Introduction

This study aims to look at how the theme of immigration and educational practices has been investigated in Brazilian educational research, with a focus on the state of São Paulo, specifically to the different movements around immigrants that have taken place there - and continue to take place nowadays. In order to do so, it analyzes articles on the subject published in Brazilian scientific journals in the field of education, organized into two large blocks: those that investigated contemporary processes and those studied events from the past.

The phenomenon of immigration was chosen over that of emigration because, unlike the former, the latter hardly featured in the articles studied here. Furthermore, the state of São Paulo was chosen as the focus of the analysis, since foreign immigration is a fundamental aspect of its history, as we conceive it today. According to researcher Zeila ^{Demartini (2004}, p. 216; translated from Portuguese),

[...] a society such as São Paulo [...] can only be understood if the immigration phenomenon is considered as a constituent part of its history and way of being, the past and present are ‘loaded’ with these various immigrations, although they are not always so evident at first glance.

This is the case of the capital of São Paulo. The intense flow of immigrants who settled there in the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century is not only a milestone in its history, but also a turning point in its political, economic, and social framework in relation to the rest of the country. “With a population of around 30,000 inhabitants in 1872, and by 1920, with more than half a million inhabitants, São Paulo gained the status of a Brazilian metropolis” (^{Cruz, 2013}, p. 44; translated from Portuguese) - thanks, in a large extent, to the contribution of the immigrants who settled there.

Bearing in mind that other Brazilian states also have foreign immigration as an important variable in their history, the difference in São Paulo’s case lies in the fact that migratory flows were not restricted to the 19th and early 20th centuries but have remained constant ever since. For example, taking the data presented in the 2020 Annual Report produced by the Observatory of International Migration (OBMigra), it is known that between 2011 and 2019, 209,764 (32%) of the 660,349 long-term immigrants registered in Brazil were in the state of São Paulo (^{Cavalcanti, Oliveira, & Macedo, 2020}).

Another consideration regarding the scope of this article is necessary: it is common for migration studies to be restricted to a particular ethnic group or a specific set of them. Although so far, we have treated the different groups under the general notion of immigrants, it becomes clear that each of them has nuances and specificities in terms of both their cultural organization and the ways by they are/were addressed in the academic debate.

For the purposes of this text, we are interested in detailing the role of educational practices within the processes of the constitution of a population in contexts marked by immigration. The notion of population with which we operate is that proposed by Michel ^{Foucault (2008}, 2012). For the French thinker, this notion is linked to the emergence of a new social object that has emerged as the target of a whole set of knowledge and practices of government: no longer that of individuals - in which the collective could be governed by the individual and specific government of each subject that constitutes such a population - but an agglomerate that needs to be treated in its homogeneity, despite its shapeless condition. As Judith ^{Revel (2011}, p. 117; translated from Portuguese) explains,

[...] alongside the techniques of individualization, he [Foucault] had to address a parallel device - not contrary to the individualizing disciplines, nor even successive to these disciplines, but contemporary and complementary - which consists of determining ‘homogeneous sets of human beings’ and assigning them a specific economy of powers.

The emergence of the notion of population thus called for a new scale of analysis, no longer concerned with the particularities of the individual subjects or social types, but with what they had in common. To do this, it became necessary to operate with new knowledge and practices to understand the processes that govern human behavior, both in interaction with the environment and with each other. Edgardo ^{Castro (2016}, p. 336; translated from Portuguese) opportunely points out:

For Foucault, this concept of population that emerges from the 18th century onwards comprises two elements: on the one hand, the relationship number of inhabitants/territories; on the other, the coexistence relationships that are established between individuals inhabiting the same territory (growth rates, mortality rates) and their conditions of existence.

The emergence of this notion is thus linked to a whole group of knowledge and practices that see humans as a biological species governed by the same natural processes to which all forms of life are subject. Thus, especially during the 19th and 20th centuries, the biological dimension was seen to affect political mechanisms - a process that ^{Foucault (2012}, p. 180; translated from Portuguese) called ‘biopolitics’:

At that moment, what I would call biopolitics was invented, as opposed to anatomopolitics, which I mentioned earlier. At that time, we saw problems such as habitat, living conditions in the city, public hygiene, changes in the relationship between birth and mortality. At this point, the problem of how we can get people to have more children, or at least how we can regulate the flow of the population, how we can also regulate the growth rates of a population, migrations.

The notion of population is therefore directly linked to the emergence of biopolitics. However, this notion also has a second meaning, as proposed by Foucault, which is precisely the focus of this study: a direct object over which modes of governance is practiced.

It is the population, therefore, much more than the power of the sovereign, which appears as the purpose and instrument of government: subject of needs and aspirations, but also the object in the hands of the government. [It appears] as conscious, before the government, of what it wants, and unconscious of what it is being made to do. Interest as the consciousness of each of the individuals who make up the population and interest as the interest of the population, whatever the individual interests and aspirations of those who make it up, this is what it will be, in its equivocation, the target and the fundamental instrument of the government of populations. (^{Foucault, 2008}, p. 140; translated from Portuguese).

Thus, a new dimension of the notion of population emerges, not only as a direct consequence of biopolitics, but also as the target of what Foucault calls ‘governmentality’. This is

[...] the set of institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, calculations and tactics that make it possible to exercise this very specific, very complex form of power, which has the population as its main target, political economy as its most important form of knowledge, and security devices as its essential technical instrument (^{Foucault, 2008}, p. 142; translated from Portuguese).

