School activism. The meanings of political participation of young migrants in Italian schools

This contribution discusses the results of four researches with young migrants that took place in three different regions of Italy between 2006 and 2014. Data consist of young (age 13 to 18) migrants' narratives, promoted and collected through 62 focus group and 118 individual interviews. Notwithstanding different aims, the four research projects shared a methodological framework consisting in the facilitation (Baraldi,2015) of young people’s narratives to allow a phenomenological description of a semantics of political participation. Based on data constructed over ten years, the presentation argues that political participation in students’ movements (school activism), represents for young migrants a context for the dialogical construction of hybrid identities through the negotiation of cultural differences in peer-interactions (Holliday, 2011; Piller,2011; Baraldi&Iervese,2014; Zhu Hua, 2014). Rather than a small-scale reproduction of a political participation they are excluded from, as lacking citizenship status, school activism offers to young migrants a context for the development of working trust in intercultural groups (Kelman, 2005), built on mutual interests and orientated to shared political objectives. However, participants’ narratives suggest that working trust may be the foundation of affective trust (Giddens, 1991) and inter-personal relationships, adding a new dimension to the semantics of political participation of young migrants. This new dimension consists in forms of inclusion and participation based on trust, a genuinely social process beyond the centrality of individual agency emphasised by previous research. Students’ movements and campaigning are contexts for the development of trusting relationships allowing the negotiation and co-construction of fluid hybrid identities around the person trough multicultural dialogue. School activism presents migrant, and non-migrant, young people as agents of cultural hybridization (Nederveen Pieterse, 2004) and practiced citizenship (Lawy&Biesta, 2006) through multicultural dialogue.