Giovani stranieri, nuovi cittadini. Le strategie di una generazione ponte

[Autom. eng. transl.] In Italy there are about 800,000 foreign nationals, 8% of the resident population of the same age group. Foreign adolescents mostly attend educational or vocational training courses. The varied scenario of situations, life stories, personal, family and community itineraries, represents a test both of the parents' migration project and of the capacity to welcome and integrate the receiving societies. If, for adolescents born in Italy, there are guarantees of inclusion thanks to the possibility of acquiring Italian citizenship, for the children of reunification the trajectories are more complex and unpredictable, influenced by living conditions and available resources. In effect it is a bridge generation, which is building the transition between first-migrants and successive generations, intent on developing concrete strategies for inclusion, belonging, but also for coexistence between multiple worlds. Starting from a survey carried out in Lombardy on a sample of foreign young people aged 14-19, enrolled in post-compulsory courses, the book identifies the crucial questions in view of future results: the weight of the family background (before and after migration), gender differences in mobility choices and paths, factors that lead to educational success, forms of discomfort in the school experience, the difficult balance between study and work, acculturation in the host society in the light of identity construction processes. This new youthful presence is anything but marginal, nostalgic or crushed on the needs of survival, but capable of developing dynamic and heterogeneous strategies and life projects, largely autonomous with respect to the original ethnic and family belonging. In this perspective, the challenge is not so much about welcoming as about the possibility of full citizenship.