Seconde generazioni: amicizia, socialità e tempo libero

Abstract

Children of immigrants are now a permanent presence in Italian upper secondary schools. Compared to primary and lower secondary schools, upper secondary schools host a higher proportion of foreign students that arrived in Italy during pre-adolescence. From a sociability point of view, what happens in upper secondary school classes? Do segregation and polarization occur? Are ethnically based models of sociability emerging? To help answer these questions, selected results of a research project, conducted between 2007 and 2012 in seven upper secondary schools in the Trentino region in Northeast Italy, are discussed. The project comprised a yearly survey administered to students of the sampled classes along with ethnographic observations, interviews and group discussions with students, parents and teachers. The results show a partial porousness of social and symbolic boundaries in school contexts. The sociability models also appear relatively similar among the foreign and native populations. The isolation and segregation phenomena are, to a great extent, concentrated among young teenagers that arrived very recently in the host country.