The measurement of social integration among the pupils in different Italian regional contexts

Antonella Guarneri, Instituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)
Luisa Natale, Università di Cassino
Giulia Rivellini, Università Cattolica, Milan
Maura Simone, Instituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)
Laura Terzera, Università Milano, Bicocca

The experience of the countries with a long history of migratory inflows indicates that obtaining high integration level is possible not so much in the first as in the second and later generations. In this contribution our attention is on first-grade secondary (junior) school kids living in the two most significant regions for the presence of immigrants: Lombardy, in the North, and Latium in the Centre of Italy. With data gathered from ITAGEN2 (an Italian sample survey on children of immigrants and their Italian schoolmates, carried out in 2006) and using network and multivariate analysis, we supply an empirical measurement of social integration by individualization of the ways with which the foreign origin pre-adolescents live the socialization with peers. We will focus on friendship relational ties inside the school, where the classes represent closed networks, and outside the school, taking into account some other social ties: to have Italian and/or foreign friends; to see friends outside the school; involvement in a team (basketball, football, etc.); daily hours spent in front of TV/Playstation. The individualization of social marginalization, ethnic isolation and pre-adolescents’ characteristics with these social profiles can be useful to understand if these situations are only transient (i.e. depend on the socialisation) or concerning a specific “type” of foreign origin kids that needs of integration school policies.