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This chapter offers an anthropoloigcal and pedagogical perspective from the results obtained within the European project “Children for children wellbeing: strengthening national child care system to guarantee equal rights for all children ", of which the University of Palermo was a partner, aimed at children in care and care leavers.

The article focuses on the emotional, cognitive, and social climate in which multilingual families make and influence language choices. It investigates what impact the choices can have on the general well-being of the family, regarding both the intergenerational relationship and the community context. The research suggests that the linguistic attitudes of migrant families can stimulate and implement potential well-being. It consists of the conscious management of the specific and complex dynamic activated in a multilingual family.

The essay presents some results of an ethnographic survey conducted in Palermo (Sicily) in a host community for unaccompanied foreign minors, focusing on the collective imaginary of the sea that a group of migrant minors from South Africa in-corporated during their travels. It highlights, from an ethno-historical perspective, the oral narratives and life stories collected during the symbolic-liminal passage through the Mediterranean sea. The re-elaboration of time and space in the boat correlates to the “bodies of water” as a possible contribution to the prospective discourse on trau-ma, exclusion, survival of separated children.

Il numero che proponiamo ha per titolo “Antropologia del viaggio e del prendersi cura dell’Altro” e propone cinque articoli che da diversi punti di os- servazione si occupano del rapporto con l’alterità. Viene indagata la relazione con l’altro che arriva nel nostro territorio attraverso viaggi al limite della sopravvivenza, che fugge da miserie, guerre e maltratta- menti.

Il presente contributo propone delle riflessioni critiche sulle notazioni demologico-folkloriche di Salvatore Salomone Marino, il quale, nei suoi studi, pone particolare attenzione alla materia religiosa popolare. In particolare egli si sofferma ad analizzare le leggende agiografiche di santi e di episodi di guarigioni miracolose, da cui derivano i culti di alcuni patroni molto venerati Sicilia, proprio per i loro poteri taumaturgici. Sant’Agrippina, Sant’Agata, San Francesco Saverio e San Nicolò di Bari costituiscono quattro exempla del tracciato storiografico della fede, che evidenzia l’aspetto più genuino e oikotipico della religiosità popolare siciliana

This paper proposes to think the category of religious pluralism as an essential mindset of contemporary society. Religions, even today, go to war; sometimes it happens that a religious representation turns its prophetic vision in an extremist perspective to be applied against a perceived enemy. Often conflicts, never dormant, come back on presenting a new look and the cause is not a difference of belief or doctrine; as evidenced by Enzo Pace (2004), conflicts become an important symbolic device in identity politics. However, it is the duty of civil perspective reasoning on a proactive and inclusive perspective for the construction of the common good and the compresence of religious cultures.

Breastfeeding is a practice so far unobtrusively studied by cultural and medical anthropology, an act placed between nature and culture, between private and social women spheres and which, like birth and pregnancy. It expresses hierarchies in roles and gender relations among biopolitical dynamics which denote the organization of society itself. As a cultural practice, breastfeeding differs itself on the basis of the social and ethnic belonging of the mother and the child, leading to ritual differences such as the law of the “kinship of milk” in muslim societies or the apothecary taboo of Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper reflects on how much this is occurring in Western society where breastfeeding is less and less widespread and how much the lobbies influence technological and biomedical hypertrophy.

Over the last few years, the link between health and migration has acquired an increasingly clear and precise social and political significance in the context of relations between Italy and the undeveloped areas of the world.

This paper proposes an anthropological reflection on the connection between social inequality and Roma/ Gypsies’ religious experience in Italy, focusing on religious practices between Orthodox Christians and Muslims Roma groups living in marginal conditions. The essay, finally, refers to the way in which the Italian state does not consider the religious practices of the Roma and the issue of human rights, stressing that the religious dimension is totally ignored at government level because of harmful categorization and discriminatory attitude.

The volume is the result of the eighth edition of University of Palermo International Summer School on “Migrants, Human Rights and Democracy”, bearing the human mobility and hidden geographies theme held in Favignana (Italy), in July, 2014. Moving from Kumar Rajaram and Grundy-Warr’s volume Borderscapes. Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge (2007), the interesting and relevant contributions by participants (outstanding scholars, academics and humanitarian practitioners) from different Eu and non Eu countries investigate the new mobility paradigms (Cresswell, 2006; Hannam et al., 2006; Sheller and Urry, 2006), providing a comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of contemporary diasporas, through both comparative reflections and ethnographically based case-studies

I grandi flussi migratori che caratterizzano il nostro tempo e il nostro spazio-mondo che muta così rapidamente ci conduce all’interrogativo su come si possa vivere insieme, come si possa coabitare pacificamente, pur nel rispetto delle pluralità culturali, della profonda diversificazione di nazionalità, etnicità, linguaggi, equilibri tra genere, età, capitale umano e statuti legali. Il mondo globalizzato è fortemente segnato dalla superdiversità, quale esito di spazi urbani sempre più complessi e più definiti dalle mobilità umane in continuo divenire.

