Interculturality and Social Bonds Formation: a Case Study on Immigrant and Native Preadolescents in Italy

In Italy, the rapid increase of foreign students has represented a test for the traditional tendency of the Italian school to inclusion. The Italian regulation on migration shows a model of school that is integrative and intercultural. The intercultural dimension involves all the school, which has the duty to create equal possibilities to learning, justice and equity. Interculturality, as a specific objective of a school undergoing transformation, requires the complementarity of action lines that include the integration of immigrant students and intercultural exchange in scholastic and extra-scholastic relations, in the knowledge and the competences. The study investigates - through the analysis of the results of an empirical research carried out through the administration of a questionnaire on a sample of over 1300 Italian and foreign preadolescents attending the second and third year of secondary schools of first degree in Abruzzo, in the centre of Italy - the experience of preadolescents in a transforming society and school, that are characterized in growing measure by a multiple living together, with the intention to deepen inclinations that are being shaped among new generations as regards integration and the formation of social bonds