The paper explores teachers' language literacy practices in underprivileged, inner-city schools in Athens, Greece, and their implications for student learning and educational inclusion. The current developments of global/European and national education policy agendas on literacy and inclusion inform the research questions of the study. Bernstein's theory of pedagogic discourse frames our analysis on the reproduction of social inequalities through schooling and informs our discussion on the discursive means and the pedagogic practices for their interruption. Findings, based on interview data and classroom observations, indicate that global discourses on inclusion, (re)articulated in the disadvantaged school settings of the study, invest the notion of inclusion with three different meanings: (a) inclusion as assimilation and absorption into the dominant culture and society; (b) inclusion as therapy for students' emotional 'traumas'; and (c) inclusion as recognition of difference. We argue that these constructs of inclusion shape teaching practices that either promote or undermine student learning and empowerment.