In epoca contemporanea, il leitmotiv ricorrente nell'immaginario collettivo è quello della rottura del sistema della trasmissione, talvolta di un mancato incontro intergenerazionale, in un contensto spesso percepito come globalizzato e, al contempo, sgretolato.

Il volume, esito di una ricerca etnografica, prova a fornire un quadro esaustivo della fenomenologia zingara a Palermo, come caso idiografico, con costante riferimento comparativo all'ambito nazionale, per un possibile assioma nomotetico. Il focus tematico è centrato sulla marginalità dei gruppi rom, sulle loro strategie di sopravvivenza negli interstizi della società maggioritaria e sulla riproduzione dei loro etnemi. Il testo si sofferma, inoltre, sulle prassi di insediamento, adattamento e conservazione dei principali tratti culturali della più grande minoranza etnica europea. Un esempio della trasmissione culturale è l'analisi ermeneutica del rito festivo di San Giorgio (Herdelezi), la cui struttura cultuale celebra l'arrivo della primavera e si connota per il forte sincretismo religioso. La ricerca offre spunti di riflessione sul tema dell'inclusione sociale e l'empowerment dei rom, in un'ottica interdisciplinare a cavallo tra antropologia e psicologia di comunità. Il lavoro è corredato da un apparato iconografico, che traduce visivamente la marginalità esperita dai rom, riflettendo altresì sul possibile processo di autodeterminazione verso un lecito stato di cittadinanza.

The theme of our research is understanding why many aspects of school climate are interrelated and how such relations influence subsequent scholastic functioning. The research is oriented towards the determination of personal and environmental factors that provide to explain several aspects of the construct. We administered a test battery to analyze: Scholastic Climate; Personal and Collective Efficacy; Organizational Commitment, Involvement, and Job Satisfaction. Findings confirm the constant influence of personal efficacy on determining of the level of job involvement and satisfaction. If teachers’ personal efficacy convictions play a significant role on stamp their scholastic perceptions and evaluations, they reflect the experience of each teacher, the history of successes and failures of individuals in their own experience of teaching.

This chapter focuses on the conditions of extreme poverty and uncertainty of Roma women in Italy, and on the consequences they have on their children. The present analysis starts from the living context and from the organizing of families in ghettos. Finally, it proceeds to the women’s economic activity and to the debate on the ethnicity of this community.

This paper focuses on the religious feasts of St. Agata, one of the most important religious feasts in Southern Italy, in the city of Catania. Drawing upon participatory observation and a netnography of virtual communities of devotees, the Christian popular religiosity towards this female Saint can be seen to represent an annual consecratory encounter between the Saint/Sacred and the local community, and also a kind of contemporary ordeal for young people. As Durkheim suggested, religion is what brings people together by reinforcing social relations and moral norms through a “collective effervescence”. This group energy, when felt by the individual, is not recognized as the result of communitas, but is attributable to the sacred. I suggest that this event has a double aspect: on the one hand, every devotee has to submit him/herself to this initiation rite at least once in his/her life to confirm belonging to the local community; and on the other hand, worshippers experience a sort of humanization of the Saint, who becomes one of them, someone to ask for employment, good health and so on, in exchange for extreme performances of devotion, such as enduring of more and less severe trials. Once a year, the collective suffering for Agata is perceived by the local actors as an initiation rite during the three-day feast. I suggest that this religious celebration is not only a social form of embodiment but a perpetrated contemporary form of ordeal.

L'attuale offerta di una cultura uniformante, esito della globalizzazione e della massificazione della comunicazione, impone di custodire maggiormente anche a livello istituzionale,il senso della propria identità culturale e territoriale. Il prerequisito affinché la tradizione e la cultura identitaria divengano risorsa per gli uomini e i territori, è la conoscenza dei beni culturali, tradizionali e non, che ogni comunità/territorio possiede a sua caratterizzazione. Da qui, il riconoscimento del valore sistematico delle ricerche sulla cultura popolare, dei folkloristi italiani dell’800, tra i quali spiccano i nomi di Pitrè e Salomone Marino, ai cui studi è dedicato il volume.

The paper focuses on the case-studies of nomad camps in Italy, where groups of “gypsies” live in condition of ghetto. The nomad camps generally constitute a world out of the city, as an encompassed microcosm. They represent a borderland or a grey zone. The only interaction between “them” and “us” happens when Romanì exit from the camp and cross the municipal streets. Roma people develop a capacity to survive in urban interstices. These practices consist in unusual welfare forms of material help for day by day survival, while living in a condition of human rights negation by majority society members.

Il saggio focalizza l'attenzione sul fenomeno dell'antiziganismo nei media, quale vettore di fenomeni di stigmatizzazione sociale.

The paper presents the reslt of the action research project issued in Palermo (Southern Italy), in disadvantaged urban suburbs, methodologically based on Kurt Lewin's field theory - that is a three-step spiral process of planning which involves recoinnaissance; talking actions; and fact-finding about the results of the action - in order to develop the social participation and the social change. The principal aim of the project was the empowerment of participants, obtaining their collaboration through participation, giving them acquisition of knowledge for a real social change.