The population would therefore not only be an object over which a form of government would be practiced, but also one of the ultimate objectives of the very notion of government. In other words, one governs to guarantee the constitution, preservation and strengthening of a given population. In short, this notion emerges in Foucault’s thinking as the point to which the focus of both biopolitics and governmentality converge. Understanding it as an operator in the articulation of these two dimensions is therefore fundamental to the analysis proposed here.

More specifically, while biopolitics allows us to see the creation of normative mechanisms that turn the population into a concrete and manipulable object, governmentality allows us to understand the ethical-political effects derived from these practices. Despite recognizing the importance of both theoretical dimensions in any discussion centered on the concept of population, in this research we have chosen not to focus on its biological form, since this is the analytical trend in the wake of which most immigration studies already operate. From this perspective, we believe that there is already extensive and competent academic production on the biologizing and racial processes that guided many of the public policies on immigration in Brazil in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

When discussing the formation of the national population in conjunction with the theme of immigration throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in Brazil, it is indisputable that works such as Preto no Branco: raça e nacionalidade no pensamento brasileiro by Thomas ^{Skidmore (1976}), A invenção da brasilidade: identidade nacional, etnicidade e políticas de imigração by Jeffrey ^{Lesser (2015}) and Diploma de brancura by Jerry ^{Dávila (2006}) prove to be important to understand racism, as they show the ideal of whitening that guided public policies aimed at both external and internal immigration - in the case of São Paulo, for example, by encouraging the establishment of European immigrants, as well as, in the opposite direction, by the obstacles imposed on those coming from the northeast region of the country.

Regarding historiographical studies which, like this one, are guided by the Foucauldian theoretical framework, it is certain that racial issues appear directly or indirectly linked to themes such as biopolitics, eugenics and social hygiene. As an example, it is possible to mention works that have directly studied the impact of biopolitics on Brazilian educational practices in the early 20th century, such as Mozart Linhares da ^{Silva (2015}) or Margareth ^{Rago (2014}), who, among other issues, discuss foreign immigration and social hygiene during the First Republic. There is also a study by José Gonçalves ^{Gondra (2000}) which seeks to understand the influences of hygienism on discourses about childhood throughout the 19th century. As such, we understand that the discussions - also in the context of Foucauldian-inspired work - on immigration and the formation of a national population at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century were based on racial and ethnic debates.

Despite the theoretical consensus on the issue of migration in previous times and its imbrication with the practices of eugenics and social hygiene, they seem necessary to us, but not sufficient to situate the migratory issue today. For this reason, the central interest of this study is to create a dialog between the past and the present, hoping to understand the continuities and discontinuities in the processes related to the formation of the population of São Paulo and the foreigners who settled and have been settling there.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that this study is rooted in the general scope of genealogy, as conceived by ^{Foucault (2019}). Like the Frenchman, our interest in looking at the relationship between past and present does not lie in the search for a direct connection between the two temporalities, but in the creation of an intellectual interval that makes it possible to question what is seen as natural nowadays (^{Foucault, 1998}).

In this direction, authors such as Tzvetan ^{Todorov (2010}) and Edward ^{Said (2015}) help us to understand how the ‘others’ are essential for delimiting the boundaries of what is considered to be ‘ones’. It is on the basis of these that it becomes possible to define a certain notion of ‘us’. Hence the crucial role of educational practices in such processes. Based on the ideas of Daniel ^{Tröhler (2017}), as well as those of Marc ^{Depaepe and Paul Smeyers (2016}), we can see that schooling was a fundamental part of the process of forming nation-states - which would necessarily include the issue of migration in the case of former colonies, such as Brazil.

Whereas these nation-states were becoming defined and justified politically by the constitutions and defended militarily by the armies, the inner coherence of the nation-state, the inhabitants’ identification with the nation-state, had to be made by education, respectively the school systems (^{Tröhler, 2017}, p. 702).

Regarding Brazilian education, it is evident the role of educational institutions in the effort to create a national identity in the face of foreign immigration. Regarding the first decades of the 20th century, Simon ^{Schwartzman, Helena Bomeny and Vanda Costa (1984}, p. 72; translated from Portuguese) stated: “It is difficult, and it was much more so in those days, to perceive the ideological charge behind the notion that education should be an instrument in the construction of Brazilian nationality, until we consider the fact that Brazil is largely a country of immigrants”.

Using a similar argument, Lúcio ^{Kreutz (2011}, p. 351; translated from Portuguese) writes: “The school played a central role in shaping a national identity, while at the same time encouraged the exclusion of ethnic identity processes”. Schooling was thus seen as a central element in the formation of a national identity around which it would be possible to forge certain common population contours.

Having made these introductory remarks, we must now present the empirical material chosen for this analysis. Given the breadth of the thematic field and, consequently, the large volume of sources related to the object of study, restricting the material to just one empirical niche was, in our opinion, an attempt to ensure a certain procedural cohesion.

The choice of academic journals is also based on the premise that they are the means of dissemination that circulate the most among peers. Furthermore, the analysis of academic production provides a glimpse not only of the profusion, but also of the diversity of points of view on migration circulating in the educational field.

