Different Kinds of Difference: The Field of the Nation and the Conditionality of Singularity in Milan Youth Centers.

The investigated topic regards the ambiguity of youth workers’ habitus in Youth Centers in Milan. These are
funded by the Municipality but managed by Third Sector’s youth workers and aim to enhance youth
empowerment and active citizenship in marginalized urban areas: as such they are mostly frequented by
people with migrant background. I propose to categorize them as “social infrastructures of belonging”, as
one of the explicit means to the goals of Youth centers is to foster a sense of local belonging through
relational welfare practices. In this context, youth workers’ practices are in a position of structural
ambiguity: on the one hand, their habitus as agents of relational welfare aiming to create a sense of local
belonging tend towards practices of “indifference” or even “sympathy” toward cultural differences, which
are recognized and accepted as part of the singularity of each person; on the other hand, their position in the field of the
nation, as people predominantly without migrant origin, lead them to struggle to impose as dominant a
certain “practical nationality”, i.e. the right way to be “Italian”. I have used in-depth interviews
and participant observation to uncover a situation of “different kinds of differences” and “conditionality of
singularity”: recognition of differences as part of one’s singularity by youth workers seem possible only on
the condition that youth’s performed differences are of little relevance to the field of the nation, while
expression of differences which conflicts with youth workers’ “practical nationality”, mostly related to
gender-related issues, cease to be features met with indifference or sympathy, and become issues to be
managed.