Combattere il pregiudizio contro i gruppi Rom, ma anche favorire la socializzazione: nasce con questa esperienza l'idea di lavorare con la "pallastrada". Allo stesso tempo si sviluppano competenze linguistiche, si abbattono barriere , si gioca. Un percorso che guarda ai pregiudizi e alla possibilità di utilizzare la Peer Education anche nella prevenzione degli stereotipi etnici.

The ethnographic research conducted since four years focuses on the case of a nomad camp in Palermo, town in Southern Italy, where three Roma groups live since twenty-five years, in condition of ghetto. This nomad camp constitutes a world out of the city, better an encompassed microcosm, even if it is located inside the downtown. This means that there are not interrelations between the camp and the rest of the external space. Specifically, the three different groups (Xoraxane, Cergara and Serbians) represent for the outside a generic nebulous whole, confined in a green area, surrounded by a high wall. Don’t see them signifies don’t care about them, about their living conditions, about their culture and about their identity. The only interaction between Roma and gage happens at traffic lights where they beg manghel. In the indigenous imagery, there is a lot of prejudice in term of exclusivity: first of all the idea that their occidental space is invaded by this unpleasant microcosm that must stay in its boundaries. Focusing on Roma negotiation of identity, the research showed that, except for Romani married women, the youth of the camp usually prefer to hide their ethnicity with local friends. Especially this demographic group allows us to analyse the continuous fluctuation of young Roma as suspended particles in their attempt of social inclusion, based on masking their original culture, but that expresses itself by a wrong process of assimilation of consumption rules.

The work focuses on the case of the nomad camp of Palermo, in southern Italy, where three groups of “Gypsies” have been living for twenty-five years, in ghetto-like conditions. This camp represents a world outside the city, or rather a confined microcosm, with, except for volunteer workers, sporadic contact with the people of the city or the public administration. . This means that there is no inter-relationship between the camp and the outside world. On the contrary, for the so-called host society, the three different groups represent a sort of generic and nebulous whole, cut off in a green area, surrounded by a high wall. Not seeing them means not caring about them, their living conditions, their culture and their identity. The only interaction between “them” and “us” happens when the Romanì women leave the camp every morning and walk the city streets; children wander about alone, begging for food; little boys are disguised as girls in order to make passers-by feel sorry for them;; on the other hand, younger Gypsies prefer traffic lights as a place to beg for money. As known, in local people imagery It is widely acknowledged that in the minds of local people there is widespread ethnocentric prejudice, especially in terms of marginality and xenophobia. Local inhabitants tend to assume that their western, urban space is being invaded by this unpleasant microcosm, which really ought to stay within its own boundaries. Within this ethnic framework, I would like to suggest social intervention through the empowerment approach (Montero, 2009) and “street level bureaucracy” (Lipski, 1980) in order to arrive at an initial form of social security cushion on the long road towards social inclusion.

The aim of this paper is to study in depth some methodological aspects of social interventation, focusing on desirable passage from social maternage method to peer advocacy method. For this purpose, we intend analyze social and organizative components, that affect operator's professional action and that are part of his psychological environment, besides the physical and social one. In fact, operator's interventation should not be limited to a pure supply of techniques, nor to take shape as improvised action, but “full of good purposes"., {"references":["S. Caretto, Tra personale e professionale. Animazione Sociale, 5/2004,\npp. 65-72.","C. Michelot, \"Domanda\", in Dizionario di psicosociologia, J. Barus-\nMichel, E. Enriquez, and A. Lévy, Eds. Milano: Raffaello Cortina, 2005.","R. Carli, L-analisi della domanda in psicologia clinica. Milano: Giuffrè,\n1993.","R. Carli, and R. M. Paniccia, Analisi della domanda. Teoria e tecnica\ndell-intervento in psicologia clinica. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003.","G. Montesarchio, and C. Venuleo, Narrazione di un iter di\ngruppo.Milano: Franco Angeli, 2006, p. 114.","G. Montesarchio, and C. Venuleo, op. cit.","R. Carli, and R. M. Paniccia, Analisi della domanda. Teoria e tecnica\ndell-intervento in psicologia clinica. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003.","S. Caretto, op. cit.","C. Costanzi, Introduzione all-analisi dei servizi e degli interventi in\nambito sociale. Milano: Franco Angeli, 2006.\n[10] G. Lavanco, and A. Milio, Psicologia della dipendenza dal lavoro.\nRoma: Astrolabio, 2006.\n[11] E. Mounier, Trattato del carattere. Milano: Paoline, 1990.\n[12] A. M. Baggio, Etica ed economia. Verso un paradigma di fraternit├á.\nRoma: Citt├á Nuova, 2005.\n[13] G. Lavanco, and C. Novara, Elementi di psicologia di comunit├á. Milano:\nMcGraw-Hill, 2006."]}