The school as place of integration: second generation in Apulia

Pierpaolo Bonerba, Università di Bari
Michela Camilla Pellicani, University of Bari
Fanizza Floriana, Università di Bari

Recently Southern-Italy is living an important socio-cultural change, turning from a transit to a stabilization area of the foreign population. The growing school attendance by immigrant’s children represents a strong sign of the migratory project transformation, confirming the transition from a conjunctural presence (principally motivated by the search for a job) to a more stable, maybe definitive, structural settlement. Consequently, seen the considerable importance that the school begins to have (as a fundamental place of dialectic process construction among different cultures) we launched a field survey in a Southern-Italy “zip” region - Apulia very unique and hence very interesting for its immigration dynamic - from the school year 2000/01 with the Regional School Division. Our aim was to detect and analyse the non-Italian pupils’ integration degree in all school orders. It has been possible to find out, beyond quantitative aspects, qualitative features very useful for a more complete phenomenon interpretation.