A Collective Action to Rebuild the School: Parents’ Mobilizations in Rome

Criticizing the lack of welfare and public policies in the city, new collective actions attempt to cope social fragmentation and integration issues, which are particularly at stake in the latest decades. They intervene, as occurs in Rome, in order to create what they define as participatory spaces, based on popular consultation in support of schools and neighborhood. These interventions aim at rebuilding a social fabric that is supportive of and controlled by the neighborhoods themselves – whether central or peripheral – or in order to demand the care and management of common goods, either through subsidies or as an alternative to existing institutions. Based on a fieldwork research in different urban areas (central and peripheral), the research has considered different collective actions in Rome led by citizens claiming for direct democracy and active participation. We focus on the agency of Parent Association of two public schools in Rome. Engaging in an integration process that take place in the micro perspective of companionship and in the neighborhood, they aim at responding to the multiculturalism and multi-ethnic issues of this school. By studying their bases for action, we highlight the subjective and shared experiences of the “open school”, through a symbolic re-appropriation of common goods. According to this mobilization perspective, the school represents an exemplary place to re-build institutions and active citizenship as an ethical model of democracy for the next generations.