Conference Program

In a global scenario characterized by intensified migration flows, racialized public narratives, and growing social polarization, democratic education cannot be conceived separately from intercultural justice. This contribution presents the experience of “Casetta Rossa”, a self-managed community space located in Rome and rooted in its local urban context, where an Italian language school for migrants functions as a space for the co-construction of intercultural knowledge and democratic education practices.

The contribution is based on a qualitative case study founded on narrative and participatory approaches. Rather than analyzing the language school as a functional integration service, the study interprets it as a critical pedagogical space in which migration, citizenship, and knowledge are continuously renegotiated. Through dialogic practices and collaborative learning, the experiences of the participants, multilingual repertoires, and situated narratives are recognized as epistemic resources (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In this sense, the school challenges assimilationist models and deficit-based representations, contributing to forms of social and epistemic justice consistent with a democratic and intercultural perspective.

The experience also highlights a second complementary dimension: the implementation of active citizenship by volunteers—former teachers, retired professionals, and neighborhood residents—who serve as language facilitators. Their involvement does not simply respond to a gap in services, but constitutes a civic practice through which individuals reposition themselves in the public sphere. Teaching Italian becomes a relational and political act, fostering intergenerational dialogue, mutual recognition, and shared responsibility. Both migrants and local residents thus participate in democratic learning processes that reshape their understanding of belonging and collective life.

Building on Appadurai's (1996) notion of locality as socially produced and dynamically negotiated, the paper argues that such grassroots educational practices generate emerging public spaces where alternative modes of urban citizenship can take shape. These spaces function as everyday infrastructures of democracy, where intercultural dialogue is not reduced to rhetoric but is realized through embodied encounters, negotiation of differences, and shared problem solving (Biesta, 2011; Amin, 2002). By placing intercultural education within lived urban practices, the contribution proposes a model of democratic education that goes beyond abstract references to diversity. The case of "Casetta Rossa" suggests that democratic and intercultural education takes shape in situated, relational, and conflict-aware contexts, where knowledge is co-constructed and citizenship is exercised collectively. Community-led language schools can therefore be understood as transformative spaces that connect migration, social justice, and democratic participation in concrete and meaningful ways.