At present, western European societies are at the same time facing the aftermath of massive immigration movements and the challenges of new globalization waves. Education is at the heart of this twofold experience. On the one hand, it is confronted with the demand of developing a canon for national identity construction. On the other hand, it is held responsible for the pupils’ emancipation in a globalizing society. As a consequence teachers and pupils are challenged to deal with identity issues in their everyday classroom realities. In politics, the media, and the educational field much has been said and done regarding immigrant minority pupils’ identities and their socio-cultural and linguistic integration. Still, little is known about how identities are actually constructed and developed in the discourses of those who make up the primary school classroom.

This book reports on two ethnographic case studies carried out in multicultural classrooms in a Dutch and Flemish primary school. It portrays the discourses and the interactions class teachers and their twelve-year-old pupils are engaged in on a daily basis. In-depth analyses are presented of the institutional discourses which the classrooms are part of and of the teachers’ and pupils’ discourses and their mutual relationships. In both classrooms the analysis shows that pupils’ identities are constructed by the institutions and their teachers on the basis of their language behaviour and their ‘presupposed’ belonging to a homogeneous cultural and/or religious group. The analysis at the same time makes clear that teachers have started questioning their understanding of immigrant minority pupils’ identities. It further shows that the pupils under investigation are by no means passive objects of identity ascription. Rather, they appear as active and capable multilingual and multicultural stockbrokers, ready and willing to invest in the linguistic and cultural currency that ensures the highest return on investment.