This article presents an analysis of those curricular practices that reproduce dominant ideas about nation, which in turn facilitate the circulation of exclusionary ways of knowing about subjects and their communities in schools. In this study we use ethnographic knowledge produced in two Chilean schools where we conducted ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and curriculum document analysis. Our purpose was to trace essentialist discourses about the nation, as a homogeneous and predictable space, and give meaning to the problematic naturalised correspondence between subjects and spaces. We use Foucauldian discourse analysis to understand the production of rationalities that support the production of the 'Chilean student' as distinct from other students from other countries within the same school contexts. We conclude with some highlights on the productive force of performativity when reproducing power relations around nation discourses.