This is a critical sociolinguistic ethnographic investigation of how inequality is constructed through linguistic practices in multilingual classrooms at four schools in the Madrid region in Spain. The macrosocial background that informs the study is Spain's newly gained status as an immigrant-receiving country in recent decades, the change in the demographic and linguistic makeup of the classroom as a result of the immigrant influx, as well as various educational policies that have been put into effect in the face of such change that presumably aim to promote integration while maintaining diversity. The author's contention is that such macrosocial background shapes what transpires inside the classroom, and that what transpires therein at the micro level of interaction is constitutive of the larger social process. To reveal the mutually constitutive nature of the macro and micro, a critical sociolinguistic analysis of classroom interactional data and interview data was conducted. The analysis reveals that, a policy statement to promote integration and respect diversity notwithstanding, much of the day-to-day interaction in the classroom is deeply embedded in a complex web of discourses of inequality, such as segregation, monolingualism, marginalization, and ethnicization, which leads to the establishment and entrenchment of a sociolinguistic order that denigrates the language and culture of the immigrant students, belittles their intellectual capacity, and destines them for school failure and the unskilled labor market.

The book consists of ten chapters. Ch. 1 offers an overview of the whole book. Chs. 2–4 situate the study within a configuration of factors: the social and historical background that gave rise to the immigration wave in Spain; educational policies dealing with the immigrant influx and the multilingual reality at school; the theoretical and methodological issues that inform the study; and finally the ethnographic details of the four schools. Chs. 5–9 focus on data analysis. While each chapter deals with a different interactional theme, all the themes are underlain by a discursive process called decapitalization—a process that strips the students of their linguistic and symbolic capital, thereby constructing and perpetuating inequality. To be more specific, decapitalization is embodied in the following linguistic practices: classroom instruction is often informed by a “compensatory logic” that treats the students as deficient (Ch. 5); students' classroom behavior is frequently evaluated, and categories such as “good” or “bad” students are used (Ch. 6); the Castilian standard is upheld, and a monolingual norm is maintained (Ch. 7); cultures are often essentialized and the students are ethinicized (Ch. 8); and finally, while the students stage various forms of resistance, the author cautions that this can further contribute to their failure in school and serve to maintain an unequal socioeconomic order in the long run. Ch. 10 concludes the book. All educators and researchers who are concerned with how inequality is constructed through classroom interaction will benefit from this book.