To collect the articles, we focused on the production between 2000 and 2020 - 21 years, therefore - of 57 academic journals in the field of education, classified in the Qualis-CAPES¹² system in the A1, A2 and B1 categories. We also chose to work with generic journals, in other words not specialized in sub-areas, with one exception: the field of history of education. This choice, of course, was based on the requirements of the object of study itself.

The journals chosen were: Acta Scientiarum; Atos de pesquisa em educação; Cadernos CEDES; Cadernos de Educação; Cadernos de Pesquisa (FCC); Cadernos de pesquisa (UFMA); Comunicações; Currículo sem Fronteiras; E-curriculum; Eccos; Educação & Realidade; Educação & Sociedade; Educação e cultura contemporânea; Educação e Pesquisa; Educação em Foco (UEMG); Educação em Foco (UFJF); Educação em perspectiva; Educação em Revista; Educação (PUCRS); Educação (UFSM); Educação (UNISINOS); Educação Temática Digital; Educação-Teoria e Prática; Educação, ciência e cultura; Educar em Revista; Educativa; Em Aberto; Espaço Pedagógico; Horizontes; Imagens da Educação; Inter-ação; Linguagens, educação e sociedade; Linhas críticas; Perspectiva; Práxis educacional; Práxis Educativa; Pro-Posições; Quaestio; Reflexão e ação; Retratos da escola; Revista Brasileira de Educação; Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedagógicos; Revista Cocar; Revista da FAEEBA; Revista de Educação Pública; Revista de Educação (PUCCAMP); Revista Diálogo Educacional; Revista Educação em Questão; Revista Eletrônica de Educação; Revista Ibero-americana de estudos em educação; Revista Tempos e Espaços em Educação; Roteiro; Série-estudos; e Teias. Also, the three main journals in the area of history of education: Cadernos de História da Educação; Revista Brasileira de História da Educação; and Revista História da Educação.

Based on a search of titles, abstracts, and keywords for the terms - ‘migration’, ‘immigration’, ‘emigration’, ‘immigrant/s’ and ‘foreigner/s’ - we selected the material for analysis, giving up, it should be noted, those that dealt with the migratory issue as a side fact in their arguments. In the end, 35 texts served as the basis for this study.

The migratory phenomenon and the educational context in São Paulo: immigration in the past

Aiming to organize the analysis of the articles that focused on immigration in the São Paulo context, we made a division between those that investigated the past and those that focused on the present. However, we did find one article that moved between both, which sought to articulate historical narratives with contemporary issues: A educação no contexto diacrônico de antigos núcleos coloniais (^{Bastos & Souza, 2012}), which analyzed the relationship between public education and the political and economic context of the region where the São Paulo municipality of Gavião Peixoto is currently located, throughout the 20th century (when it was a colonial settlement intended to receive immigrants, mainly Europeans, who came to work on coffee plantations) and the 21st century (when an aeronautical hub was established there). The authors argue that, at the beginning of the century, public education was neglected due to the coronels’ dynamics that prevailed in the region and the low qualifications for work on the coffee plantations. At the beginning of the 21st century, educational policies began to respond to the need for a qualified workforce. However, there have been few changes in the educational sphere, as there has been a cyclical reproduction of the past.

Among the 22 studies on immigration and education, there is a concentration of studies that investigate the 1890s, 1900s and 1910s, which is a time span related to the First Republic. What’s more, only three of the other studies did not intersect with the First Republic. The emphasis on this period could be justified by the theme we chose to focus on the material. In other words, if we are dealing with historical research that discusses education and migration in the state of São Paulo, the preference for the first republican period would be due both to its importance for the history of São Paulo (^{Love, 1982}) and to the fact that, in these decades, the arrival of immigrants in the state was notoriously large (^{Carneiro, 1950}). Added to these reasons is the period’s relevance to the history of Brazilian education (^{Nagle, 1974}).

It would also be possible to carry out a similar analysis in relation to the ethnic groups focused on in each of these studies, that is to identify which were the most studied within them. They are, in descending order: Italians (in eight studies); Japanese (four); Americans (two); Afro-descendants, Germans, Arabs, Spaniards, Jews and Portuguese appear, respectively, in one article¹³. In addition, there are three studies that discuss immigration issues without focusing on a specific ethnic group.

The study that investigates Arab immigration (^{Cabreira, 2001}) seeks to measure how, even though the volume of immigrants was not as significant as that of other groups - Italian and Japanese, for example - this ethnic group had a cultural influence on São Paulo society. Even though the article was published in an academic journal in the field of education, it does not, however, present a direct dialog with it. Regarding the work that investigates the immigration of Africans (^{Yade, 2014}), both the international movements of the slave trade and the displacements within the national territory due to the diasporas of black populations after the abolition of slavery are approached. The article thus avoids a distinction that is usually made in studies between internal migration (within the same country) and external migration (between different countries).

Proposing a study of the black population based on territorial space presupposes the need to deconstruct stigmas, prejudices, racism and stereotypes, among other social disqualifiers. In the case of Brazil, the mestizo identity is constructed to the detriment of a black identity [...] (^{Yade, 2014}, p. 188; translated from Portuguese).

