On Hosting and Being Hostile: Italy and Its Disconnected Youth

This chapter draws from documentary analysis approach to critically expose how European and specifically Italian institutions address youth with a migrant background. It focuses on the way the challenges in this context are experienced in Italy, and it explores the tensions connected with addressing cultural diversity issues and related stereotypes and prejudices, often generating situations of inequality and discrimination. Such tensions concern the contradictions between (1) the best interests of the minor and the migration controls of the various countries; (2) the children and youth welfare and the measures that are implemented to control the migratory flows; (3) the migrant children and youth rights and the insufficient measures and resources available to guarantee them. A specific focus is devoted to the work of scholars such as Néstor Garcia Canclini that offer an analytical framework connecting social justice and cultural diversity issues from a Latin American perspective.