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This article addresses the concept of participation in the mathematics classroom, especially as it relates to students from certain ethnic and language groups and economically disadvantaged students. We are primarily concerned with seeking ways to develop approaches to mathematics education that are sensitive to the contexts and lived experiences of all learners. In particular, we are concerned by how to develop classroom-teaching environments that promote the mathematical participation of all students. In our local contexts we work with students who are often left behind in the academic journey. We present two cases located in geographically very distant settings. They share essential characteristics, however, that point to problematic areas that transcend borders, especially in reference to how certain groups of students, such as immigrants, members of specific ethnic and language groups and economically underprivileged students, are viewed by the educational systems in place. These two cases illustrate the effects of social and organizational structures on students’ participation in the mathematics classroom. Our work is grounded on a sociocultural view of education (Moll, 1992; Nunes and Bryant, 1996; Lerman, 2001). Sociocultural theories emerged as an alternative to a perceived dichotomy between social and the psychological or individual perspectives. In the psychological or individual approach, the notion of participation is centered on the learner and pays little attention to the characteristics of the learning context. In the social approach, the key notion of participation is viewed as a kind of socialization into the mathematical practices. The participation model, as understood in the sociocultural approach, focuses on the use of discourse and some of its contents (norms, values, valorizations) as crucial mediating tools in order to interpret the mathematical learner in context. The acquisition of concepts and skills is not enough in the process of becoming a mathematical learner. There also needs to be an active participation in the reconstruction of a specific kind of discourse. In this article we focus on barriers to this active participation. Common to both cases is our (including the teachers’) focus on the experiences that each student brings to the mathematics classroom. So, rather than looking at certain students from a deficit-model approach that focuses on what they are lacking, we question the educational policies that seem to lead to these barriers. Although the two cases are located within experiences in which the teachers attempted to change the nature of participation, in this article our focus is not on the nature of those attempts but on the situation that prompted the teachers to try to change the patterns of participations. Specifically, we illustrate how the students themselves are aware of the social and organizational structures in place and of the effect of these on their participation. Case 1:“How come I don’t get to be in GATE?” This case [1] takes place in a fifth grade classroom (ten-yearold students) in a bilingual school (English and Spanish) in Tucson, Arizona. By the time they reach fifth grade, many of the students at this school have been together for up to five years and have developed strong bonds of friendships as well as rivalries. The twenty-nine children (fourteen boys and fifteen girls) in the class in which the study took place came from predominantly working class families. The class was comprised of nineteen children who were Mexican American or of other Hispanic origin, five who were Anglo American, four who were African American, and one native American. The fifth grade teacher was a teacher-researcher in one of our research projects. She was open to try approaches that would reach out to her students while helping them develop a strong mathematical basis for middle school. To that end, we developed a series of learning experiences, such as a learning module centered on games and another centered on the geometry of our local context. First of all we had to work on developing social and sociomathematical norms (Yackel and Cobb, 1996) in the classroom that were quite different from what the students had experienced in previous years. Mathematics was not a subject that they were used to talking about. For these students, to do mathematics meant to fill out a worksheet and return it to the teacher for evaluation. The idea of discussing a problem, listening to different points of view and building on each other’s ideas was not part of their experience as mathematical learners (see Civil, 2002, for more details on the work in this classroom). When we tried to open up the patterns of participation in the classroom, the power and status structures were deeply engrained. There were two groups who had high status in this class and therefore exerted power: those who were good at certain sports (primarily basketball and American football for the boys and, to a certain extent, softball for the girls) and those who were in the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program (seven students, four of whom were Anglo American). In this article we focus on the obstacles we encountered as we tried to bring about change and to move towards the participation of all students. We want to draw attention to how powerful certain structures, such as GATE and the sports program, are in determining whose participation is going to be valued. We do this by focusing mostly on students’ voices and behaviors, to show how aware these ten-year-old students were of “how the system works”. Being good at certain sports was a defining characteristic of popular students. At the beginning of the year we conducted interviews with all the students in order to establish a rapport with them. Most of the boys expressed an interest PARTICIPATION IN THE MATHEMATICS CLASSROOM: DOES EVERY STUDENT HAVE A VOICE?