expectations gap: on the one hand, the gap between the families’ expectations on their children’s education and the obstacles they encounter for fulfilling these expectations; on the other hand, the gap between the families’ expectations and the schools’ perceptions on the families’ expectations. We argue that the concept of educational expectations needs to be placed in a broader context in order to better understand what lies behind school failure among an ethnic minority group that is racialized and socio-economically disadvantaged.

摘要

西班牙罗姆儿童的失学率极高，这引起了极大的关注，并且经常成为地方，国家和欧洲各级政策和项目的目标。仍然普遍认为，罗姆人总体上对研究缺乏兴趣，这与主导性的话语框架相一致，后者倾向于使罗姆人本质化，并认为他们的做法和选择主要是受其文化推动的。我们通过对罗姆人家庭的教育期望提供更为复杂的解释，从而挑战这种观点。根据作者在巴塞罗那地区进行的一项广泛的实地考察，并与作者们领导的研究项目相关，我们发现了我们所定义的双重期望差距：一方面，家庭对子女的教育期望与实现这些期望所遇到的障碍之间的差距；另一方面，家庭的期望与学校的期望之间的差距对家庭期望的看法。我们认为，教育期望的概念需要放在更广阔的背景下，以便更好地了解种族和社会经济处于不利地位的少数族裔群体的学业失败背后的原因。