Construire l’École inclusive ? Une analyse de cas en Suisse par les outils de la sociologie de l’action publique

Abstract

This article examines an inclusive school policy in the canton of Geneva in Switzerland. It analyzes how the concept of inclusive school, developed at the international level, is translated, disseminated and transformed at a local level. Our hypothesis is that this translation process involves the mobilization of collective actors whose work consists of redefining the rules of the educational game by defending, disseminating and adapting this new frame of reference. This work of mobilization and symbolic redefinition of what a fair school is can be observed in the debates generated by the very concept of inclusion and by the communication tools developed by interest groups defending inclusive schooling for students with disabilities. The analysis of these communication tools makes it possible to give content to this symbolic work and to analyze the way in which the reference frame of the inclusive school has been able to transform itself by spreading in the political and educational space of Geneva. However, it remains that the trajectory of a public policy, in education as in other sectors of society, cannot be limited to the social conditions of the emergence and diffusion of a new frame of reference (Revaz, 2020). In order for public action to be activated, it is necessary to build a political consensus around an object that is complex because it makes a radical break with previous models (Garnier et al., 2020). The second question will therefore be to understand how this consensus is achieved, and by what discursive and political tools. Our hypothesis is that the consensus around the notion of inclusion was achieved in Geneva through the use of a conceptual vagueness that made it possible for actors and institutions with divergent interests and contrasting conceptions of what a fair and equitable school is.