Etnography with indigenous youth at a university residence in Ecuador

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present some results from research in the field of studies of intercultural education at the university level, furthering our knowledge on the university experiences of youth from historically relegated social groups. I show how access to education is implemented, reconstructing particular logics taken up by “inclusion” in practice and the manners in which this is experienced by the actors at stake. To this purpose, I present a project of the Salesian congregation with a group of young people belonging to different ethnicities and communities who benefit from a grant to undertake university studies. Venturing into the daily life of these students, I investigate feelings, viewpoints, perceptions and meanings concerning their own experience of going through different stages: leaving their communities, living in the city, adjusting to leaving together at a university residence and new interactions and learning in a university context. The fieldwork was carried out in 2013 and 2014 at the Intercultural Residence Don Bosco and the Universidad Politécnica Salesiana in Quito, based on a ethnographic theoretical and methodological approach including participant observation, interviews and informal group and individual exchanges with young people especially and other adults.