Such discussion points to a second aspect of the material analyzed: the absence of articles investigating internal migration in the history of education in São Paulo, since we didn’t find any studies specifically dedicated to this discussion. As a possible exception, we can point to the work of Ediógenes ^{Aragão (2003}) who, although not exclusively interested in internal migration, discusses the formation of the São Paulo working class based on the circulation of racist theories, such as social Darwinism and eugenics, in the context of the transition from slavery to free labor, paying attention to the processes of discrimination and disposal of free and freed national workers. The author opposes theories that justify the use of foreign labor based on the claim that the abolition of slavery would have generated a deficit in the available workforce in the state of São Paulo, arguing that the real reason was the project to whiten the population.

From 1880 onwards, the subsidized immigration policy was responsible for the marginalization of free national workers in the labor market, in coffee growing, as well as in textile industrialization in São Paulo, by defining an ‘ideal type’ of worker - linked to ethnocentrism and European evolutionism - articulating liberal ideology with slavery practices in the process of building the Nation State (^{Aragão, 2003}, p. 151; translated from Portuguese).

Regarding the topics covered in the articles, there is a significant concentration of studies that focus their discussions on school initiatives run by immigrants, especially at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, targeting specific population niches. These were schools with a strong ethnic connotation which, in addition to regular school education, also aimed to maintain the culture and language of the country of origin of the immigrants who founded them: the so-called ‘ethnic schools’ (^{Kreutz, 2000}). Some considerations about the functioning of these institutions are appropriate.

The exponential growth of the population of the state of São Paulo in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, due to the large influx of immigrants, was confronted with the precariousness and insufficiency of the public education system. On the one hand, the state’s population was growing exponentially; on the other, public services were not expanding at the same speed. With specific regard to education, there was a strong demand from immigrants for the creation of schools for their children (^{Mimesse & Maschio, 2009})¹⁴. The public authorities’ inability to meet this demand led various immigrant groups to founding their own schools (^{Prado, 2015}).

In addition, the turn of the 19th to the 20th century was marked by nationalist projects aimed at solidifying a common identity among its citizens. For immigrants from the recently unified Italy (^{Panizzolo, 2020}) and those from the Japanese ultranationalist period (^{Okamoto, 2018}), schools emerged as an important tool for preserving the culture of their countries of origin, as they allowed children, even if they were born and raised far from their parents’ homeland, to become their citizens. Another indication of the value of such schools for their countries of origin can be seen in the case of some schools that received financial support and teaching materials from Italy (^{Prado, 2015}). Finally, these institutions varied in size and public (^{Demartini, 2004}), with some schools receiving a few dozen students from the lower classes (Prado, 2015) and others receiving hundreds of children from the economic elite (^{Cantuaria, 2004}).

In the studies that have investigated ethnic schools in São Paulo, the interest in Italian schools predominates. There are only two articles that focus on schools founded by other ethnic groups, as well as a third that, although not specifically concerned with a single school institution, focuses on community organizations that, among other activities, ran schools. The researcher Adriana L. ^{Cantuaria (2004}) investigated, in the period between 1878 and 1978, schools that were founded by and targeted immigrants belonging to the upper classes, becoming bilingual schools with international curricula aimed at the São Paulo bourgeoisie. The focus was on German schools such as the Deutsche Schule (which became the Colégio Visconde de Porto Seguro) and the Colégio Humboldt, as well as the Italian Instituto Medio Italo-Brasiliano Dante Alighieri. The author also points out that “[...] São Paulo’s school space, however, is also made up of institutions whose existence is linked to a different type of relationship between foreign and national groups than that established with traditional immigration” (^{Cantuaria, 2004}, p. 51; translated from Portuguese), including some international school institutions that are not associated with the main ethnic groups of immigrants who came to São Paulo. These are: the Liceu Franco Brasileiro (later named Liceu Pasteur), the São Paulo Graded School and the British Gimnasio Anglo-Brazilian School (which closed in the 1920s) and the contemporary Saint Paul’s School. The author’s interest is in the founding of these schools as something relevant to understanding the formation of the national economic elite, insofar as, although these institutions were, in principle, intended for foreigners, there were many Brazilians among the students enrolled due to the efforts of the São Paulo upper classes to raise their children based on a European and North American ideal. In a similar vein, we can mention a study (^{Augusti, 2000}) on the political career of the German doctor Germano Melchert, which showed how some wealthy immigrants quickly inserted themselves and became influential within the São Paulo elite.

Regarding the texts on Italian ethnic schools, two articles investigated general aspects, without discussing any specific institution or school aspect: A escola étnica na cidade de São Paulo e os primeiros tons de uma identidade italiana (1887-1912), by Claudia ^{Panizzolo (2020}), and O convívio concomitante e frugal das escolas elementares públicas e privadas paulistanas, by Eliane Mimesse ^{Prado (2015}), both of which have already been mentioned here. The first seeks to contextualize the attempts to manage and cooperate, as well as the disputes surrounding the first Italian schools founded in the city of São Paulo. The time frame chosen begins in 1887, when the first Italian school in the city was registered - according to Fanfulla, a periodical of the Italian community in Brazil - and ends in 1912, the year of the publication of the Regolamento per le scuole italiane all’estero¹⁵, a document issued by the Italian government containing the curricular and organizational standards for Italian schools operating abroad. The author argues:

The Italian schools in the city of São Paulo can be thought of [...] as builders of patriotism, and for this, they were required to take responsibility for ‘Italianizing’ those who came here from a newly unified Italy, and those born here, who by the jus sanguinis principle, according to the Italian government, had the transmission of nationality ensured by descent. (^{Panizzolo, 2020}, p. 26; translated from Portuguese).

