Conference Program

Across Europe, migration policies increasingly emphasize the need to enhance the intellectual capital of young migrants in order to reduce skills mismatch and foster social and labour market inclusion. Yet, education and training systems often reproduce processes of devaluation: bureaucratic uncertainty, linguistic barriers, and forms of stigmatization hinder the recognition of prior competences, rendering intellectual capital socially invisible or institutionally illegible.

This paper argues that the enhancement of intellectual capital among asylum seekers cannot be understood solely as technical skill acquisition. Drawing on Erving Goffman’s concepts of face-work and stigma, together with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capital, intellectual capital is conceptualized here as competence that becomes effective only when it is socially recognized within interaction. In contexts shaped by precarious legal status and processes of stigmatization, the fragility of face concerns not only personal identity but the very possibility of presenting one’s competences as legitimate. This interactional vulnerability can inhibit participation, reduce engagement, and weaken learning trajectories. Reconstructing face thus emerges as a relational precondition for activating capital.

The analysis is based on a qualitative case study of a 500-hour Vocational Education and Training (VET) programme (“Warehouse and Logistics Operator”) implemented in Italy in 2025 within the national GOL employment policy framework. The programme involved 11 asylum seekers and resulted in a 100% success rate in both theoretical and practical qualification exams. Through sustained classroom observation, the study examines how relational practices aimed at reducing face-threat, managing linguistic exposure, and fostering mutual recognition supported participation and successful completion.

The analysis is informed by FACET®, an interactional analytical framework identifying five interdependent relational dimensions—trust, authenticity, control, exposure, and tolerance—that shape the stability of face in interaction. FACET operationalizes face-work through observable micro-interactional indicators, making analytically visible the relational conditions that enable or inhibit the activation of capital.

The findings suggest that enhancing intellectual capital among structurally vulnerable young migrants requires not only access to training opportunities, but attention to the interactional processes through which competences become socially validated and institutionally legible. The paper proposes a micro-sociological reframing of inclusion strategies in VET policies, highlighting relational recognition as a necessary condition for transforming marginalized skills into recognized intellectual capital.