Intercultural Competence in School Social Work with Immigrant Children and Families

Contemporary schools face increasing challenges resulting from the growing diversity in Portuguese communities. Although educational policies are guided by principles of inclusive education, nondiscrimination, and interculturality, schools continue to reproduce processes of exclusion, inequality, and discrimination affecting immigrant students and families. Equity in education should be understood in terms of access, retention, progression, and outcomes, independent of students’ sociocultural background or country of origin. In this context, school social workers play a key role in promoting equity and social justice through intercultural and inclusive practices. Their intercultural competence, intervention methodologies, and close engagement with families and communities position them as essential professionals in preventing marginalization and supporting immigrant students and families. The right to education can only be fully realized when schools respect cultural specificities, recognize multiple identities and contexts, and actively engage with families and local communities. This chapter examines how the skills of school social workers support interventions promoting equity and social inclusion for immigrant students and their families. A qualitative approach was adopted, involving interviews with 11 social workers from school clusters in the Porto metropolitan area. The findings reveal that social workers contribute to building more intercultural schools by mobilizing resources, mediating relationships, and fostering inclusion within educational and community settings. The chapter identifies a good school social work practice focused on interculturality and on developing practices that (re)cognize the plurality of experiences and identities, within the educational community, transforming schools into spaces of belonging, participation, and recognition for migrant students and their families.