In the second article (^{Prado, 2015}), the author seeks to understand, based on Fanfulla and the reports and data produced by school inspectors published in the Annuarios do Ensino do estado de São Paulo¹⁶, the tensions that arose between private schools run by Italians and public schools, understanding that both disputed projects for creating identities:

At the time, there was a clash, because São Paulo’s public schools, especially the ‘school groups’, and the Italian subsidized schools were pursuing the same goal: they both wanted their students to be literate in their respective national languages, to form citizens (^{Prado, 2015}, p. 195; translated from Portuguese).

As for the other articles that investigated Italian schools in São Paulo, there are two more written by ^{Panizzolo (2019}a; ²⁰¹⁹b) that studied the use of a collection of books as teaching material in the first decades of the 20th century. In this case, the series studied was Piccolo mondo, letture per le scuole elementare, produced in Italy by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Public Instruction and intended for primary education in Italian schools outside the Italian peninsula (^{Panizzolo, 2019}b). In addition, there is an article written by Elaine Cátia Falcade ^{Maschio and Eliane Mimesse Prado (2017}) which presents a comparative study of the teaching of Portuguese in Italian schools in the cities of São Paulo and Curitiba between 1883 and 1907. The authors point out how the school in Curitiba received financial support from both the Italian and Paraná governments, while the São Paulo schools received it only from abroad. However, the schools in São Paulo welcomed all students who came to them without charging a monthly fee, regardless of whether they were Italian or not. Regarding the teaching of the Portuguese language, even with the existence of laws prohibiting the exclusive use of foreign languages in schools and making it compulsory to teach the national language, Curitiba did little to ensure compliance with the law, according to the authors. “In the city of São Paulo, the regulations were enforced as the number of school inspectors working in the capital city increased” (^{Maschio & Prado, 2017}, p. 98; translated from Portuguese).

Regarding the teaching of national language and culture within foreign educational institutions in the country, it is worth mentioning a study (^{Bahia, 2009}) that investigates, based on the memories of activists, two institutions linked to left-wing movements within the Jewish community: the Associação Scholem Aleichem (ASA) and the Instituto Cultural Israelita Brasileiro (ICIB) - the former located in Rio de Janeiro and the latter in São Paulo. Under the administration of these institutions, there were various cultural, community and educational initiatives, including school institutions that promoted the propagation of Jewish culture and socialist values in conjunction with aspects of Brazilian culture and history. This was the case at the Scholem school in São Paulo:

In the school curriculum, emphasis was placed on the history of the Jewish people, Yiddish literature, and mastery of the language. The celebration of Jewish festivals emphasized the combative nature and values of freedom associated with a historical reading of the tradition that at no time ‘detached itself from Brazilian reality’ (^{Bahia, 2009}, p. 131; translated from Portuguese).

So far, the texts have invariably treated foreign educational institutions as competitors to national education. Whether in a more direct and combative relationship, or in a more dialogical relationship with the local culture, ethnic schools established themselves as substitutes for local public education. Nevertheless, there are studies that have looked at foreign educational initiatives that complemented national schooling. Adriana Aparecida Alves da ^{Silva and Wilson Sandano (2013}a) focused on the rituals and cultural festivals promoted by the Escola de Língua Japonesa in the region where the municipality of Pilar do Sul is located today.

Unlike other Japanese schools that operated in the state of São Paulo that were researched by Demartini and Kreutz, the Pilar do Sul Japanese Language and Boarding School was not a primary or secondary school. Its students, even the boarders, attended at times that did not conflict with those of the “Padre Anchieta” School Group or the Pilar do Sul State Gymnasium (^{Silva & Sandano, 2013}a, p. 228; translated from Portuguese).

This school was founded in 1950 and operated illegally for several years. It is important to note that during the Second World War, Brazil imposed bans on immigrants from the Axis powers countries (Germany, Italy, and Japan), which prevented them from speaking their mother tongue in public and holding meetings. They were also restricted in their mobility and their schools were closed. These sanctions were only removed in 1956 (^{Silva & Sandano, 2013}a).

In addition to studies on educational institutions founded by immigrants themselves, it is possible to identify other articles that seek to understand the influence of foreigners on public education in São Paulo. This is the case of two articles by the authors (^{Silva & Sandano, 2013}b; ^{Pereira & Sandano, 2015})¹⁷, which sought to investigate the impact of Japanese immigrants on the school field in Pilar do Sul. At the end of the first article, the authors concluded that it was not possible to “[...] state that the arravial of the Japanese and their descendants changed the school culture, but that there were changes in some respects, such as the reorganization of school time and space and especially in their practices” (^{Silva & Sandano, 2013}b, p. 205; translated from Portuguese). According to the second text (^{Pereira & Sandano, 2015}), the initiatives to nationalize education, which began under the government of Getúlio Vargas, were intensified in schools due to the greater presence of foreigners; this is, it is inferred that the strengthening of nationalism would be a response to the presence of foreigners.

