In Italy, young immigrants of second and third generation are facing serious integration problems. A context in which this is more evident is the Italian Juvenile Penal System. In North Italy, these minors authors of crime are largely of African origin and this could be connected to their social disadvantage. The juvenile penal system is increasingly oriented towards promoting a process of probation (in Italian “messa alla prova”), aiming at a social reintegration. The social services have to create an individual path to empower the young capabilities, stimulate his/her growth and, at the same time, to serve the punishment. The two essential factors are the socially useful work and the attempt to repair the damage through penal mediation. This probation requires objective and subjective criteria. These criteria seem to be less present in the aforementioned category and it seems that the social services, in charge of studying these individual paths, struggle to intercept specific needs. The proposal of this research/action work is to create a pathway, a kind of "probation for empowerment" that is adapted to personal needs but also includes the most recurring variables of this population of young people. It is hypothesised that intervening with subjects considered to be in need of "re-education" through forms of empowerment may make it possible not only to help them to rehabilitate themselves, but also to become sensitive to forms of prevention. The observational method of analysing criminal situations will be used as an operational method. It represents the meeting of two criminological approaches, namely narrative criminology (Ciappi & Schioppetto, 2018) and visual criminology (Brown, 2017). The method stems from the assumption that for a good narrative of a phenomenon, a good observation of it is fundamental (as phenomenology, Husserl, has already taught us). The intervention envisages that the study, observation and analysis are carried out directly by the subjects involved (the minors), with the mediation of the educators/social workers (Bugini & Monzani, 2022). In order to realise this project, which will be implemented with social services, we will consider the theories of deviance pedagogy, as well as the administration of various questionnaires. The investigation of empowerment is addressed both to social services and to minors. As regards the first one, we used an investigative questionnaire to understand if the needs of this population described in international literature finds confirmations from their perspective. In addition, a Psychological Empowerment Scale at work (PES), developed in 1995 by Spreitzer, can allow us to measure the empowerment based on four dimensions related to the individual’s psychological states: meaning, competence, self-determination and impact. In order to investigate the empowerment of the minor it is used EMPO, a scale validated in Italian by Francescato and collaborators in 2007, based on the measurement of three key component of individual empowerment: ability to set goals and achieve them effectively, lack of hope and trust, and interest in socio-political issues and participation in the political area.

In the Italian school system, the subject of Italian is traditionally divided into a pre-assigned amount of time dedicated to the study of the language and another that is dedicated to literature. Although the roles and application of literary texts in the teaching of a language (and vice versa) have been extensively described (Fabio Caon & Spaliviero, 2015; Lavinio, 2005, 2021), as they are, in fact, inseparable due to one feeding into the other, a gap is maintained between theory and practice, especially in school settings and in second language teaching.

The development of a firm interest towards reading within students should be one of the primary objectives of a literary education. Reading is a habit that may be nurtured at school through stimulating activities which foster a pleasant and enjoyable encounter with literary texts and (their) authors, as well as promote a cross-cultural understanding of society and linguistic proficiency.

Teaching a second language, specifically Italian, can benefit from the potential didactic application of the numerous intersections between linguistic education and literary sources. The literary text, in fact, does not only convey social values, which allows the learner to perceive the world through different cultural perspectives (Colombo, 2005; Spaliviero, 2021), but it also carries a multifaceted variety of linguistic usages, making it a suitable foundation for multiple didactic purposes (Pinello, 2014).

This study describes the potential affordances offered by the use of literary texts, ludolinguistic activities and creative writing activities, for teaching Italian as a second language to young learners, paying particular attention to the potential for social and linguistic inclusion, as well as employing an approach that accounts for the rational and emotional dimension of the learner.

The objective of this research is the observation of a teaching experiment in which linguistic purposes and literary means encounter in order to create a particular focus on the creative uses of language and storytelling. Such experiment is structured into an 11-hours teaching unit inspired by Gestalt psychological theories.

The data analyzed here were collected within an ‘Italian as L2’ course aimed at foreign students attending a lower secondary school in the Cagliari area. The language course, which resulted from a collaboration between the Provincial center for adult education and training ‘1 Karalis’ and the University of Cagliari, involved a multilevel classroom. However, this specific didactic intervention was directed to a group of A2 level learners of recent migration coming from Bangladesh and Pakistan aged 12 to 16 years old.

The didactic intervention produced a corpus of data which consists of a teaching unit specific for A2 level learners, to which some preliminary activities for creative writing and for vocabulary development are added, as well as a post-intervention questionnaire.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) considers the child a citizen to be promoted and liberated (Milani, 2019), taking up the fundamental principle of non-discrimination, but disadvantages and violations emerge from the Italian framework. Migrant minors are one of the least protected categories in Italian society (Save the Children, 2019). The critical issues of the reception system dedicated to them distance these minors from the exercise of active citizenship, reducing the achievement of decision-making freedom. Failure to recognize previous skills and educational qualifications, inclusion in school classes that are inappropriate for one's age or in CPIA (Provincial Centers for Adult Education), removal from access to fundamental rights (education, protection, world of work), exacerbated by Legislative Decree 133/2023, the absence of programs for access to professional training, the lack of qualified school staff (EASO, 2019; UNICEF, UNHCR, IOM & ISMU, 2019) and the progressive demotion of the reception system of his educational role, place the foreign minor in a situation of alarming educational poverty (Milani, 2020; Gozzelino & Matera, 2020).

