Inclusion Through Political Participation, Trust from Shared Political Engagement: Children of Migrants and School Activism in Italy

This contribution presents the results of four researches with young migrants that took place in Italy between 2006 and 2014. The four research projects were concerned with the promotion of young people’s personal narratives to support a phenomenological description of their semantics of social participation. The researches cover a period characterised by economic crisis, the rise and fall of xenophobic political parties and a continuing debate around migration and inclusion in different social contexts. Data consists of young migrants’ narratives, promoted and collected in 62 focus group and 118 individual interviews. The discussion will introduce ‘school activism’ as the context of participation in political movements and campaigning of young migrants. School activism is an example and the context of the development of trusting relationships with peers, where positions of marginalisation are rejected and identities are negotiated and co-constructed around the person through dialogue. Participants’ narratives suggest that cultural essentialism can generate important problems of ineffective educational treatment of cultural identity. These problems can become particularly relevant during adolescence, an age in which the construction of identity may be seen as challenging. At the same time, young migrants and children of migrants’ narratives construct identities that through school activism position their authors at the center of rich networks of political participation and peer relationships.