On the dichotomous relationship between national and foreign education, Zeila de Brito Fabri ^{Demartini (2000}) presented the tensions experienced by Japanese immigrants throughout the first half of the 20th century, both when they joined São Paulo’s public education system and when they created a parallel network of Japanese schools. The author pointed out how Japanese immigrants lived, voluntarily or not, with two types of education: national and Japanese. The former was offered in both national and Japanese schools, aiming at enabling communication and integration into the local job market; the latter took place only in Japanese schools and aimed to maintain the children connected with oriental culture.

Both above articles described different ways in which immigrants were present not only in ethnic schools, but also in institutions belonging to the public school system. In this regard, it is worth mentioning two works by César Romero Amaral ^{Vieira (2008}, 2002). The author highlights how American Protestantism was influential in shaping Brazilian republican thinking, bringing notions and principles that would become important foundations for the formation of public education in São Paulo during the First Republic period in Brazil:

The contribution of the Protestant schools to public education in São Paulo is undeniable: in the introduction of co-education, in opposition to the Catholic tradition of separation of the classes by the sexes; in the dignity of educating the female sex, in opposition to the prejudice against their education; in curricular innovation, with an emphasis on the scientific aspect, in opposition to an essentially classical curriculum, in which the physical and natural sciences were presented almost without the use of laboratories and experimentation; in the principle of freedom of religion in schools and in opposition to the compulsory teaching of religion in public schools; and in the spirit of understanding [...] (^{Vieira, 2002}, p. 25). ...] (^{Vieira, 2002}, p. 272; translated from Portuguese).

Still about immigrant schooling, there is an article by Eliane Mimesse ^{Prado (2013}), which describes the childhood of Italian immigrants in the city of São Caetano do Sul in the early decades of the 20th century. The author describes how many of these children - belonging to the working classes - stopped going to school because they had to take up a job. The children’s intermittent attendance to schools caused concern among some public-school teachers. Here we see an immigrant childhood that took place on the margins of school education.

In a similar way, there is a set of articles that discuss the education of the working class and issues related to workers’ movements. In addition to the work by ^{Aragão (2003}), there are two others: A educação libertária na bagagem dos imigrantes: uma trajetória no Brasil (^{Moraes, 2000}) and Entre hinos, bandeiras e heróis: imigração europeia, classe operária e a constituição da nacionalidade nos grupos escolares da cidade de Santos (^{Carreira, 2014}). The first describes educational practices between the 1890s and 1930s developed by anarchist collectives, mostly of Italian origin. These included the creation and management of schools, cultural centers, and athenaeums. The author sought to understand changes and shifts within these educational actions, dividing them into three phases:

[...] the first, between the years 1895 to 1909; the second, between 1909 to 1919, as the operation of schools, already under the guideline of Francisco Ferrer’s thought and some study centers; and finally, the third, between 1927 to 1937, in which only the study centers and athenaeums, became the only references that worked with education (^{Moraes, 2000}, p. 36; translated from Portuguese).

^{Moraes (2000}, p. 37; translated from Portuguese) argued that the first phase “[...] was more linked to a libertarian spontaneism, seeking to make a large number of workers increasingly literate, with the aim of strengthening the workers’ movement, which was beginning emerge in Brazil”. The emphasis placed on literacy seems important to us insofar as it is a concern not only of the workers’ movements, but also of the state.

The text by ^{Carreira (2014}) investigates the role of the public education system in the state of São Paulo regarding the incorporation and assimilation of foreigners associated to workers’ movements in the city of Santos throughout the 1910s and 1920s. The author describes the existence of a project that sought, through education, to integrate a population that was marked by its heterogeneity and diversity. To this end, combating illiteracy was seen as a crucial strategy:

In the 1910s and 1920s, schools were once again at the center of debates about the future of the nation. Illiteracy and the foreign ‘threat’ became the targets of the discourses and public educational policies of the period. [...] The 1920 Reform, promoted by Sampaio Dória, made illiteracy a national problem and an obstacle to the country’s development. The importance attributed to literacy, although fundamental to its understanding, does not exhaust the efforts contained in the 1920 Reform. Notions of civics would play a key role in shaping the national character, instilling in children the conceptions of love for the country, respect for the established order and fulfillment of duties (^{Carreira, 2014}, p. 107; translated from Portuguese).

Finally, it is worth mentioning a paper by ^{Demartini (2004}) in which the author presents indications of possible paths for future research on immigration and education based on a historical-comparative perspective. Many of her indications aim to understand the tensions in the contact between nationals and foreigners, both in the linguistic field (investigating the relationship between the teaching of the language of the country of origin and that of Portuguese) and in the context of coexistence within educational institutions.

In the studies reviewed so far, it is possible to observe a myriad of competing projects - both the nationalist and the foreign - and how schools became the privileged institution for putting these proposals into practice. From this perspective, it becomes clear that many of the paths designed to build a proper population for São Paulo involved schooling. If, on the one hand, the desire to whiten and Europeanize São Paulo society led the elites to enroll their children in foreign schools aimed at the wealthier classes, on the other hand, the excess of ethnic schools and the lack of attention to teaching the Portuguese language worried the school inspectors of the time. In one way or another, the schools emerged as a tense space insofar as, whether by defending their own exclusive project or by co-opting those seen as different, it was within their practices that were the key to building a common population.

Let’s see which horizon would emerge more than a century later.

