Turning Migration Disadvantage into Educational Advantage. Autobiographies of Successful Students with an Immigrant Background

The article focuses on unexpected pathways of successful students with an immigrant background, in order to investigate the implication of this phenomenon from a theoretical, methodological and empirical point of view. After a review of the main sociological studies on ?immigrant optimism? towards educational success, I will reflect on biographical approach, particularly suitable to study this topic. A on-going research project based on the collection of educational autobiographies of successful immigrant-origin students, attending upper secondary schools in Northern Italy, is presented. Then, the story of Destiny, a 16 years-old girl with Moroccan origin, is used as a case study to explore transformative actions that lead second-generation students to educational success and to identify the social logic enrolled in a single case. Destiny, with the support of parents and teachers, shows the capacity to turn the disadvantage of migration into an educational advantage, through specific strategies developed to contrast adversities and inequalities, assuming education to handle social constraints. In Destiny autobiography, migration reveals its nature of biographical resource and its important role to lead disadvantaged students to excellent school outcomes: migration appears as a an experience of familiar sufferance and failure, but also a source of a biographical learning; a chance of reflexivity on failure and of awareness of disadvantage; an experience that transmit and foster non-cognitive skills, that are strong predictor of educational success. The methodological choice of ?educational autobiography? is thus considered crucial to track new narratives and discourses on ethnic inequalities in education

Interculturalism, education and society: Education policies for immigrant students in Italy

The article seeks to illustrate Italian educational policies for students with an immigrant background within the context of the EU intercultural framework. Italy can be considered the EU country where interculturalism is more widely recognized in terms of pedagogical theory and school legislation. However, the Italian approach is characterized by a weak and contradictory relationship between policy, teaching strategies and educational experiences. To support this argument, I will refer to a review of Italian sociological studies, which demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the interculturalism as applied to the Italian education system. The conflict between theory and practices is illustrated by empirical findings that suggest immigrant students are still not granted equality of opportunity, linguistic and cultural diversities are almost absent from most school curricula, and a positive dialogue between culturally different subjects is still more of an aspiration than a fact. More research is needed in order to monitor and evaluate if intercultural practice is indeed a true expression of the ideas to which it aspires

Education in a crisis. Italy within southern Europe: Trends and the way forward

El artículo analiza la reacción peculiar del sistema educativo italiano a la reciente crisis, en comparación con países dotados de un «modelo de bienestar Mediterráneo», como Grecia, Portugal y España. Analizando los principales indicadores estadísticos nacionales de los sistemas educativos –acceso a la educación, éxito escolar, equidad e inclusión de alumnos inmigrantes– se ha profundizado en las dificultades, pero también en la resiliencia del sistema italiano de educación. El análisis permite concluir que las prioridades en términos de reforma son: completar el proceso de autonomía escolar, completar el plan de digitalización, dotando todas las escuelas de TICs actualizadas, cambiar la jornada escolar e implementar un sistema de evaluación nacional. El articulo presenta los resultados de un Proyecto de investigación trasnacional llevado a cabo por ISCTE-IUL de Lisboa con el apoyo de la Fundación de Ciencias y tecnología (Gobierno de Portugal).The essay draws on this crisis-frame and aims at showing as the education system in Italy, compared with Greece, Portugal, and Spain that converge for the similar Mediterranean welfare regime, reacted to crisis in a peculiar way. By comparing statistical indicators of national performances (about: educational access, school success, equity, and inclusion of students with ethnic background) during the crisis time (2000-2014), we want to focus on the sufferance but also on the resilience of the Italian system of education. Four priorities rise in the direction of its reformability: completion of school autonomy, completion of the digitalization plan providing all schools with updated ICTs, changes in time scheduling of the school offer, and implementation of the national evaluation system. The essay reports findings from a cross-national research project, carried out by ISCTE-IUL of Lisbon with the support of the Foundation of Science andTechnology (Portugal Government

