Within a conception of educational poverty that is irreducible to the material and economic component and understood as “deprivation by children and adolescents of the possibility of learning, experimenting, developing and letting skills, talents and aspirations flourish” (Save the Children, 2014, p. 3), this paper focuses on the invisibility (Milani, 2015) of foreign minors in Italy, to investigate educators’ perceptions of educational poverty and the strategies in place to counter it.

Educational poverty affects the self-determination capacity of the subjects, the possibility of choice and planning autonomy. In most cases, socio-economic, individual and family conditions weigh heavily on it (Raffo, Dyson, Gunter, Hall, Jones, & Kalambouka, 2009; Kintrea, St.Clair, & Houston, 2011). Several researches highlight how the condition of migrants and foreigners has an important impact on educational poverty (Chzhen, Gromada, Rees, Cuesta, & Bruckauf, 2018; Save the Children, 2020) and how the crisis caused by Covid-19 will particularly affect children with foreign parents (OECD, 2020). Educational poverty aggravates the developmental difficulties of the minor in self-fulfillment, in building his own meaningful future, in increasing personal skills and abilities to be able to live and act in a complex society. In Italy, over one million minors do not have Italian citizenship (Istat, 2020). The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) considers the minor a citizen to be promoted and freed (Milani, 2019), taking up the fundamental principle of non-discrimination, but disadvantages and violations emerge from the Italian framework. The risk of educational poverty of Italian foreign minors derives from multiple factors: linguistic and cultural barriers; economic, material and legislative disparities; widespread prejudices that bind children to stereotyped visions of their own future. “Overcoming the challenge of integration is necessary so that all children and young people have access to quality education” (Osservatorio Povertà Educativa, 2020, p. 3) and can therefore plan their future intentionally. “Freedom is a category of the pedagogical as such must be educated, cultivated, made to grow and expand” (Loiodice, 2017, p. 10). But in Italy this educational duty is compromised.

Foreign minors are one of the least protected categories of Italian society (Save the Children, 2019). Their possibility to actively participate in the planning of their own growth path is compromised by strong predestination logics and by the adult-centric vision of the protection system. The sectoralization of the interventions, the emergency dimension of reception, the legal and administrative obstacles posed to educational planning, the practical absence of rights (Deluigi, 2012), the inclusion in a path of “institutional infantilization” (Traverso, 2020) highlight the lack of recognition of the minor in his specificity and globality. The social mandate of educational structures, in fact, places pedagogical action in the logic of rapid adultization, making residual the possibilities of socialization and experimentation with adolescent challenges and therefore of an authentic development of the self.

This paper provides a critical discourse analysis on foreign children’s educational poverty, freedom and empowerment, investigating these aspects:

1) What are the educators’ perceptions of educational poverty and the possibility of self-determination of foreign minors?

2) What educational actions are activated to promote the freedom and empowerment of foreign minors?

In order to understand the point of view of educators on the relationship between educational poverty and self-determination and to bring out the actions implemented to promote the freedom of minors, an interpretative-constructivist qualitative research was carried out (Trinchero, 2002; Cadei, 2005) which involved operators active in educational services for foreign minors in Turin (Italy). The tool used is an open-ended questionnaire (Seidman, 2013), useful for having a wide range of information. The empirical basis, consisting of the responses of 16 interviewees to two open questions, was subjected to interpretative reading, adopting a pluralist and constructivist perspective and favoring the emergence of descriptions and educational views. The analysis was conducted through the construction of a posteriori categories, focusing attention on emerging themes (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Chong & Yeo, 2015), according to the concepts of “freedom to”, “freedom from” and “freedom for” (Milani, 2010).

This paper will reflect on how educational poverty is understood by the educators of services for foreign minors, in relation to the theme of self-determination. In addition, we will show the educational actions implemented to promote the freedom of minors with a view to intentionality, awareness and active participation. The survey shows the connection between the status of a foreign minor and the lack of freedom of planning and decision making, which is reflected in the subject’s perception of self-efficacy. In fact, educators report: - a sense of resignation, little self-awareness and insecurity in foreign minors; - the inability of the protection and reception system for foreign minors to provide adequate responses to their needs; - the incidence of the logic of predestination, dictated by family planning, cultural ties and “structural racism”, which entail existential and institutional invisibility. This paper will critically discuss the contexts, strategies and actions proposed by educators to develop empowerment and promote the freedom of foreign children. From the interviews it emerges that educational poverty is not always correlated to the weak possibility of choice and the lack of self-determination capacity in subjects: policies and strategies risk being weak and not responding to the rights of the most vulnerable children.

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