Contemporary immigration

Among the 12 studies on migration and education that studied São Paulo nowadays, the most common themes were those linked to immigration from African Portuguese-speaking countries (PALOP) and Bolivia. Regarding the first group, the field of higher education stands out. For example:

Universities in Brazil, particularly those located on the Rio de Janeiro-São Paulo axis, such as the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and the University of São Paulo (USP), received a significant number of foreign students from various Latin American and African countries in the last quarter of the 20th century, through agreements signed with various international organizations and universities in these countries. But the largest influx of university students came from the African continent, through the Undergraduate Student Agreement Program (PEC-G), linked to the Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MRE) and Education (MEC) (^{Fonseca, 2009}, p. 24-25; translated from Portuguese).

The articles that investigated the presence of African immigrants in higher education sought to understand factors such as: reasons for immigration, conditions of stay and prospects of returning to their home countries (^{Subuhana, 2009}; ^{Fonseca, 2009}). However, the research in this case was not restricted to the state of São Paulo. In one of them (Fonseca, 2009), the discussion establishes a dialogue between universities in São Paulo and Paraná - in this case, mainly the São Paulo State University (Unesp) and the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR). In another study (^{Silva & Morais, 2012}), the debate compares the University of São Paulo (USP) with the University of Brasília (UnB), regarding the integration and sociability of students from PALOP countries. Another article (^{Rossa & Menezes, 2020}) focused on the trajectory of Angolan refugee women living in São Paulo. In the latter case, the research sought to understand the dialog between these immigrants and the languages of their home country and Brazil. It is important to note that, although the official language of Angola is Portuguese, there are several other languages in the country - such as Umbundu, Kimbundu and Kikongo - linked to the different ethnic groups there, so it would be a mistake to assume that all Angolans have Portuguese as their mother tongue.

Regarding the studies dealing with Bolivian immigration, it is noteworthy that, while in the previous group the focus was on higher education, now the attention is on basic education, especially nursery and primary school. One possible justification for this could be the fact that, among foreign students enrolled in public schools in the state and city of São Paulo, the most common foreign nationality is Bolivian, representing 34% of immigrants enrolled in the state school system and 48% in the municipal school system, according to data from 2019 and 2020, respectively¹⁸.

In the articles that focused on Bolivian immigration issues related to school education and the interpersonal relationships that take place there are a common theme. There are studies that seek to analyze how the relationship between Bolivian students and their Brazilian teachers and peers develop in specific school contexts, both in Early Childhood Education (^{Freitas & Silva, 2015}) and in the initial years of Elementary School (^{Gondin, Pinezi, & Menezes, 2020}) or in the final years (^{Dias & Souza Neto, 2019}). It is also possible to observe discussions that come close to the field of human rights and the debate on immigration and the right to education (^{Magalhães & Schilling, 2012}; ^{Dias & Souza Neto, 2019}). Here, the argument takes a step back to approach not the integration of immigrants into classrooms, but the conditions of their access to educational institutions.

Still on Bolivian immigration, we would like to highlight an article that, like those presented above, also investigated the social interactions between Bolivian students and the school community in which they were inserted, describing the cultural differences materialized in language barriers (^{Gondin & Pinezi, 2020}). The study analyzed how language appears simultaneously as a foundation for an identity and as a marker of difference between Bolivian and Brazilian children in a public school in the literacy cycle. The teachers also stated that the main barrier to teaching and integrating foreign students was associated with linguistic differences, which could lead to obstacles in understanding lessons and communicating with teachers and other classmates.

Even when they are already fluent in Portuguese, the accent and the way words are pronounced can make foreign students feel uncomfortable, which could be one hypothesis to justify the shyness and insecurity perceived during the ethnographic work (^{Gondin & Pinezi, 2020}, p. 15-16; translated from Portuguese).

The focus on language issues is recurrent in studies on education and migration. In this subject, we highlight two articles that investigated the teaching of Portuguese to immigrants without restricting themselves to any specific ethnic group. In one of them, based on the notion that “[...] learning to read and write necessarily implies a change in identity” (^{Silva, 2003}, p. 173-174; translated from Portuguese), the author describes her object of study as “[...] the identity that is constituted in the relationship between language, culture and identity” (Silva, 2003, p. 174; translated from Portuguese). Thus, the article develops a discussion about literacy in the formation of identity before continuing and providing a set of reflections and indications for teachers working with adult literacy in contexts of cultural plurality. In another article (^{Silva & Minvielle, 2019}), the authors start with a legislative discussion about the right to education for immigrants¹⁹, arguing that guaranteeing access per se would not ensure the right, since many foreigners were unable to continue their studies due to, among other issues, difficulties in understanding the Portuguese language and the institution’s neglect of these difficulties. The research therefore set out to

[...] to investigate whether there are foundations of Social Pedagogy²⁰ in the initiatives that offer Portuguese language courses at the beginning of the school trajectory of migrants and refugees, as well as the importance/relevance of these foundations in their process of socialization, integration and guarantee of rights in the host societies (^{Silva & Minvielle, 2019}, p. 111; translated from Portuguese).