Scientific research shows how institutional and social racism, media disinformation and structural violence emanate from the institutional invisibility of these minors and at the same time reinforce it, compromising their ability to self-determine, as well as their ability to establish and maintain relationships significant with the local population (Gómez Quintero, Carreras Aguerri, Gimeno Monterde, 2021) and to participate in the construction of a more complex narrative (Adichie, 2020) on migration, which is often lacking or flattened on the side of deviance (Galtung & Vincent, 1992; Penalva & La Parra, 2008; Matera, 2021, 2022a; Milani & Matera, 2022; Matera & Serrano García, 2022).

In Italy, the new laws on immigration make the essential relationship between school and territory for integration even more complex, delegating the responsibility for the reception and training of foreign minors to charities, volunteers and individual initiatives and denying the essential dialogue for educational planning. By exacerbating the educational disparities of foreign minors, they take away the possibility to aspiring to change, developing skills and building a conscious training question around the constraint of the migratory mandate and the logic of predestination (Matera, 2024).

Starting from a qualitative academic research carried out by the authors (Gozzelino & Matera, 2020; Matera, 2021, 2022a, 2022b) the contribution provides a critical pedagogical reading of the link between the educational poverty of migrant minors in Italy and their self-determination, proposing reflections and actions of operators in the development of opportunities and experiences to encourage collaboration between school and territory, active citizenship, the empowerment of minors and intercultural encounters in their social context. The focus is on the role of educators in promoting migrant minors as protagonists in the re-foundation of inclusive narratives and experiences for a more complex and co-constructed culture of migrant childhood and adolescence, with a view to global, shared citizenship education and democracy.

According to data from the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, there are about 24 thousand MSNAs (unaccompanied foreign minors) in Italy as of December 31, 2023. Of these, except for Ukrainian minors, 4,139 (17.79%), 4,685 (28.14%), come from Egypt and 2,440 (10.49%) from Tunisia. The figure assumes relevance when read in reference to the sociolinguistic and economic integration pathway, provided for by Law No. 47/2007 (Zampa Law) due to the high number of presences on Italian territory (in particular Turin, Milan and Rome) of predominantly Arabic-speaking msnas and at the age of compulsory schooling-training.

"The age of arrival is 16-17 years old although in recent years there has been a lowering of the age whereby 13-14 year olds and in some cases 10-11 year olds have arrived." During 2023 also noted "an increase in psychiatric cases." Increasingly, "groups of minors generally between the ages of 14 and 17 are arriving who are difficult to manage" with obvious frailties, with physical problems or rare diseases, most often not certified, with problems of aggression, hyperactivity for which one would need medical, psychological and/or psychiatric care. Despite the "cultural" resistance of Egyptian and Tunisian minors in accepting any kind of psychiatric care "if the msna experiences a mental distress or physical condition that requires a diagnosis or health certification, the path remains very complex: 1. the legislation does not clarify who should/could undertake it; access to services without a residence permit and without knowledge of the language is almost impossible.

2. If he then succeeds in carrying out the neuropsychiatric examination, there are no suitable means, linguistically and culturally, for a health assessment."

This has obvious repercussions on the normal process of learning a second language and on the child's educational-training path whether it is within compulsory schools or, within the Cpia. Among Arabic-speaking MsNas, it is common to find minors who are illiterate or unschooled in L1, who never went to school because they were farm laborers in the countryside or because they were expelled from a school system not equipped with inclusive teaching tools and adequate resources to support the classroom teacher. Msna are often carriers of pre - post migration trauma. "The loss of the family and friendship network," of the cultural identity of belonging, generate enormous difficulties in social integration as well as language and school learning. During the last year, the teaching action of CivicoZero Onlus within the Italian L2 classes has informally experimented with the tools made available by L.104/92 and 170/10 for inclusive teaching, testing their effectiveness and criticality in: pre -literacy and literacy (A0 and pre A1 Alte - Cliq), levels in which the absence of appropriate texts and teaching tools is detected.

The participatory theory of democracy, in which citizens who are impacted by a political decision have the ability and right to participate directly in said decision, has three primary justifying principals: experiential education, epistemologically enhanced governance, and reduced social inequality. Among the three justifications for greater participation, social inequality has been the least investigated and therefore the least understood. It is said that the lack of evidence for decreasing inequality stems from economic structural problems that enable better off citizens to participate more readily. Yet, in actuality, there are very few actual structural participatory reforms that incorporate large swaths of the population and thus enable a systematic study of how participation impacts inequality. This, first of kind, study looks closely at one of the largest and most enduring historical participatory reforms: the “Decreti Delegati” in the public education system of Italy. Since 1975, parents have had the right and expectation to politically participate at schools through legally codified “consiglio di scuola” and “consiglio di classe.” Despite nearly 50 years of institutionalized operation, these councils remain little understood as a vehicle or impediment to social equality. Taking one particular dimension of this larger question, the specific concern in this paper is how and whether these councils are a productive organ for the civic integration of immigrant parents. The absence in the scholarly literature and European institutional initiatives regarding immigrant parents at schools is surprising given the established finding that schools are the primary public institution where immigrants interface with others and participate civically.

In order to address this gap, this paper is based on an ethnographic study of parent councils and combines archival data and semi-structured interviews of parents and teachers in Italian public schools. The paper first utilizes PTOF Forms - Piano Triennale Offerta Formativa – in which each school in Italy establishes their basic “constitution” and therein outlines the principles of inclusion endorsed by the school. In a systematic comparison of primary and secondary schools, the data demonstrates the predominant narratives of inclusion (or exclusion) that are used by schools toward immigrant communities. At stake in this paper is the role of formal powers allotted to parent representatives on the “Consiglio di Istituto” and the “Consiglio di Classe”. The investigation of formal and/or advisory powers given to parents in schools leads to the driving concern of the paper: does more direct decision making power in school administration for lay parents lead to greater inclusion or greater exclusion of immigrant families?