Researching Integration in Multiethnic Italian Schools. A Sociological Review on Educational Inequalities

The article offers a review of the main sociological studies on school integration of students with an immigrant background, carried out in the past 15 years in Italy. Italian research on this topic is still not recognized at international level, but Italy can be considered an interesting case study due to the recent, rapid and exponential increase of immigrant students and the contradictions emerging from the attempt to turn an inclusive educational model into integration practices. The review identifies educational achievements and interethnic relationships as crucial components of school integration in multiethnic schools, highlighting strengths and weaknesses of the Italian sociological research. Finally, a model for the analysis of school integration of immigrant students will be proposed, which combines individual, relational, institutional, structural, and personal agency factors

Nuove generazioni e radicalismo violento. Stereotipi e antidoti

Il presente contributo offre alcune coordinate per una analisi interdisciplinare del radicalismo violento di matrice religiosalegato alle giovani generazioni europee con background immigrato. A partire da una riflessione sui termini con cui si discutedel fenomeno della radicalizzazione violenta (tra fondamentalismo e terrorismo), il saggio si concentra sul nesso violenza/religionelegato all’Islam e alla falsa percezione dell’Islam come (unica) religione violenta. Nelle conclusioni si riflette su comeun nuovo sapere storico-sociologico è necessario antidoto all’ignoranza all’interno e relativamente alle culture religiose

At the Margins : Challenges for Sociologists of Education in Southern Europe

The aim of this Special Issue of the Italian Journal of Sociology of Ed-ucation, published at the same time of the n. 3/2019 of RASE (Revista de Sociología de la educación), is to reflect on Sociology of Education from a Southern European perspective. Undoubtedly, the starting point is the well-consolidated international debate on the so-called "Theories of the South" (Connell, 2007) or "Epistemologies of the South" (Santos, 2007), and the call for a "Global Sociology" (Burawoy, 2016) also in a postcolonial per-spective (Bhambra, 2014). These approaches have made visible the need to seek new theoretical and empirical contributions to think about the social realities of the Global South outside the Euro-American area, which as arisen over the last 40 years in response to social movements and to the emergence of different sociological voices all around the world

RELIGIOSITY AND SCHOOL INTEGRATION AMONG ITALIAN AND NON-ITALIAN STUDENTS. RESULTS FROM A SURVEY IN MULTI-ETHNIC CLASSROOMS

The paper investigates the role of religion among a group of adolescents (11-15-year-old) surveyed in Italian multicultural schools. The multicultural classrooms (with over 30% of pupils with ethnic background) may be interpreted as social spaces for inter-ethnic coexistence, open to ethnic and religious diversity. We rely on a sample of 1,040 students enrolled in lower secondary education in Lombardy in 2011 on which we investigate religiosity, conceptualized as consisting of religious belonging and religious practice. The investigation questions are: does religiosity hamper horizontal relationships with classmates and vertical relationships with teachers? What consequence does the religious practice produce on educational achievement, and more in general on school integration? On average, religious students tend to report a higher level of integration (positive relationships with peers/teachers) compared to non-religious students, even after controlling for a wide set of covariates. In addition, they gain higher marks. Furthermore, these positive results are similar among Italian and non-Italian students: for future research, this evidence suggests that religiosity of students with an immigrant background could be considered as a resource for their educational integration, especially when schools are more welcoming towards religious diversity

Alunni con cittadinanza non italiana. Tra difficoltà e successi. Rapporto nazionale a.s. 2013/14

Il rapporto presenta la realtà multiculturale delle scuole italiane, ricostruendo le traiettorie formative dalla scuola dell'infanzia all'università degli alunni stranieri, comparate con quelle degli italiani. Si mettono in luce difficoltà, svantaggi, opportunità e successi degli alunni stranieri, facendo riferimento a una molteplicità di fonti istituzionali di dati (Miur, Isfol, Invalsi, Pisa Ocse 2012, ecc.)