Education is a constitutionally protected right in the democratic legal systems of many European countries. Then, ideally speaking, regardless of legal status, all have access to schools. However, since the grounds on which equality is advanced against a certain state, which is the “contractual guardian of its citizens” (Lui, 2004: 120), the school access and placement of some differ from others. Like other governing apparatuses, schools act and organize themselves according to an inside/outside arrangement (Lui, 2004), and different phases characterizing school life are implemented under formal and hierarchical differentiation of rights (Morris, 2003). Under this perspective, in this paper, we look at how the very first phase of refugee schooling is organized.

Assessment of entry learning levels is essential to address new arrivals to appropriate grades. Analyzing practices and policies adopted in assessing pupils’ prior educational attainment is also useful to disentangle how education-related migration policies are conceptualized and implemented in institutional settings. We investigate refugee education policies of Italy and Sweden, focusing on the first phase of schooling: skill and knowledge assessment and placement into school classes. The analysis relies on in-depth policy text analysis, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with teachers and social workers. As expected, these two countries present remarkable differences in newcomers’ skill assessment and school admission policies. While Sweden adopts a centralized assessment test on students’ previous schooling, aiming to address new arrivals into mainstream classes as fast as possible through mother tongue assistance, in the absence of a national framework (and definition of refugee minors as a policy target), school admission is spatially fragmented in Italy. Despite these differences at the macro-policy level, however, in both contexts, school leadership and the agency of involved actors have substantial importance in the first phase of refugee pupils’ school placement.

Unaccompanied Minors (hereinafter UAMs) represent an emblematic case to observe challenges and disadvantages linked to access and participation in the education and training system in Italy. Even if they are a small number of people (23,226 in December 2023) compared to the total number of students with a migratory background in Italy (around 872 thousand units, Ministry of Education data for the 2021/22 school year), the UAMs are a population of minors among the most vulnerable, due to the intersectionality of multiple obstacles to integration in education. It’s important to consider, for example, the lack of family relationships and of economic and cultural resources; the linguistic and cultural barriers; the temporal proximity to multiple traumatic events; the loss of legal protections once they are 18+.

UAMs therefore belong to a sort of "global underclass of minors in migration", marked by the main socio-educational inequalities, i.e. socio-economic disadvantage, migration, age (often close to the end of compulsory school/training), experimenting also a negative social perception due to the fact that they are mainly male. In public debate they are indeed often considered a group of almost adult migrants to be controlled, rather than minors to be protected and included.

With UAMs, teachers and practitioners, we conducted a study on access to education in Italy (ISMU ETS, 2020/22), financed by the Ministry of Education. Through a survey on a probability sample of reception institutions and a census of around 4 thousand UAMs, we could observe that their integration in schools in Italy is far from fulfilment (only 21% of the minors registered are in ordinary school). With a qualitative approach (case studies and focus groups with social practitioners and teachers), were highlighted educational institutions’ not easy to solve dilemmas, for which schools find themselves making choices that are not always in line with what is defined by the regulations.

With the aim to understand the link between the social structure and the attempts of the subjects involved to escape from subordination conditions, emerge practices of resistance by the subjects involved in the educational relationship, especially in 50 interviews carried out with the UAMs. The agency in subjects (UAMS, practitioners and teachers) who act in a strongly conditioning context, that gives them few possibilities and strongly influences their actions, can be identified also in the decision "to stay inside the system” and "to do your best”, maybe finding creative ways despite the available options’ range.

The results achieved until now with this study are the basis for new research and intervention paths, that aim to investigate further mechanisms that produce differential inclusion of UAMs and to observe the agency of subjects, that are actors in social change processes.

