Conference Program

In French-speaking Belgium, the educational system is transitioning from a segregated model for students with special educational needs towards a more inclusive one, notably through the 2018 decree on reasonable accommodations. Despite this reform, which aims to promote inclusion, specialized education pathways continue to see an overrepresentation of boys from disadvantaged and immigrant backgrounds. This research, therefore, investigates how an instrument designed for inclusion can paradoxically reinforce pre-existing social inequalities.

Adopting an intersectional framework based on the concept of “inequality regimes” (Acker, 2006), this study analyzes how schools’ categorizations of pupils and their families shape access to reasonable accommodations versus pathways into special education. The research unfolds in two qualitative phases. The first phase, consisting of 22 semi-structured interviews with primary school principals in Brussels, reveals that institutional presuppositions regarding families’ resources, reliability, and perceived “compatibility” with school norms are pivotal in how the legal framework is applied.

The second phase deepens this analysis through a multi-sited, multi-actor study in five socio-economically diverse schools. It combines detailed reconstructions of pupils' trajectories with in-depth interviews with both teachers and parents. This approach allows for a granular examination of how intersectional categorizations (class, race, gender, etc.) inform the concrete implementation of reasonable accommodations and how families perceive, negotiate, or contest the school’s decisions.

By focusing on the encounter between educational institutions and diverse family socializations, this paper demonstrates how an inclusive instrument can, in practice, transform social inequalities into educational ones. It also sheds light on the agency of families as they resist or partially reconfigure institutional expectations, offering a critical perspective on the complex realities of inclusive reform.