Interculturalidade: experiências e desafios da/na universidade

Abstract

This teses is inserted in the Higher Education (HE) research field with a focus on interculturality in the context of the internationalization of Higher Education. Internationalization is a theme that has come to occupy the research agenda in the last 20 years, both for researchers, international organizations, governments and for the management of Higher Education institutions. The interculturality category related to internationalization is still little explored. That said, the objective proposed here is to analyze the categories of thinking and operating interculturality, from the constitutive sociogenesis of the UNILA (Universidade Federal de Integração Latino Americana) project and from the experiences of faculty and staffs of this University, as well as understanding the internationalization of the HE in the context of Western modernity/coloniality. The choice of UNILA is justified because it is an institution located on the Triple Frontier (Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay) and because its mission is to be an international university, in which the diversity of ethnicities and cultures is present. The decolonial perspective brought epistemic bases necessary for the construction of the dissertation from authors such as Aníbal Quijano, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Catherine Walsh, Enrique Dussel and Walter Mignolo. Decoloniality as well as interculturality for these authors has offered possibilities to expand processes of resistance to the hegemonic model and present potential for change, both in the ways we live and in the possibility of doing and thinking about the university, making it possible to develop world sensibilities. Mainly to those who were invisible, who had knowledge, cultures and freedoms covered by the modern/colonial standard. It is a qualitative research, based on exploratory research and documentary analysis. The research took place through the search for documents on the UNILA website and semi-structured interviews with civil servants. The main results demonstrate that interculturality is part of the University's mission, built from a different project, from the vast majority of Brazilian universities; inclusion is part of its constitutive project and seeks to develop actions and initiatives aimed at interculturality, leveraging non-hegemonic knowledge. Daily life imposes tension between projects and actions, however, it is possible to affirm that the university is a privileged place to deepen experiences of inclusion and respect for democracies.