In the reality of Israel’s educational system, it is highly unlikely that Arab and Jewish students will ever meet at school. The country’s geo-socio-political situation and the prolonged ethnic conflict, which escalated to another extreme level with the events of October 7th, 2023, have resulted in almost complete socio-economic, spatial, and linguistic separation between the two populations. This separation is reflected in the educational system, divided into 'Jewish' and 'Arab' streams. In fact, public education reflects a strong case of institutionalized discrimination and has been systematically used by the State of Israel as an instrument of control, creating a cultural hegemony of national Jewish values (Al-Haj, 2002; Agbaria, 2015).

Within this state-segregated context, there are only 8 bilingual multicultural schools that exist at the intersection of these two opposing educational sectors, one of which is dominant and the other vernacular. Having appeared as bottom-up initiatives and united by their strive for co-existence, they present a unique example of education that has the potential to foster a more inclusive and equitable society in contemporary Israel, distinguishing them from purely linguistic bilingual educational models. While the separate Jewish and Arab educational streams are well studied by Israeli and Palestinian researchers, bilingual multicultural education initiatives remain on the brim of not only governmental but also academic interests. It is alarmingly evident how the sphere of bilingual education does not catch much of the attention of European scholarship and remains understudied.

The purpose of this study is to examine the complex interplay of power dynamics within the Israeli state educational system, focusing on bilingual schools as contested spaces that reflect broader societal tensions. By analyzing the construction of belongings and their borders within the framework of Nira Yuval Davis theory (2006, 2011), the research explores how social categories of ethnicity, language, culture, and class contribute to the construction of state-created national narratives of ‘the other’. Data collected from semi-structured interviews with bilingual schools' principals and teachers reveals intricate connections between language and ethnicity in the State of Israel’s political project of belonging. Opposing this project are bilingual multicultural schools whose alternative perspective on belonging and identity is itself “an act of rebellion” (Participant 4).

The Roma, Sinti and Caminanti populations are among the most marginalised linguistic-cultural minorities in Italy, as in the rest of Europe. The data on school attendance seem to confirm processes of reproduction of social inequalities: the high drop-out rates that these pupils show are often explained by their parents' lack of recognition of the value of education, which contributes to passing on between generations an implicit and explicit rejection of school continuity, seen as a threat to the maintenance of traditionalist models.

However, a growing number of international surveys show that even in these communities it is important to grasp a change underway, albeit a minority one, whereby alternative models of investing in study as a means of building a different future, shared or not with families, are spreading among young people.

Methodological framework

The qualitative research conducted aimed to investigate the school experiences of a group of 23 young Sinti in Reggio Emilia, focusing on the biographies of those who decided to continue their studies after secondary school, and on those of some parents. This research contributes to explore and interpret the intertwining manifestations of social reproduction and social change in young people Sinti's lives, and how these relate to participation in education.

Main results

The comparison shows some signs of change in young Sinti's approach to school and choices that overcome stereotypes and define possible new collective models. However, elements of reproduction of value models and social distances also emerge from the young people's stories.

For many young Sinti going on to secondary school means entering a new world, with many unknowns, many fears and without the example of people around them who, having had a positive school and work experience, can encourage and stimulate. Parents feel inadequate and lack the tools to support such choices. In school, young people find no reference to their own cultures. These reasons may be at the basis of the most widespread choice, i.e. to reproduce models of distancing from school culture and gagè, and thus to drop-out.

However, some young people continue their studies, making choices that 'break' with traditional (family and/or community) models. They see study as an opportunity to improve their future and introduce paths of individual and social change. For some this means alienating themselves from family and friends, for others the decision is supported by them. Not experiencing a normalisation of school continuity, these young people go beyond stereotypes and are the first members of the family unit to invest in education, becoming in turn, role models for others, which is important to recognise.

