Studying Hybrid Identities in Schools: Notes on a European Project

Abstract

This paper introduces CHILD-UP (Children Hybrid Integration: Learning Dialogue as a way of Upgrading Policies of Participation), a Horizon 2020 project (Grant Agreement No 822400) which started in January 2019. CHILD-UP deals with the integration of children with migrant background in seven European countries. The project is based on the concepts of migrant children’s agency and hybrid identities in relation to the education system. CHILD-UP project recognises migrant children’s agency as children’s active participation enhanced through the availability of choices of action, which subsequently enhance alternative actions, and therefore change in the interaction. Education can improve the potential of migrant children’s agency in order to change the social conditions of their lives. The concept of agency works in conjunction with non-essentialist theories of culture, denying the existence of permanent membership of cultural groups and conceiving cultural identity as hybrid, i.e. as a contingent product of social negotiation in both public discourse and interaction. In this anti-essentialist perspective, education is the setting for sharing personal cultural trajectories. CHILD-UP analyses the types of intervention that can improve the potential of agency and enhance the hybrid identities of migrant children.