Chapter 6 At The Borders of Italian Local Welfare. Unaccompanied Refugee Children in South Italy: Between Persistence and Changes in Politics and Policies

Abstract

Abstract The chapter presents a critical analysis of the reception system for non-asylum seeking unaccompanied migrant children in Calabria, a region of South Italy. It focuses on the main features of local welfare for migrants’ children emerging from a qualitative research carried out by mixing different sources: analysis of literature and semi-structured interviews to different stakeholders (politician, local administrators, juvenile judges, social workers, management of foster-care communities, and educators). Shortages in individualized planning, lack of resources for qualifying the educational staff, economic difficulties of local administrators, frequent absence of a cultural and linguistic mediator, lengthy delays in appointing tutelary judge, weakness of social territorial services to support communities, difficulties in organizing training and creating job opportunities, lack of verification and monitoring of inclusion interventions, organizational isolation of reception communities, fragility of networking and sporadic collaboration among different stakeholders involved in protection system, and inadequate collection of data and information about migrant children hosted in foster-care communities are salient limits of the local policies and interventions for non-asylum seeking migrants’ children. The chapter also includes a brief presentation of latest innovation in this policies filed, highlighting some of the best practices in education, training, and employment conducted in the Protection System for Refugees and Asylum Seekers, better organized, more specialized, and supported by the national government.