However, the manifestations of social reproduction and social change can also be influenced by the views held by the teachers and practitioners with whom these young people come into contact. The materials collected from the interviews were used in a research-training project with teaching staff and socio-educational workers and the transcripts of the group discussions also allow us to reason about the influence of educational contexts on the lives of young Sinti

Young refugees, including asylum seekers, are entitled to education in England; however, they are invisibilized by a lack of policies aimed at educational provision for them (McIntyre et al., 2020, p. 395). The national invisibility of young refugees in government planning and funding can threaten their full rights to education. Procedural issues related to the asylum system, such as ongoing age assessments and dispersal procedures, also pose barriers that delay young people’s access to a school place and their schooling experiences after enrolment. In addition, England’s education system’s exclusionary procedures may further delay young people’s access to timely education due to long waiting lists, school staff being unprepared to support their needs and schools’ reluctance to accept youth who arrive mid-year. After accessing a school place, young people may encounter surveillance due to integrationist policies such as PREVENT. They may also find Eurocentric curriculum content that does not reflect their backgrounds, languages, communities, cultural and religious practices.

Similarly, all “migrant, refugee, stateless and asylum-seeking children, and adolescents” have the right to enrol in Brasil’s public education system (Resolution CNE/CEB nº 1/2020 - Ministério da Educação, 2020). However, this recent policy may not be implemented as intended across the country. Further, young people face barriers to accessing education and remaining in school due to precarious housing and living conditions. The right to education is essential but insufficient to guarantee their access to other essential rights.

I adopted an ethnographic research approach in both contexts to investigate how young people’s education and migration experiences affect their realities and aspirations. Considering England’s increasingly anti-migration and refugee policies and its colonial past and present, I examined how (im)migration and integration policies may affect young people’s educational experiences and opportunities. In contrast, Brasil appears more welcoming to the arrival of people from Venezuela and Haiti, for example. Nevertheless, I considered educational and migration regulation policies and socioeconomic issues that may exclude young people and affect their material conditions.

Considering that my work focused on young Black, Arab, Latin American and Indigenous youth, I followed critical, anti-racist and resource-based theoretical perspectives to make sense of their experiences and perspectives of education and their living conditions. Despite facing various barriers, I found that young people are active agents who built networks and supported their families in their new environments. In this presentation, I will share findings from England and Brasil to amplify young people’s voices, including Indigenous youth, who often find themselves trapped between their aspirations and realities and how they navigate the contexts encountered.

Today's childhoods differ due to sociocultural, educational, affective, psychological, linguistic, and relational conditions, but also due to gender, age, geography, religion, etc. (Silva, Deluigi & Zaninelli, 2022). As Contini (2010) emphasizes, the faces of childhood are in perpetual transformation: precisely for this reason, it becomes necessary to valorize every nuance of the individual, cultivating from the earliest years of life an educational approach attentive to individual diversity.

Building on these premises, this contribution aims to emphasize the recognition of linguistic pluralism inherent in our communities. In the last twenty years, studies and national and international documents ((Zanzottera, Cuciniello & D’Annunzio, 2021) have increased, calling for the need to promote the knowledge and protection of all languages spoken by children at school and home. Although often with non-binding indications, on the one hand, they aim to encourage the process of acquiring the national language and, on the other hand, recognize the importance of languages of origin.

In this context, reading emerges as a useful tool to safeguard the identity prism of all boys and girls, offering them the opportunity to know, recognize, and identify themselves (Favaro, Negri, & Terucci, 2018). By reading quality illustrated books that tell stories from around the world and in many languages, all children, even those with a migratory background, can have their need for reading satisfied in their native language and develop linguistic and intercultural competencies.

This contribution fits within the studies of intercultural pedagogy and it focuses on the experience of " Mamma lingua. Storie per tutti nessuno escluso," an Italian national project aimed at promoting reading in the native language in families with children aged 0-6. The goal is to make these texts accessible, free of charge, at some municipal library services, encouraging their use and fostering both individual and social recognition of multilingualism, which children with a migratory background often experience, and exposure to multilingualism for all children (IBBY, 2022).

Specifically, the focus is on the implementation of the project carried out in the Metropolitan City of Florence, an interesting case study, that has proven capable of intercepting the specific needs of the community through surveys and educational and training interventions aimed at children and parents, educators, and library staff.