Voices of children and parents from elsewhere: a glance at integration in Italian primary schools

This study involves 35 research participants: 20 immigrant parents(primarily mothers from South America, North Africa, Eastern Europe andthe Middle East) and 15 primary school children, aged 10–11. Thesechildren were born outside Italy and primary school was their firstencounter with the Italian educational system. We observed theirprocesses of integration through their stories and those of their parents.Our investigation aims to identify factors that support or inhibit theirschool integration. We adopt an ecological research paradigm,proposing a vision of knowledge as rooted in natural life contexts,focusing on subjectivity. Analysis of the data led to identification of corecategories concerning these families’ experiences and their children’sencounters with Italian schools. This paper focuses on the children’sperspectives of their experiences with school.