Adult Education as policy that engages foreign-citizen is a relevant issue pushed by the European Union since the so-called Lisbon strategy and one of the major priorities of Europe 2020 (Evans, Kurantowicz, Lucio-Villegas 2016). In effect, the strategy identifies adult education as the main way to go beyond economic crisis and points at migrants as key word of the priority axis and interventions. But, to what extent European do discourses and strategies affect adult Education in the Italian landscape? The results of a research conducted in the school year 2014/2015, using the methodological strategies of document analysis, survey (Marradi 2007) and ethnographic research (Cardano 2011), allow us to highlight some relevant issues to the debate. In particular, the study points to a landscape of ‘discourses at war’ (Serpieri 2009), which unfold along two axes. The first one links and overlaps formal rules and value-based frames, confirming the policy in exam as arena of contention for the government processes among multiple point of control and steering (from communitarian to local space). The second one links and compares the involved actors: on the one hand, the policy makers, who promote a managerialist understanding of the adult education, on the other hand the actors, who ‘put into practice’ adult education and lay claim to ‘inclusion technologies’ through autonomy they have and preserve. In this picture, as we will show at the symposium, the adult education policy emerge as hybrid configuration, counterbalancing inclusive rhetoric(s) and practices of marginalisation and exclusion, but also contribute to widening the spaces for resistance strategies, that is: resilient professionalism and learners who root the learning process in a citizenship exercise (Fenwick and Landri 2012).

Cardano, M. (2012). La ricerca qualitativa. Il mulino, Bologna. Evans, R., Kurantowicz, E., Lucio-Villegas (2016), Researching and Transforming Adult Learning and Communities, Sense Publisher, Rotterdam. Fenwick, T., & Landri, P. (2012). Materialities, textures and pedagogies: Socio-materia assemblages in education. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 20(1), 1-7. Grimaldi, E., & Serpieri, R. (2010). The reforming trajectory of the Italian educational system. Site-based management and decentralisation as a challenge for democratic discourse. Journal of educational administration and history, 42(1), 75-95. Landri, P. (2014). Standard, dati e performance. La governance del sistema scolastico italiano in tempo di crisi. Scuola democratica, (1), 73-96. Desjardins, R., Milana, M., & Rubenson, K. (2006). Unequal chances to participate in adult learning: International perspectives (No. 83).. Marradi, A. (2007). Metodologia delle scienze sociali. Il mulino.2007) Ramella, F. (2006), Il disegno della ricerca, in Reti sociali e innovazione, Firenze University Press, Firenze 1000-1006 Serpieri, R., 2009. A ‘war’ of discourses. The formation of educational headship in Italy. Italian journal of sociology of education, 1 (1), 122–142.