Competenze di mediazione interculturale per educare alla cittadinanza in contesti plurali

Intercultural competences to educate for citizenship in plural contexts In the present age, the difference imposes itself on each level of the local and global life not only as "problem" of democratic coexistence but also ─ and in particular ─ as "challenge". It is a “challenge” to the human ability to trace possible "meeting points", from which it makes possible for each person (at different levels of the collective society) to collaborate with others in the construction of social and cultural contexts “positives”, namely, which allow to each one to be, to grow and to participate. Putting itself in this direction, the paper follows a epistemology both dialogical, phenomenological-hermeneutic and constructivist which, although from different angles, recognizes that the relationship is the dimension both existential, ontological and axiological of subject-person. Hence, it aims to focus on the concept of intercultural mediation. In particular, it seeks to highlight the "areas" ─ both existential and relational ─ along which it is called on to act in a perspective both pedagogy and educational, today. After having highlighted the "lights" and the "shadows" that the national and international studies detect on the device of linguistic and/or cultural mediation until today practiced, the paper recognizes the opportunity to "stay on mediation" by means of a process of critical-constructive reflection. Therefore, collecting the instance to distinguish the practice of mediation between "specific profession" and "professional competence" (which is both located and distributed among those who work in different contexts both educational, social-cultural, and health), the paper intends to: ‒ reiterate that the mediation represents one of the key concepts around which the italian pedagogical proposal (both in general pedagogy and intercultural pedagogy) articulates; ‒ emphasize such as it represents a "professional style" that the operators ─ and especially educational operators ─ are called upon to assume. Specifically, the paper aims at highlighting the competences of intercultural mediation that, putting themselves along the planes both anthropological, ethical and social-cultural, allow each operator to: - act in sense both educational and training on the concepts of belonging, citizenship, inclusion, justice and democratic participation; - promote, between the various actors involved, real interactive processes of social cohesion and human. Therefore, by opening up to different levels of reflection (pedagogical, educational, ethical and political), the paper can be the subject of interest for teachers, consultants and scholars/experts.