Educating at the margins: school imaginaries and ideas of the future in Metropoliz

Abstract

This study explores the school imaginary of students living in Metropoliz, a housing occupation in the eastern periphery of Rome, in order to understand how, under conditions of social marginality, educational experience and the idea of the future are constructed through the relationship with school. The research problem concerns the distance between the school institution and students’ family habitus, and the consequences this distance has for processes of recognition and educational participation. Through an ethnographic study based on participant observation, interviews, and questionnaires administered to teachers and after-school volunteers, the research analyses the experiences of eleven students. From the analysis, three school imaginaries present in Metropoliz were reconstructed: school as coercion, as transition, and as horizon. The findings show that school, far from always configuring itself as a space of emancipation, may reproduce distance, misunderstanding, and labelling, while informal educational spaces emerge as sites of recognition.