Rethinking citizenship with educators. Voices and perspectives from research in a multicultural peripheral neighborhood

Abstract

In the peripheral areas complex educational needs emerge from the youth with an immigrant background who live there. Among them the needs of community, made even more critical by the instability of existence in contemporary towns, the transience of diasporic migrants’ experiences and the pandemic that forced the closure of all the community spaces. Educators and pedagogical experts, more than ever, need to rethink the ways of activating and engaging young people starting from a reinterpretation of the construct of active citizenship as open, flexible, intercultural. Insights from the in-depth interviews with some educators met during the project XXX show how a reflective approach to these issues contributes to ensuring that educators themselves could grasp the “lived experiences” of citizenship scattered throughout the territory and make them levers of construction and participation in inclusive and resilient communities.