Borders in the Learning Processes of Unaccompanied Minors: A Research in the Italian Context

Unaccompanied Minors (UAMs) in Italy face many visible and invisible borders (Khosravi, 2010). They are marked by key sources of inequality and seen as young adult males, therefore as subjects to be controlled in emergency rather than as minors to be protected (Santagati, Barzaghi, 2021). This also occurs in the educational contexts dedicated to them, including school-training institutions and the reception system, which employ standard approaches failing to enhance their skills and cultural capital. This is an emblematic case of migrant students in the Italian context that leads to reflect on the lack of valorization of the cultural capital that these subjects can bring to the whole society.

The author's research raises the following questions: how do UAMs perceive and define borders? What are the learning processes activated by UAMs crossing and experiencing borders?

The research aims to observe the trajectories of UAMs, with a focus on the intersection of learning and migration, recognizing that learning must be contextualized and cannot be understood without considering movement through social space (Morrice, 2014). Furthermore, the author proposes to view borders (Mezzadra, Neilson, 2014) from the perspective of minors, offering new insights for reflection (Kaisto, Wells, 2020), and to consider borders as a social space for learning.

To answer the research questions and seriously consider the UAMs' perspective, challenging the adult and colonial narrative (Freire, 2022), former UAMs involved in their own contexts as activists are engaged in the co-construction of qualitative investigative tools (creative participatory methods such as drawing, body maps, life maps), which are then used to collect biographical narratives from the UAMs. The research is developed in different Italian local areas paying attention to national, urban and rural borders.