Conference Program

Recognizing dynamism as a constitutive feature of human beings and multiplicity as a primary characteristic of contemporary identities, this paper underscores the necessity and urgency of developing research postures, practices, and competencies capable of countering single-story narratives and embracing disorientation, creativity, and cultural pluralism within the framework of a complex epistemology. Contemporary societies are traversed by separatist, assimilationist, and differential exclusion policies that generate rigid categorizations, impoverish interpretative models, and lead to social isolation and identity closure. Marked by a profound crisis of democracy—one that rejects intercultural encounters within hyper-complex societies—spaces of sociality, education, and culture increasingly appear characterized by segmentation and marginalization. These tendencies privilege orientations that celebrate homogenization among groups, lineage, and identity fixity, while fearfully rejecting mobility and cultural hybridization. This conception of identity, together with the emergency-driven representation of migration—promoting the “control of the foreigner” and reinforcing prejudice—is supported and amplified by: (a) securitarian and homogenizing rhetorics that depict migration as flows, waves, or invasions; (b) migration policies in the Italian context that implement pushbacks, blockades, expulsions, the strengthening of borders, and restrictions on family reunification and residence criteria; and (c) ethnocentric educational orientations and guidelines. Within this scenario, migrant children and adolescents, reunified and unaccompanied, represent one of the most socially vulnerable groups. The paper considers them as privileged witnesses both to the systematic violation of rights and to processes of empowerment, resilience, and the co-construction of new cultures, narratives, and visions. These processes restore depth, multidimensionality, and transnationality to migrant histories and identities, situated between forms of continuity and generative crossings. Adopting a critical pedagogical perspective, the contribution reflects on initial findings emerging from observations and interviews conducted within a participatory research project carried out at the University of Turin in collaboration with Diskolé APS and Renken ETS. The protagonists of this process are young adults who reinterpret their experiences as migrant minors through the lenses of education, culture, and civic participation. In dialogue with researchers and educators, they critically problematize their trajectories, contributing to the shared construction of knowledge, to the decolonization of minds and practices, and to the re-signification of migratory experiences within educational and social contexts.