At the Margins: Challenges for Sociologists of Education in Southern Europe

The aim of this Special Issue of the Italian Journal of Sociology of Education, published at the same time of the n. 3/2019 of RASE (Revista de Sociología de la educación), is to reflect on Sociology of Education from a Southern European perspective. Undoubtedly, the starting point is the well-consolidated international debate on the so-called “Theories of the South” (Connell, 2007) or “Epistemologies of the South” (Santos, 2007), and the call for a “Global Sociology” (Burawoy, 2016) also in a postcolonial perspective (Bhambra, 2014). These approaches have made visible the need to seek new theoretical and empirical contributions to think about the social realities of the Global South outside the Euro-American area, which as arisen over the last 40 years in response to social movements and to the emergence of different sociological voices all around the world. We believe it is time to consider whether a Southern analysis of educational problems should be suggested, both at the European level and in each country of the EU, considering the many ‘Souths’ within the ‘Norths’. We would not like to foster North-South divisions inside or outside the scientific community or social life. On the contrary, we propose to discover and widen the possibilities of international dialogue among Sociologists of Education, deconstructing and going beyond this presupposed divide.