Conference Program

Despite Italy’s long-standing commitment to intercultural education, disparities between native and immigrant-background students persist across academic achievement, tracking, and school continuity (Aktaş et al. 2022; Ferri et al. 2023). Scholarship has also emphasized the fragmented and normatively ambiguous character of the intercultural policy framework (Santagati & Bertozzi 2023; Landini 2025). Rather than focusing on policy design, this paper turns to the level of practice, examining how integration is interpreted and operationalized within schools. The analysis draws on qualitative research conducted in four lower secondary schools on the periphery of Milan and is based on 71 in-depth interviews with administrative and teaching staff, students of diverse backgrounds (including immigrant origin), and their parents.

Across the schools, a recurring repertoire of measures emerges: Italian L2 courses, cultural mediation, collaboration with external actors, pedagogical adaptation, and initiatives aimed at fostering parental involvement. These interventions signal institutional recognition of linguistic and cultural diversity and constitute a meaningful baseline of commitment. However, their configuration, intensity, and integration into ordinary pedagogical routines vary significantly.

The paper argues that integration frequently remains confined to formally established measures and to a general institutional openness to provide support upon request. Rather than reshaping the underlying logics of schooling, the research findings suggest that support often operates as an additive layer alongside mainstream pedagogical routines. Yet these routines are not neutral: they are structured in ways that implicitly privilege students whose linguistic and cultural dispositions align with dominant expectations.

Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence, the empirical analysis shows how taken-for-granted institutional norms may reproduce inequality without explicit discriminatory intent (Bourdieu & Passeron 1990). Within this configuration, integration emerges as heavily dependent on individual teachers’ reflexivity and relational commitment. However, these dimensions remain unevenly institutionalized and weakly supported organizationally. Limited reflexivity can reframe structural disadvantages as individual shortcomings, subtly shifting responsibility onto students and families for limited academic performance or participation.

The paper does not dismiss the mitigating role of existing support measures; instead, it highlights a persistent tension between formal institutional commitment to integration and organizational routines that continue to structure unequal educational trajectories. Promoting integration of immigrant origin students therefore requires not only expanding support measures, but also rethinking the underlying logics that shape everyday school practices.