In the articles that focused on teaching Portuguese language for immigrants - mainly in its literacy aspect - two arguments emerged: one linked to identity; the other, to the right to education. Regarding the first, the immigrant’s mother tongue appears as a guarantee and an identity marker that must be respected within educational institutions. Meanwhile, access to the local language is seen as a means for foreigners not only to communicate their identity, but also to familiarize themselves with that of the locals. Language therefore appears as a delimiter and mediator of otherness. In the second movement, the teaching of the local language is seen as a prerequisite for guaranteeing the right to education, under the precept that, without it, it would not be possible to ensure minimum conditions of communication to access education provided in formal institutions and to socialize within the school community.

Concluding the discussion on studies that focus on issues in the present days, there is one more article that we believe is close to the debate on human rights, now in dialogue with early childhood education. In the article (In) visibilidade das crianças imigrantes na cidade de São Paulo: questões para pensar a cidadania da pequena infância (^{Nascimento & Morais, 2020}), based on the argument that in Brazil there is little academic research focused on children in migratory contexts, the authors state that, although there are legislative documents and public policies that recognize and defend children’s rights, the focus of these regulations is restricted to protecting the basic rights to health and education. However, there is a certain negligence when it comes to recognizing immigrant children as social subjects and their right to participate in society, which is fundamental for children to exercise their citizenship. The research opted to carry out a comprehensive debate, looking at the presence of immigrant children in the municipal network, without focusing exclusively on any ethnic group or specific school institution.

Final considerations

Considering the path taken so far, it is possible to affirm that school institutions, in studies that have investigated past events, are an important vector of state action in response to the arrival of foreign immigrants in the country. In this sense, the expansion of São Paulo’s public education system and the valorization of literacy emerged as responses to the variety of foreign school institutions that were emerging among the foreign communities. There was a need to integrate immigrants into São Paulo society, as they were, to some extent, suspending the contours of the local identity that was being built. Hence the school as a bastion of the ‘national spirit’.

In the studies that turned to the present, the integration of immigrants through school also emerged as an urgency, but now as a way of ensuring universal rights. Schooling and teaching the national language to foreigners would appear to be a duty of the state, thus enabling them to be truly integrated. However, it would be necessary for this process to consider cultural differences, i.e., the local culture must be taught, while safeguarding that of the foreigner. In this way, the diversity that makes up any population is preserved, without jeopardizing the cohesion needed to guarantee its supposed unity.

If the school of the past was seen as an institution responsible for defending against the foreigner taking over the place, in response to the exogenous image of the immigrant, the education of the present would establish itself as a vector capable of governing differences, proposing to include immigrants and ensure their incorporation into social life. However, there is no inversion of the school’s role in the two temporalities, since in both the educational practice tries to absorb the immigrant. It is therefore a question of a sophistication in the way this agglutinating movement is imagined: from belligerent opposition to differences to the ingenious subtlety of normative inclusion. This leads us to conclude that educational practices are not just a unilateral strategy by the state towards foreigners. On the contrary, they are inexorably instituted in the ambiguous game of demands and refusals characteristic of dynamics between government and the population.

Returning to the Foucauldian notion of governmentality, we must recognize that the presence of foreigners in São Paulo’s territory, throughout its history, is agonistic in relation to the identity constitution of the local population, in the way that it was the massive influx of foreigners that, on the one hand, paved the way for the exponential increase in São Paulo’s population and, on the other, never ceased to establish the limits of population governance by the state.

We are therefore at the heart of the processes of social governmentalization, since the population is not just an object to be governed, but its management is the very objective for which it is governed. Let’s remember that, in Security, Territory, Population, Foucault described precisely how in Modernity would have emerged

[...] a state of governance that is no longer essentially defined by its territoriality, by the surface it occupies, but by a mass: the mass of the population, with its volume, its density, with, of course, the territory over which it extends, but which in a way is no longer a component of it (^{Foucault, 2008}, p. 145; translated from Portuguese).

Throughout this article, we have tried to demonstrate, by means of the studies examined, how the arrival and stay of foreigners in the state of São Paulo have presented itself as a point of tension regarding the population problem. In this sense, it seems to us that the social inclusion of immigrants can no longer be understood as just a question of observing rights, but above all as a political necessity insofar as the very actions of the state are defined by the arrangements and vicissitudes of the population groups that are governed by it. Without one element, therefore, the other does not exist. Thus, by taking immigration as an agonistic vector in the constitution of populations, it becomes clear that it does not occur because of a supposed dichotomy between nationals and foreigners, or between those at the center and those on the margins of a given social conjecture. The power of the processes of social governmentalization lies precisely in the ultimate indistinction of both population domains, resulting in a composite of complementary forces, like an ethical-political dynamic projecting movements that incessantly unfold from one another.

The studies analyzed here lead us to two main conclusions. The first: the continuity of immigration as a point of tension in São Paulo’s population constitution. Just as immigration represented a political problem at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century that destabilized local society, it persists today as a factor of social friction insofar as the ways of dealing with these individuals who, even though outsiders, are equally responsible for what constitutes the very uniqueness of São Paulo society are still problematic. São Paulo remains, strictly speaking, a land of foreigners.

This leads to a second conclusion that can be drawn from the texts examined here: schooling is where the hope of resolving the tension mentioned above lies. In both temporalities, both when the belligerence of the public policies of the First Republic is criticized and when diagnoses are made about the successes and failures of current policies, the school is assigned the task of governing diversity and mediating population conflicts involving immigration.