Indigenous university entrance and participation experiences

Abstract

This article analyses the admission process of Chaquenean indigenous people since the implementation of an institutional program that seeks to fulfil the right to pursue higher education studies in an Argentine University. We study a program that focuses on indigenous students’ university admission not only from the viewpoint of inclusion but also as a contribution to the right of participation and intercultural education. We describe the participation of indigenous actors in a range of settings and tasks. This is qualitative research and the techniques used are semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document analysis. The focus of the study is on the following issues: i) the type of practices, different from the usual ones, that are projecting and /or enabling indigenous students in the settings in which they participate, and ii) the ways in which this experience, in which special care is given to ethnic diversity and the rights of Indigenous Peoples, contributes to the field of university admission studies.