School activism: The meanings of political participation of young migrants in Italian schools

Abstract

Farini presents the results of four empirical research projects concerning migrant children in Italy. Data consists of young migrants’ narratives, promoted and collected in 62 focus group and 118 individual interviews. Respondents in the four projects were 17-20 years old at the moment of data collection and resident in Italy for more than one year. Non-probabilistic and convenience sampling methods were used to select respondents, and narrative analysis was used to examine the data collected. The narratives produced suggest a criticism of the idea of cultural identity as an ‘essential’ identity, something given and fixed. Farini’s research approaches personal narratives as constructed through multicultural dialogue, that is, a social process rather than an object. Issues surrounding the complexity of cultural identities are visible in the data, and the possibilities of cultural hybridisation through multicultural dialogues are presented.