TY - JOUR
T1 - The (im)possible success of disadvantaged students. Reflections on education, migration and social change
AU - Santagati, Mariagrazia
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - The paper focuses on the “unexpected pathways” of successful students with an immigrant
background: these biographical routes, that seems socially impossible, raise theoretical issues
around the individual-society, actor-structure relationship. Disadvantaged students who succeed
represent a sociological challenge in the attempt to understand atypical situations and to identify the
institutional processes and the structural opportunities that facilitate them, reducing ethnic
inequalities in education.
This framework is the starting point of the Su.Per. project (Success in educational pathways of
students with immigrant background), based on the collection of written autobiographies of 65
immigrant students, attending upper secondary education in Northern Italy. The biographical
approach allows to deepen the social change that derives from the positive impact of immigration
on education. Within this interpretative perspective, the article underlines the contribute of the
Su.Per. project to a new “definition of the situation”, that considers possible the educational
success of immigrant students, drawing new narratives and discourses on inequalities, but also
giving voice and supports to disadvantaged students, and introducing them to a field of unforeseen
possibilities.
AB - The paper focuses on the “unexpected pathways” of successful students with an immigrant
background: these biographical routes, that seems socially impossible, raise theoretical issues
around the individual-society, actor-structure relationship. Disadvantaged students who succeed
represent a sociological challenge in the attempt to understand atypical situations and to identify the
institutional processes and the structural opportunities that facilitate them, reducing ethnic
inequalities in education.
This framework is the starting point of the Su.Per. project (Success in educational pathways of
students with immigrant background), based on the collection of written autobiographies of 65
immigrant students, attending upper secondary education in Northern Italy. The biographical
approach allows to deepen the social change that derives from the positive impact of immigration
on education. Within this interpretative perspective, the article underlines the contribute of the
Su.Per. project to a new “definition of the situation”, that considers possible the educational
success of immigrant students, drawing new narratives and discourses on inequalities, but also
giving voice and supports to disadvantaged students, and introducing them to a field of unforeseen
possibilities.
KW - educational success
KW - immigrant students
KW - educational success
KW - immigrant students
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10807/149695
UR - http://roderic.uv.es/handle/10550/71973
M3 - Article
SN - 1137-7038
VL - 40
SP - 51
EP - 58
JO - ARXIUS DE SOCIOLOGIA
JF - ARXIUS DE SOCIOLOGIA
ER -