Teaching Italian and Reconfiguring Citizenship: The Case of Language Volunteers in Migrant Education

Pro-migrant volunteering is often denounced as apolitical and patronising. Voluntary initiatives for immigrants' language education, then, have been accused of facilitating the neoliberal governmentality of migration, by fashioning migrants into precarious workers. Based on 20 in-depth interviews with volunteer language teachers in Lombardy, Italy, this article complicates such understandings, by shedding light on the tensions and ambiguities characterising volunteers' activities vis-à-vis the institutional governance of migration. Indeed, whereas such initiatives take on integration tasks for the benefit of the State, and thus can be accused of allying with the State in the governmentality of migration, against a background of growing nationalism, volunteering appears to develop people's empathy and solidarity beyond national belonging, questioning the division between citizens and non-citizens. In particular, it shows that volunteering in language education has the potential to transgress consolidated lines of inclusion and exclusion, turn volunteers from 'active citizens' into 'activist citizens', and offer resources of substantive citizenship to students. Ultimately, these 'humanitarian' actions by citizens belonging to the dominant society may represent acts of citizenship complementary to the initiatives of 'denizens'

Motivations and Effects of Volunteering for Refugees. Spaces of Encounter and Political Influence of the 'New Civic Engagement' in Milan

The article focuses on the new civic engagement often referred to as volunteer welcome initiatives. Indeed, during the misnamed 'migration/refugee crisis', a consistent number of citizens in Europe engaged in practices of helping toward refugees and migrants. Based on participant observations and 28 interviews with volunteers from four different voluntary groups running their activities in Milan, Italy, I argue that such organizations offer a space of encounter and confrontation with migrants throughout which volunteers develop a strong sense of outrage and critical awareness of asylum system deficiencies. Moreover, it is argued that these organizations have had an important role within Milan's urban policy arena, to the extent that they contributed in shaping how the challenges of receiving the many newcomers were addressed locally

Teaching Italian and Reconfiguring Citizenship: The Case of Language Volunteers in Migrant Education

Pro-migrant volunteering is often denounced as apolitical and patronising. Voluntary initiatives for immigrants' language education, then, have been accused of facilitating the neoliberal governmentality of migration, by fashioning migrants into precarious workers. Based on 20 in-depth interviews with volunteer language teachers in Lombardy, Italy, this article complicates such understandings, by shedding light on the tensions and ambiguities characterising volunteers' activities vis-à-vis the institutional governance of migration. Indeed, whereas such initiatives take on integration tasks for the benefit of the State, and thus can be accused of allying with the State in the governmentality of migration, against a background of growing nationalism, volunteering appears to develop people's empathy and solidarity beyond national belonging, questioning the division between citizens and non-citizens. In particular, it shows that volunteering in language education has the potential to transgress consolidated lines of inclusion and exclusion, turn volunteers from 'active citizens' into 'activist citizens', and offer resources of substantive citizenship to students. Ultimately, these 'humanitarian' actions by citizens belonging to the dominant society may represent acts of citizenship complementary to the initiatives of 'denizens'

TOPIC 16 – Electrophysiology, arrythmias and pacing – D

Trabajo presentado al Simposio Conmemorativo del Centenario de Lagasca